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The Multivoice Synthesizer was used with a computer screenreader, producing the sound needed to convert text into synthesized speech for people with visual impairments. A screen reader is a software application that, rather than presenting web…

"I expected to go out of there feet first... I was just like the clients, I had been there my whole life. How could I function on the outside?" Sarah Poole started working as an attendant at Muscatatuck State Developmental Center in 1968. She soon…

"Distressed" and "oppressed," is how Tony and Connie Blair describe the city of Gary and the Northwest Indiana region where the Blind Social Center is located. They founded the center in 2014 after Mr. Blair, a general contractor, lost his eyesight…

This photograph shows a group in front of the ADA Legacy Tour bus in Monticello, Indiana on June 20, 2015. The Monticello tour stop, at Indiana University Health White Memorial Hospital, was hosted by the Mayor’s ADA Advisory Council and the City of…

Mike Morton worked in Indiana state government for 20 years. In the late 1970s, after the legislature passed the Family Subsidy law, he was responsible for defining family subsidy, which included respite services. The Indiana Governor’s Council for…

The first Special Olympics games were held at Soldier Field in Chicago in 1968. Athletes from the United States, Canada and France participated in the games. In 1969, a group of volunteers organized the first Special Olympics Indiana games in…

Mike Furnish, President/CEO of Special Olympics Indiana, was interviewed in 2013. Here he shares a brief history of the creation of the not-for-profit organization that provides sports training and athletic competition for children and adults with…

"Can I see him? That's all I want to do is see him." The doctor called Melody Cooper to tell her that her husband's body was beginning to shut down. Like many others whose family members got COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic, she was told…

"I couldn't see myself making a career standing bagging somebody's groceries," Melody Cooper explains. Starting her employment at Goodwill Industries and then at a Meijer store, Melody was hired by The Arc of Indiana. She attributes her career growth…

On December 24, 1958, Mary Lou and Don Melloy were told their daughter Cindy should be placed in an institution. Mary Lou said, “My response was that they didn’t know what they were talking about…a very unhappy, aggressive mother left the room.”…