Blindness and Employment with Cynthia Coffin, Disability Empowerment Center | Disability Rights Podcasts
Cynthia Coffin, Program Coordinator at the Disability Empowerment Center in Seattle, shares how her Center for Independent Living supports people with disabilities through outreach, peer support, and goal-setting services. In this conversation from the NCIL Conference, Cynthia highlights the importance of community-based programming — from museum trips to one-on-one coaching — and offers a powerful message on acceptance, employment equity, and the role of positive self-talk in overcoming challenges. @disabilityempowermentcenter #disabilityrights #disabilityawareness #disabilitypride
Transcript
My name is Cynthia Coffin. I work with, uh, in Seattle for Disability Empowerment Center. We're a center for Independent Living.
I'd say what keeps us most busy is the, um, is the community outreach.
Uh, the working with our consumers and trying to help people get into. Like meeting their goals, like if they wanna go to school, if they want to find housing or we serve all of King County. Um, we have offices in Redmond, Auburn, and Seattle, so we we're definitely a big-- we're an office of 10 people, but that's what keeps us really busy is the community outreach and assisting our consumers.
I think for people who don't have a disability, the message would be that it's, it's important to accept people with disabilities and to really, um, to, to know that we, that we're here and that we, we exist.
I would say, 'cause I'm blind. Oh. My big biggest accessibility would be that blind people would be able to have better jobs, be able to, um, reduce the job.
We, we, um, we to from 75% unemployment rate to 25% unemployment rate and for all disabilities that be able to hold down the job.
Um, I would say one of the most important thing is positive self-talk is a good aspect for, um, overcoming challenges. That, and that's the last thing I have to say.
