With summer around the corner, commercials for all kinds of colorful clothing are popping up on any screen I happen to look at. And every once in a while there will even be a model with a disability s

“Google it” has nowadays become the go-to response to questions we actually don’t know how to answer. But imagine you or someone you love, have just become paralyzed, due to an injury or

Foundation Honors Actress Marlee Matlin with Morton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion
 
In 1987, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Marlee Matlin the Oscar for Best Actress in

The Ruderman TV Challenge was designed to continue our work in Hollywood and advocate for greater inclusion of performers with disabilities. At a time when the discussion around the need for greater

This piece was written by Gary Alpert, Program Director for Ambassadors for Inclusion.
Recently, as I was concluding a Jewish day school visit, I noticed an entire class of 5th grade students giving

February is Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month, a time to raise awareness and support efforts to foster the inclusion of people with disabilities and their families in Jewish communitie

I first wrote about Tikkun Olam Makers—better known as TOM—in May of last year, and titled it “How to Change the World.” Admittedly a lofty title, but not an inaccurate one. TOM is best known

 
Our New Study Reveals Self-Driving Cars Could Open 2 Million Employment Opportunities for People with Disabilities
 

 
Introduction
Self-driving cars have almost become a staple of

The canine, “man’s best friend.” The close-knit, inter-mammal friendship between humans and dogs has spanned thousands of years, and this resulting expression has solidified itself as a mainstay

The year may still feel new to many of us, but to expecting parents it is absolutely the same old by comparison to the newness of their coming baby. What is also relatively new for expecting parents i

Ah, the holiday season is upon us. It’s a time of celebration, but also of reflection and as we reflect over the year, we at the Ruderman Family Foundation wanted to highlight and share one of our f

On December 5, there was yet another shooting of an unarmed, black, and mentally ill man at the hands of law enforcement, this time in Arkansas. As of the time of this writing, Gary Johnson is hospita

The Ruderman Family Foundation has announced the winners of its fifth annual Ruderman Prize in Inclusion, five grants totaling $250,000 awarded to companies and organizations that operate innovative

The advertising and modelling industries have long been under fire for unrealistic portrayals of the human form—particularly of women, though men have not been immune either. Seeing countless depict

Last month we published the Ruderman White Paper on Voting Accessibility for People with Disabilities. I co-authored it with Norman Ornstein after an intensive period of qualitative research where we

THE RUDERMAN WHITE PAPER:
VOTING ACCESSIBILITY FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

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We are less than two months away from the 2016

Football. It’s America’s obsession and most of us are not ashamed to acknowledge that. For 21 glorious Sundays throughout the fall and winter our nation is glued to television sets a

Those in the disability realm are in a unique situation- arguably a challenge- when it comes to highlighting their cause or issue: how to reach and influence the general public in today’s hyper

In all the hype surrounding two of the largest international sporting events in the world—the Olympics and the Paralympics—we’ve heard about grueling training routines, deep backstories, scandal

Only a week ago, the Paralympics were in serious trouble. As we wrote in our last blog, they’d sold barely 12% of the available tickets—just about 290,000. That was only a fraction of the 2012 Par

In a previous piece on how to avoid offending minority groups, I wrote how you should not call a person with a disability inspiring just because they do basic, mundane things. “The first time someon

In a few weeks, following the Games of the XXXI Olympiad, the world will once again gather in Rio de Janiero to celebrate the globe’s diversity and compete in feats of athleticism. However, i

Whether or not you actually watch the Olympics and Paralympics, if you’ve at all been on social media in the last two weeks, you probably haven’t missed this video:

Produced by UK’s Channel 4,

I’ve been doing martial arts—various forms of jiu-jitsu—for about eight years now. Whenever I tell people that, I inevitably get the semi-joking, “oh, so you could beat me up” line that

Girls and their dolls. It sounds like a cliché, but the relationship between these anthropomorphic toys and their owners is quite real and has durably stood the test of time. Even in 2016, when peop

Captain America, Iron Man, Wonder Woman, Black Panther, Superman, and the list goes on and on, and we’re still talking only about the superheroes that were featured in big-budget movies this year al

Two weeks ago I awoke (uncharacteristically early) to attend the Second Annual Disability Pride Parade, marching from New York City’s Union Square to Madison Square Park. As I rode the N trai

It’s almost not a hyperbole to say that we are constantly bombarded by news of technological advances. Every time you look at the screen of that tiny super-computer in your pocket, you’re likely t

If I asked you what comes to mind when you think of orthotics, you would probably think of shoe inserts, and you wouldn’t be alone. While that’s the most widespread use of the word, an orthosis is

Last week, my partner and I upheld our long-standing tradition of watching kids movies together and went to see Disney’s latest creation—Zootopia. To give you some much-needed context, I am one of

EasyStroll is an easy and fast connector that enables a wheelchair user to move freely and independently with a baby stroller attache. Estimated to cost $400 when commercially available, it’s the fi

Employers are in a constant tug-of-war: Make the workers happy and make the clients happy simultaneously. While most would agree that they are not mutually exclusive, it is easy to be pulled in two di