By Kim Vuong, PRC-Saltillo Blogger
One of the most important things that you can advocate for yourself is voting. Voting is a right and a privilege. If you are of voting age, you should take the opportunity to do it. You may think that your one vote isn’t important, but it matters a great deal. Our democratic system is based upon the principle that our leaders are chosen by the people and require their consent to be governed. Unless many people participate by voting, the system can’t work as our nation’s founders intended it. Instead, we may end up with a leader who doesn’t represent our interests.
Voting is especially important for people with disabilities, because it’s a chance for us to demonstrate that we are full-fledged citizens, with the same rights and equal to everyone else in society. To parents and teachers, I want to encourage you to help young people with disabilities to learn about how our governmental system works, and about the importance of voting, so they’ll be ready when they’re old enough to vote. Encourage them to learn about the candidates and what they stand for. If it’s hard for them to communicate who they support, print out pictures of the candidates to make it easier for them to indicate their choice.
Discussing the election also is an opportunity to teach them both positive and negative words, such as “don’t.” We tend to teach only positive words to AAC users, but they need to know negative ones as well, in order to be able to fully express themselves.
Communicators In Action - vote, government, president, state, representative, congress, senate