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 a Leading Role for her heralding performance in the film Children of a Lesser God, symbolizing an unprecedented selection, as it was and ...
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The Ruderman TV Challenge

February 16, 2017 / 0 Comments 0 Comments

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 diversity in Hollywood is garnering great attention, disability is still being left out. But disability is a fundamental part of the human experience and needs ...
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  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 everyday conversation. You hear about them on the radio, read about them in the newspapers, and you see them on TV, and not just in sci-fi movies. ...
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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 programs and provide services that foster the full inclusion of people with disabilities. This international recognition celebrates inclusive models that can be replicated elsewhere and ensures that resources are ...
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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 depictions of impossibly tall and thin models has been linked to low self-esteem and anxiety to flat out eating disorders in girls and women trying to emulate ...
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A Disability Journey Off the Rails

November 22, 2016 / 0 Comments 0 Comments

Imagine having a dream- something that is terrestrially possible and already being done by others with regular frequency. Imagine those individuals already living your dream may not be as passionate about it as you are. Imagine that your attempt in fulfilling that passion may lead you sitting in a prison cell for the rest of your ...
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The 2016 Presidential Election is finally over! After nearly 600 days of campaigning, this unprecedented contest for the highest office in the land will now be laid to rest in the annals of American history. President-elect Trump will have a myriad of issues to confront over the next four years as Commander-in-chief, among them: eroded ...
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October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and this observance matters to me deeply this year because I have obtained my first professional employment opportunity outside of the advocacy work I do (which is for my disability rights organization Ramp Your Voice!). This fall, I accepted the offer to be the Project Manager for the ...
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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 Paralympics attendance in London, with about 2.7 million spectators, and even less than the 3.4 million spectators in Beijing for ...
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A little over a week ago, 50 Cent, aka Curtis Jackson III, posted a video of himself bullying a young man at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. He kept following the man—Andrew Farrell—telling him he must be high on something, calling him a motherf#$%er and ignoring the airport employee’s disbelieving head-shaking as Farrell just tried to go ...
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