Sea Princess

Cruising is one of the best ways to visit new and exciting places around the world. I've been on three of them now, the most recent ended a few days ago when I returned from a Princess cruise to Alaska. The cruise was 10-days long and featured shore time in Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway Alaska as well as a day in Victoria British Columbia. Without a doubt, Alaska is one of the most beautiful places in the world. However, for those of us with disabilities, the journey can be tricky at times.

Photo of a computer monitor next to a desktop computer tower.

We've all been there, busily working through that to do list and then something completely unexpected gets thrown our way. That was exactly what happened recently at work. It was late in the afternoon and I was trying to get a number of things done before the end of the day. Suddenly, my boss stopped in with a gentleman who was in need of assistance. She explained that he was working up until about 2 weeks ago when he was let go due to budget issues. He was once receiving SSDI benefits and now wasn't sure what to do at all. Thinking that I could help him with the benefits issue and possibly assist him in finding another job, she left him with me. And, did I forget to say he was deaf and did not read lips?

I couldn't help but smile as I left the county building last Friday morning thinking that I had finally been able to do something that just about every other American has taken for granted for many years. Because of the hard work and activism of many people in the disability community I was at long last able to cast my vote independently, without the help of anyone. I know, for some of you reading this it sounds trivial. You've been able to walk/roll in to the voting booth and fill out a ballot and probably not thought twice about it. But, for some of us, this hasn't been possible.

Yes, I'm a bit late to the party and I should have been able to do this in 2006. Unfortunately, some problems prevented that from happening. Even this time, I had to wait for over half an hour while election workers tried to fire up the machine that read the ballot to me. But eventually everything worked and, after cycling through various federal, state, county and local races, I had finally done it.