The AXIS Dance Company inspires in more ways than one.

Text and Photos by Alice Faye Love

Margaret Cromwell, Alice Sheppard, Lisa Bufano and Rodney Bell of San Francisco’s AXIS Dance Company perform at a public school in Birmingham, Alabama.

Many a dance performance has left me scratching my head wondering what just happened. Even having […]

By Amy Meisner Threet

When she was 9 months old, just starting to walk, and living in Caracas, Venezuela, Marla De Fex developed a fever that an American doctor informed her parents was poliomyelitis. At the age of one her father took her to Rusk Institute in New York City. Her father continued to take […]

Eating and Healing: Traditional Food As Medicine

Edited by Andrea Pieroni and Lisa Leimer Price Haworth Press, Binghamton, New York. Softcover, 406 pages.
Reviewed by Gil C. Allen, MA, MS, PhD, DC
Eating and Healing:Traditional Food As Medicine is a compilation of articles written by various agricultural researchers who have descended on little known […]

As persons who have had to adapt to a disability, we may have had to reinvent ourselves. Many of us may, in the process, have found hidden talents we didn’t know we possessed. Luckily, the creative process knows no barriers and is only enriched by our individual experiences.
In my own life, I am grateful for […]

When, in our March issue, we asked readers of Action to send us their art, I had no idea what sort of response we would get. I certainly did not expect our invitation to elicit the amazing variety and quality of artwork we did receive. I am very grateful that the six individuals you will […]

Seattle-based artist Harriet Sanderson expresses herself on her disability by creating powerful images out of wooden canes, wheelchairs, and other unusual media.
By Lori A. Wood

“When I was three, I was on the couch taking a nap, and when I woke up, I was feverish and couldn’t move my right arm,” says Harriet Sanderson, an […]

Bill Lasher’s wheelchairs are stunning works of art.

Bill Lasher’s “Chopper Chair” (courtesy of Lasher Sport)

Bill Lasher Jr. makes beautiful custom wheelchairs for his company Lasher Sport (www.lashersport.com) out of a warehouse in Anchorage, Alaska. A United Spinal member, and longtime Alaska resident, Lasher became paralyzed during a skiing accident when he was in […]

It took an injury for Kitty Lunn to return to her beloved dance
and make it her life.

By Linda A. Cronin

“The dancer inside me doesn’t care about the wheelchair,” says Kitty Lunn, artistic director of Infinity Dance Theater. “She just wanted to keep dancing.” (Photo by Dan Demetriad)

Kitty Lunn always wanted to be a […]

In March, we asked artists among United Spinal Association’s membership to send us samples of their work along with statements about what effect, if any, their spinal cord injury or disorder has had on their art. We think you will be as impressed as we were by the diversity of real talent among your fellow […]

Two friends from the Bronx rap about living with spinal cord injury.

By Michael Lee

The friendship of Ricardo Velasquez (left) and Norris Namel, formed out of their shared experience as disabled men from the same project in the Bronx, preceded their partnership in music.

Norris Namel, 25, was celebrating his sister’s sweet 16. Namel, […]

Women liberated by their wheelchairs are celebrated at the annual Rolling with Style Gala during Fashion Week in New York.
By Kelly Rouba

Wendy Crawford, chairwoman and founding member of Discovery through Design, rolls on the red carpet in a chair and outfit designed by Thom Browne.

Last month, seven women made history by […]

Photos by Alice Faye Love

Brianna Cranmer (42), Nicole McDonald (30), Bao Yang (23)
and Sarah Binsfield from Arizona reach to take control of the ball
from Illinois’s Kathleen O’Kelly-Kennedy.

Alice Faye Love is an artist and athlete from Birmingham, Alabama, whose photography celebrates the world of women’s wheelchair sports. The photos on these […]

If you’re traveling to London in December, please consider including in your itinerary Able Voices - an exhibition of photographs taken by disabled people in Bangladesh, Cameroon and the UK, timed to take place the week following the International Day of Disabled Persons 2006 (December 3rd) at the Hoopers Gallery in Farringdon. The photographs were […]

By Elizabeth M. Treston

A scene from Krankenhaus Blues at the Visible Theatre in New York City.

New York City restaurants and bars are teeming with actors and writers. They all have dreams of making it to Broadway. They call it their “craft.” I find actors to be traveling on a different plane. They are always […]

For a puppet troupe dedicated to sensitizing school children (and adults) to people with disabilities, the medium is the message.
By Lori A. Wood
The oldest Kid on the Block was inspired by one of special education teacher Barbara Aiello’s students, Anthony, a wheelchair-user with cerebral palsy.
“At the time, Anthony was being integrated […]

An anthropologist explains what disability studies is—and why he thinks it could be so much more.
By William J. Peace
Disability studies is among the hippest and newest fields in American academia. As a college student would say, disability is cool, worthy of intense academic debate and serious scholarship. In the last decade, disability studies […]

Beth Arnoult, one of the subjects of the film Champions on Wheels,
is now the top women’s wheelchair tennis player in the United States.
(Photo by Grace Shafir)

A new documentary shows how five wheelchair athletes found meaning on the tennis court.
By Lori A. Wood
“I didn’t even know wheelchair tennis existed until the NASDAQ […]

Tiffiny Carlson at work.

Tiffiny Carlson thought her life was over after a diving accident. In fact, it was just beginning.
By Lori A. Wood
“When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.” It’s a phrase we all know, but few of us have lived it as admirably as Tiffiny Carlson. “I was a pretty active […]

Last winter, United Spinal Association was contracted to perform accessibility site assessments for various cultural venues throughout the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area on behalf of Art-Reach, a Delaware Valley nonprofit cultural service organization that helps underserved audiences to experience arts and cultural programming and that serves as a community resource by increasing accessibility to cultural venues […]

by Kathleen M. Muldoon
When I was in sixth grade, my first homework for language arts was to write my autobiography—the story of my life so far. The teacher gave us a week to complete the assignment, but I didn’t start mine until the Sunday night before they were due. By the time I’d finished, […]