Disability Rights Education And Defense Fund Inc

Child and Family Advocacy - DREDF provides technical assistance and training on the rights of families and children with disabilities in special education to parents, advocates and professionals. In 2024, our education advocates made 784 contacts to families across 30 counties in Northern California, directly helping parents navigate the special education system and learn their rights in the IEP process. DREDF's education advocates also presented 35 trainings and conducted outreach at 12 events across Northern California. The topics of the trainings ranged from supporting foster youth in special education, supporting tribal children with IEPs, learning the basics of special education rights and the IEP process, and supporting related professionals as experts in the IEP process. The education advocates also attended several county fairs and resource fairs aimed at special education families to increase awareness of DREDF's resources and support for families across Northern California who seek assistance in understanding their rights under special education law.

National Disability Policy and Research - DREDF conducts research, monitors public policy development and provides technical assistance on issues affecting the civil and human rights of people with disabilities and advocates for the rights of people with disabilities. In 2024, DREDF wrote and published a number of important papers looking at topics that affect the disability community. These papers included an examination of how the growing movement toward social housing in the US could be fully inclusive of people with disabilities, a report on the importance of capturing demographic disability data can reveal health and other disparities experienced by disabled people, and two first-of-their-kind reports on the impact of private equity and corporate consolidation impacts people with disabilities in terms of education, healthcare, housing, and institutionalization, including imprisonment. We also continued to be involved with advocating for people with disabilities to have full reproductive choice as well as the freedom to marry and build families with those they love while maintaining access to vital healthcare, community supports, and other disability benefits. Our work on tracking and analyzing the increasingly ubiquitous presence of artificial intelligence (AI) also continues, with a focus on the swift emergence of state bills and laws. Many of these laws emphasize bias testing but still broadly fail to recognize the basic problem that arises when AI is trained on data that emphasizes "typical" non-disabled bodies, thinking, and reactions, without any required understanding of how legally required reasonable accommodations can change outcomes commonly associated with disability.