Written by authors who have dealt with their own disabilities across decades, this book empowers people with disabilities to better navigate their challenges and provides great insight and help for those who live with, work with, and care for people with disabilities.

Led by a woman who was the first Commissioner of Disability Services for the city of Boston, this team of authors explains and illustrates challenges that face people with disabling conditions across the physical and mental spectrum, and also details methods they can use to cope and live well. Blending real-life experience and practical knowledge with state-of-the-art science and psychology, this book supplies an up-to-date presentation of the issues and challenges that face people with disabilities.

The types of disabling conditions addressed range from anxiety disorder to blindness, cerebral palsy, and paralysis. The work recognizes and addresses both the practical and political challenges of disability as well as the personal and emotional challenges. Written by experienced advocates, scholars, and counselors focused on disability and human rights for a combined total of far more than a century, the authors provide invaluable understanding, skills, strategies, and support for those living with disability, and for loved ones or professionals seeking to help them.

• Includes many illustrative vignettes from the authors' own lives and those of people for whom they have served as counselors, advocates, or professors

• Includes attention to both physical and psychological disabilities

• Provides an appendix that lists further resources, organizations, agencies, and support groups that can provide direction and assistance