Embedded Files
Writers: Graceana Sewall Hardy and Hana Soltani
On June 27th, 2025, Alma Silver was greeted by President Biden in Minnesota, during the mourning of Melissa and Mark Hartmann. While the media regarded the coincidental greeting as heart-warming and "inspirational", Alma reflects that “as a physically disabled woman next to one of the most famous public figures in the world, [her] presence quickly became sensational clickbait”. According to her article on AAPD, while social media was fixated on “Biden’s ‘charitable’ deed”, Congress finalized a bill “to cut $1.02 trillion from Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) benefits by 2034”, potentially leaving millions of disabled individuals with no financial support.
As a child, Alma was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy, a group of conditions caused by changes to the developing brain. According to Mayo Clinic, Cerebral Palsy manifests distinctly across individuals and may involve differences in movement and coordination, speech and swallowing, and/or other developmental conditions.
Alma has been using an Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC) device and a wheelchair since childhood, two ways to accommodate her condition. AAC encompasses all the different ways someone may communicate besides talking, including low-tech and high-tech methods. According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, low-tech communication methods include drawing, pointing to photos, or gesturing, while high-tech methods include using an app on a tablet or a computer with a “voice," a speech-generating device.
AAC is unique to every individual because communication forms are distinct. High-tech AAC devices, in particular, are uniquely designed on a strength-based approach, tailored to each individual's abilities and goals. For example, some AAC computers require individuals to type while others decode their eye gaze or thumb movement. Alma’s communication device is type-based and uses an advanced word prediction system.
First introduced to her AAC device when she was five years old, Alma refused to touch it for a year and primarily relied on her parents to interpret her gestures. When she noticed her AAC device could help her communicate more complex needs, she soon began using complete, compound sentences through AAC. She was a child so lively and passionate who, after learning how to use AAC, “had to be told to be quiet, more than anyone”.
Alma’s school journey was filled with both obstacles and triumphs. Moments where she felt most included within the classroom were times when her voice was honored, and a communication device was accommodated for instead of being treated as an “abnormality”. This included giving her time to construct her responses, pausing side conversations, and sharing discussion questions for the opportunity to pre-type her responses. Adults role-modeling communication device etiquette “often created a ripple effect”, indirectly prompting peers to respect Alma and her voice.
Alma emphasizes that communication is the right of every individual, regardless of their personal or medical background. Ever since she was five years old, Alma has been advocating for herself and those in her community's needs. Following her graduation from River Falls High School in 2016, Alma went on to graduate from St. Catherine's University as Summa Cum Laude with Honors. Since then, Alma has continued her activism through numerous publications in the Minnesota Women’s Press and is now planning to pursue a doctorate.
One of Alma’s articles, written in 2020, covers America's continued dehumanization of disabled people, particularly through a medical system and workplace lens. She discusses her horror at how states with “crisis of care” guidelines explicitly told healthcare workers to limit priority access to ventilators for those with significant physical and intellectual disabilities. She advocates that, in the wake of the pandemic and the further acts of injustice it revealed, able-bodied people need to show up for those who are disabled, especially those who are Native, Latino, Asian, and Black, as they face extra challenges from America’s complex issues of systemic racism. She calls for them to vote for legislation that supports a just and human-centered healthcare system, and to call out the ableist language that diminishes disabled people's competency and reduces them to “inspirations” and tokens.
Disability is “not a monolithic experience”. Similarly, Alma’s approach to activism has been influenced by learning others’ experiences. “I talked with disabled people who refused to be labeled, refused to be categorized, reclaimed the word "disabled" after it'd been stigmatized and treated as a source of shame their entire life. [...] Those first-hand stories and narratives of resistance really shaped the advocacy work I do today and the multifaceted lens I try to take when talking about disability experience.”
Alma has done unyielding advocacy work toward a world that functions effectively for all those on the disabled spectrum. A world where, in her words, “disability would be openly talked about and embraced as a dimension of human experience in every aspect of our society. [A world we can move toward] by normalizing and expecting disability to be present wherever we go and embracing that expectation instead of fearing it.”
Photo Sarah Whiting
Though Alma has been an advocate for her needs since she was young, we shouldn’t live in a world where constant advocacy is the requirement. “The non-disabled world ostracizes the disability community as existing outside of their world.” The mental load of constantly needing to remind people of your personhood is something that can become overbearing. In another one of her articles, she discusses how the drive that commits her to the cause at one point turned out to be a double-edged sword, especially in an able-bodied world that is actively choosing to tune you out.
“When you're a disabled woman [...] constantly explaining your existence to the majority, it's easy to feel like you're invisible and you're screaming into a void. [...] I had to make the decision to take back that power and shape what I want a feeling of power to look like. And I decided that power was going to come from being open and vulnerable with myself about what I need and claiming space for myself in a way that wasn't just catered to satisfying the needs of non-disabled people.”
But, even self care can be difficult in an able bodied world— or at least one that views that as the “default” of human experience. In reality, more than 1 in 4 adults in America have some type of disability, according to a 2025 report from the Center of Disease Control. Furthermore, the simple inevitability of aging almost always leads to some change in functioning. Whether it be cognitive or physical, these changes as well as the experiences of disabled people often require support that is not easy to access and is viewed as something abnormal. ” [.... I’d like to] tell non-disabled people you need to show up for the disability community when it's inconvenient for you, when you don't have a personal stake in it, when we're not being gratifying or inspiring. “
Ultimately, where non-disabled people put their attention matters, especially when so many disabled people's voices are being silenced. Though AAC and other forms of accommodation have helped many find their voice, access to them is often unjustly withheld due to prejudice in the medical system. Much progress has been made for disabled rights, and the fight continues forward with people like Alma Silver, and those who are willing to learn about something they may be unfamiliar with, and greet it with understanding and support. Alma plans on continuing her education and advocacy work, collaborating with other disabled people to change our world into one that works for all of them. A world where a disabled person talking to the president wouldn’t make the news– because it wouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary.
Citations:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/cerebral-palsy/symptoms-causes/syc-20353999
https://www.aapd.com/becoming-inspirational-story-alma-blog/
https://www.womenspress.com/reimagining-self-advocacy-as-a-disabled-woman/
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