WBFO Disabilities Beat

New York is less than a week away from the deadline for the 2025 state budget. Every year, people with disabilities, their families, and the agencies that serve them watch this date closely, because the results of the budget vote will determine living opportunities for tens of thousands of New Yorkers. This week on the Disabilities Beat, we highlight one family's decades-long story of fighting for their loved one's opportunity to live in his community, which is now threatened due to a workforce crisis that many advocates attribute to underfunding in the state budget.

March 21st is World Down Syndrome Day. You’ve probably met someone with Down syndrome before or know what Down syndrome is, but how often do you talk to people with Down syndrome? In this week’s episode, Disabilities Beat Reporter Emyle Watkins visits GiGi’s Playhouse in Buffalo, which provides a variety of social activities, classes and resources for people of all ages with Down syndrome. We interview three adults living with Down syndrome who share that the biggest barrier to equity might be the simplest to solve: it’s how we talk to and with people with visible disabilities.

Over the past decade, a local activist has fought for New York State to expand its paratransit system beyond the federal minimum distance it can go. Stephanie Speaker's own experiences with paratransit, the point-to-point public transportation system for people with disabilities, not being able to reach where she needs to go has galvanized her to secure funding and potential legislation that could expand the system. This week, WBFO's Emyle Watkins shares an interview with Speaker from 2023 about her work and why she wants to see paratransit go farther.

Soon New York State will finalize its 2025 budget, which always impacts programs and services utilized by New Yorkers with disabilities. One of those programs is Special Olympics, an organization that provides a variety of free opportunities for athletes of all ages with disabilities. On this week's Disabilities Beat, we speak with Special Olympics New York CEO, Stacey Hengsterman. She joined us back in December for an exclusive interview to share that they will face cuts if the state doesn't increase their funding, which they claim has remained stagnant at $1.5 million over the past 20 years.

Jasmine Harris, a law professor and disability rights legal scholar from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, explains in a conversation with WBFO’s Disability Reporter Emyle Watkins how local laws like the recently vetoed Erie County Language Access Act can interact with federal disability laws, like the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

On this episode of the Disabilities Beat, Emyle Watkins speaks with Erie County’s newest Family Court Judge, the honorable Shannon Filbert, about her perspective as a judge with a disability on what people with disabilities should know about family court. We break down some misconceptions about family court, the role disability can play in custody hearings and where the family court system could improve.

On this episode of the Disabilities Beat, Emyle Watkins speaks with Kevin Smith, the director of Mental Health Peer Connection, about how peer-led services are helping to bridge a treatment gap. We also learn about their Renewal Center, which offers a peer-led alternative to a psychiatric emergency room.

This episode kicks off WBFO’s new weekly Disabilities Beat segment. But as we create a new space for stories from the disability community to be shared, how can you, the listener, interact with this segment? What can you expect to learn? Disabilities Beat Reporter Emyle Watkins asked some of our sources what you can expect and we break down what ableism is.