It’s great that Mr. Obama has hired two people with disabilities. But his gaffe that insulted so many was directed against people with mental disabilities; did he hire someone with a mental disability? Does he plan to prioritize getting services to the hundreds of people on these waiver wait lists? My son is almost 24. He has been on a waiver wait list for almost five years, there are still over 200 people ahead of him, and this year the Virginia legislators did not allocate one single slot toward the Developmental Disabilities Waiver Wait list. This is negligence, pure and simple. We have been patient for far too long while doctors and researchers earned their living studying our children without doing anything to provide for their needs or ease the stress of our lives. How much longer do you want us to wait? 20 years? 30 years? or maybe just another 5 or 10? When there are zero slots being allocated, and there are hundreds on the wait list, you do the math. Hiring two people does not begin to address the problem.

We do not need a symbolic gesture. We do not need to be looked at, studied, analyzed and researched while we try to deal with facing daily life without any practical supports. We need serious commitment to ending this shameful situation of putting our most vulnerable citizens on never-ending wait lists and then forgetting about them. The time is now. Please let us hear some specific plans.

The truth is this is exactly the type of thing I might have said before my daughter was born and I became “aware” of this different world. I cringe when I think about how many times growing up I made a stupid crack about the short bus.

Now, I might have had the wisdom not to make the crack on national television, but that’s another issue. This is about the culture our children (and adults with disabilities) find themselves in everyday. It’s also why inclusion in the community is so important as an issue, both in special education and afterwards. People who make comments like the President did do so not out of malice (most of the time I believe) but out of ignorance. But when your next door neighbor, or the kids your kids go to school, or the person in the pew next to you have a disability, people start to see “handicaps, insert any number of slang terms here” as simply people.

Ironically enough, I really believe President Obama could do himself a favor and start a national dialogue on this very issue with a major speech detailing both a vision and significant leadership on this issue. Make some lemonade out of these lemons.

Kareem, I hope you are reading these comments.

In regard to Vocational Rehabilitation. In Colorado there is a waiting list for these services. My son leaves school in May and is on a waiting list for these services at the most critical and crucial time he needs them. But there are at least 400 individuals across the state who wait. The wait could be 6 months or more.

I hope that the Administration (Kareem Dale and the other two who represent disabled people) will study the true facts of the waiting lists and the government’s bias toward institutionalization. This is the change we need.

As White House special assistant for disability policy, it should have bothered him, and he should still be losing sleep over it. As a representative of the disability community, he should be a voice in the media sharing our perspective with the public and as a person in that position he should be a voice in the White house sharing our concerns with elected officials.

Because for us he is not doing those jobs, families who are already being disproportionately affected by the collapse of the economy are fulfilling this urgent responsibility; many who are raising children with developmental disabilities are misjudging our president’s intent and commitment to this community; and many who are not are raising children like ours are misjudging us.

The time of waiting and patience is over. We will not be ignored or patronized. Until Dale has listened and understood our perspective and the realities our families face every day, he has no right to represent us or advise us in this matter.