What is independent living?
Most Americans take for granted opportunities they have regarding living arrangements, employment situations, means of transportation, social and recreational activities, and other aspects of every day life.

For many Americans with disabilities, however, barriers in their communities take away or severely limit their choices. These barriers may be obvious, such as lack of ramped entrances for people who use wheelchairs, lack of interpreters or captioning for people with hearing impairments, lack of brailled or taped copies of printed material for people who have visual impairments. Other barriers - frequently less obvious - can be even more limiting to efforts on the part of people with disabilities to live independently, and they result from people's misunderstandings and prejudices about disability. These barriers result in low expectations about people with disabilities can achieve.

People with disabilities not only have to deal with the effects of their disabling conditions, but they also have to deal with both kinds of barriers. Otherwise, they are likely to be limited to a life of dependency and low personal satisfaction.

This need not occur. Millions of people all over America who experience disabilities have established lives of independence. They fulfill all kinds of roles in their communities, for employers and employees to marriage partners to parents to students to athletes to politicians to taxpayers - an unlimited list. In most cases, the barriers facing them haven't been removed, but these individuals have been successful in overcoming or at least dealing with them.

CHANGES THAT MAKE LIFE MORE SATISFYING DON'T OCCUR OVERNIGHT. BUT FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE WILLING TO WORK TOWARD GREATER INDEPENDENCE, INDEPENDENT LIVING CENTERS CAN HELP PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER

DEFINITION OF INDEPENDENT LIVING CENTER