Waching daily May 4 2018

Hi my name is Valerie Novack I am a Disability Rights Advocate in Toledo, OH.

I identify as a person with a disability.

I have chronic illness, and mental illness, as well as a personality disorder.

All of which I am more than okay with.

What I am not so okay with is how people with disabilities are regularly and systematically

excluded from disaster preparedness discussions around the country and the world.

This is despite a lot of things.

The first being common sense and common decency, the others being actual legal requirements

that have come because people with disabilities are considerably more at risk for harm, including

death, because of ineffectual planning.

But despite laws and best practices, and even the disability community raising their voices

and demanding this, the emergency planning field continues to ignore or think that they

know better how to assist people with disabilities in these situations than what people with

disabilities can say.

Thats why we have certain conferences like Getting it Right Conference, so that the people

who are willing to listen and for some that don't want to listen, can be faced with what

needs to change, because it does.

When we exclude people, and that's any people, from this topic, we're playing with life and

death.

These emergent situations will happen regardless of where you are, regardless of who you are,

these events happen, and when we continue to exclude people from these conversations

we are not just putting that particular person at risk, we're not just not inviting them

to the party but we are potentially setting them up for...for fatalities, and that's a

problem because people with disabilities lives are just as valuable as anybody elses and

deserve to be protected and considered just the same as anybody elses and that is why

we need to get it right and that is why we need disability representation in emergency

preparedness.