By Elizabeth Turnbull

The Seattle Disability Commission is looking for candidates to fill vacant seats in its group and join it efforts to put recommendations in front of local governing bodies to represent disability communities’ priorities in the decision-making process.

“[The commission] provides individuals with the opportunity to advocate for the disability community,” Nona Raybern, the communications advisor for the city’s Office for Civil Rights, told CHS in an email.   “…We highly encourage people who are passionate about advocacy work and want to make a difference.”

Every year, from February. to April, the commission fills vacancies after other commission members’ terms have ended. In terms of their general purpose, commissioners are meant to guide the Mayor and City Council and address community concerns.

While the commission is set to influence city policy, and to provide input from disability communities outside of the local government, the mayor and the City Council are the officials who appoint the majority of the commissioners—eight each—while the commission appoints four more. In total, the commission is made up of 21 members, who are not necessarily required to be a part of a disability community themselves.

Individuals with a disability and under the age of 65 made up 6.2% of Seattle’s population from 2015 through 2019, according to census information. In a hilly, neurotypical-centric city scattered with root-laden sidewalks, local governmental decisions can often provide wide-sweeping changes that may be difficult for thousands of its citizens to achieve purely on an individual basis.

Members of disability communities, on the commission, have helped push for city-wide accommodations. For example, former co-chair of the commission, Eric Scheir, who is also a member of the deaf community, helped put pressure on the city to mandate closed captions on TVs in public spaces and businesses.

As a result, the city announced in April of 2019, all TVs in bars, gyms, restaurants and other public spaces in the city are required to automatically activate closed captions to make life easier for people with hearing difficulties, language barriers and other needs.

Applicants for the position must either live or work in Seattle, commit 10 to 15 hours of work per month, attend monthly meetings, and communicate with legislators, among other things. According to the commission’s web page, it does provide interpreters, documents in Braille and other disability accommodations to ensure that people with disabilities can be a part of their group.

A first possible priority upon joining the group? Push for compensation. The commission’s positions are unpaid.

Learn more at seattle.gov.

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