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What Powers Us:

Letter from 2008 Board Chair Cheryl Sensenbrenner

Dear Friends:

We’re pleased to share with you the milestones of one of AAPD’s most successful years. As we look back at 2008, we celebrate triumphs like the record number of citizens with disabilities voting in the 2008 general election and the growth of our programs. But most importantly, this was the year that AAPD achieved the goal of getting the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act passed and signed into law. See page 6 for details on this law. Achieving this longtime goal was a watershed moment for AAPD and for the disability community.

As the board chair of AAPD in 2008, I prioritized making the ADA Amendments Act a reality, and worked tirelessly with many others in the community to get it passed and signed into law.

To me, as a person with a disability and a longtime disability activist, this law represents so much more than the hours we spent working with our partners in the disability, civil rights and business communities to educate lawmakers about the importance of this law. To me, it realizes what the original Americans with Disabilities Act was supposed to do – protect all Americans with disabilities from discrimination.

The ADA Amendments Act protects all people with disabilities who experience discrimination in the workplace. Hopefully it will over time help more people with disabilities achieve the goal of employment – another huge priority for AAPD.

AAPD still has so much more work to do as we organize the disability community to be a powerful voice for change – politically, economically, and socially. The passage of the ADA Amendments Act showed us we CAN accomplish so much. We will continue to work to realize the dream of the ADA – equality for all people with disabilities in the United States.

Thank you so much to our members, board of directors, donors, volunteers, advocates and staff of AAPD for making 2008 a year we will look back on as one of the organization’s most successful years. None of the achievements highlighted in our 2008-­2009 annual report would have been possible without the support of all of AAPD’s stakeholders.

Cheryl Sensenbrenner

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