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Do develop a comprehensive binder organization system for math homework.Do encase notebooks in Ziploc bags when not in use. To keep them looking brand new. Keep them dry in rain and prevent completely any smudging. You will thank me when you are the only student on campus with dry unwrinkled notes after severe weather.Do not. drink large amounts of alcohol. Freshmen die every year and even more are left comatose due to brain damage. Drinking is a young man's game, very soon you will not be a young man anymore. When will you start calling yourself a man? They way people goof off and make fools of themselves when they drink is all faking. They are putting on a show for people and it is very sad. You don't need alcohol to act like an idiot, you could do that right now if you wanted to.Do. Buy a nice jacket to keep you warm as you travel between class. Something substantial and with a hood.Do smile when working hard math problems, it really scares people.Do not. Stay or try to sleep in your apartment while your roommates party (if you aren't partying with them). They could have the police called on them for throwing things out of windows and they will all flee leaving your sleepy ass to answer to the cops. You could get arrested. Some friends. You may trust your roommates to be chill, but the friends of friends they invite and further the friends They invite might be despicable scum. Just f*** losers. Parties are dangerous. There are people being enslaved and hung like fish in markets to be sold in libya and the city where your college resides has thousands of homeless people begging for food. Partying is walking towards that, becoming intimately in contact with it. Studying is your way out. When it's not your party, be somewhere else.Do not. Trust friends of friends to be around your shit or party in your apartment. They are likely to be shady af and puke in your sink. They may steal stuff. Some say a friend of my friend is my friend. That's not how it works here. Those people are not your friends.Do not. Pull a fire extinguisher off it's mount and spray it all over the hall ways. You will get caught and you will be expelled. You may have plans when you drink that vodka, but what you don't understand is that that vodka has plans for you. And I'm not trying to make you smile.Do not. Deal drugs. Do not consort with students who deal drugs. When he gets caught he will be blacklisted and never will be able to return to any kind of college in his life. He will be a sinking ship and could pull you down into the ocean with him. It happened to two people I met in 2007. The guy with the black chest stuffed with weed should be getting out of prison about now I imagine.Do not. Punch the apartment walls or doors. Damaging your dorm is a large marker of immaturity and your dad had better be a doctor cuz the repair bill will be in the triple digits. Somebody must pay for the damages. Don't think for a moment the school wouldn't notice. That's the first thing they look for. Fingers will be pointed. Your own friends will point you out. The damager will very quickly be found.Do. Get a job of some kind. I don't care if you are an engineering student who codes ballistics programs in his sleep it will mean absolutely nothing to an employer if you are as green as a summer lawn. Being an engineering student is POINTLESS without accompanying job history. People who make it to major engineering colleges have their A game on. Almost all of them have prior work history. There are even some classes that require you to make a resume. You may have to have a job and do school at the same time. You need to accept that. And you need to get rid of any notions that food and beverage is not good enough for you. That factory work in a milk plant is beneath you. That you would not survive as a courtesy clerk. You must understand that even an engineering degree will not replace those first few retail jobs. Not ever. I have 7 years of engineering beneath my belt. I should be a damn graduate. But without that piece of paper you will be stuck firmly in the blue collar field. People will even question and want proof that you graduated high school. You will go and take engineering classes, and you will work. And it must be done at the same time. These are formative years. Forge your soul in the crucible of hell. It could take a year or two to get that first job so try to get a job before you enter college. Not during it. The stress of never having held a job mixed together with putting all your hope in high risk education that could last for 6 years or more is enough to drive you to suicidality, staying that way for years on end could give you PTSD or deplete your adrenaline supply. There are no pills to fix that.Do not. Bad mouth your teacher to other students behind his back. You will damage your momentum as a student and your reputation in the eyes of your peers. If you hate a teacher not everybody shares that attitude. And you will be pushed away from the party like the guy who is dying of thirst and drinks the ocean water.Do. Make strategic use of microwave meals. There is tactical nuclear war, between cities. And then there is strategic nuclear war spanning the cold globe. This is buying mass quantities of canned food and soups. Half of a can of soup is a meal. Eat every 3hrs alternating between 100 and 200calories. You are growing older and one day soon you will find yourself saying “I'm on a diet”.Do not. Eat at the cafeteria, waste of money. And you'll be hungry when you arrive back at your dorm. Or you'll be so stuffed full of waffles and syrup and coka cola that you go into a food coma for 4 hrs. Thats not very effective study methodology.Do not. Microwave popcorn with the pop corn setting. The fire department gets called daily to college campuses and dorm inhabitants are emptied out into the cold. The fire marshal let's people back in. Except for you. It was your fault so you must stay behind. And everyone will look at you with hatred as they file past.Do not. Microwave metal objects. See above.Do not. Cheat. You will get caught and you will face a tribunal lasting 4 hours. Probably ending with your permanent dismissal. You and the girlfriend you tried to cheat with.Do. Board where the Indian students live. They know how to live cheap. It could mean the difference between 800USD/mo. And 200USD/mo. You are an adult now, and this decision needs to be made by you and not your parents. They may want you to live in style in your own apartment. But that life is lonely and shameful. With Indian roommates you will always have friends when you are scared and people to help make good food and basmati rice. Share your food with them and care for their health. Lifelong friendships can be made. “Siddharth, drink this coffee I bought you, you need your energy.”Do. Try to befriend Indian students and follow their study routines. Try even to learn their language and their buckchodery. You will not regret peace and brotherhood between nations. Granted their study habits might not be ‘healthy', but there is nothing healthy or natural about being an engineering student. Go and follow them.Do not. Write silly things on chalkboards of empty classes. You are here to learn to conform to society not to goof off. You could do this, but if you fail and drop out you will look back and feel nothing but shame. All for something that didn't really make anyone laugh. People in engineering are dropping like flies around you, you hear about students dying in their apartments through school texts. Those are suicides. This place is not a silly place and they are trying to get rid of you at every turn. Don't waste time expressing your humor to the world. Get some sleep instead.Do not sleep visibly in empty class rooms. If you must nap in an empty class room stay out of sight of the little windows. People will call the cops and think you are a would be school shooter. It happened to me, I was just napping and some rat called security and they checked my bags and ID. You don't need that trouble. Be descrete.Do. Stick with your foreign language you are taught. It will be a life long journey of enrichment and pleasure and it's foothold is being given to you on a platter.Do not. Raise your hand to go to the bathroom. Come on.Do not. Arrive late for classes.Do. Take the hardest engineering professor available for the core engineering classes. In those 100 days of the semester you become his protege. A soldier in his army. Jump into hardness suicidally. Bathe in it. Because you are the person that when gaming the campaign mode always chooses the legendary setting. When everything around you is hard, you will not know what hard is. Your skin will become like diamond. Slamming into even 1+1 with vicious brutality. You can take it. You can survive this for 6 years before running out of fuel. Just enough time to get the degree. You engage in Soviet ‘deep battle’. Being intimately in contact with the enemy. You are at war.Do. Shower often and clean your clothes regularly. Nothing is more shameful than having to go to a meeting with some fellow students while smelling like a chronic masturbating teenager.Do. Dress up a bit for classes. Look a bit more formal. More professional. Especially when going for office hours. You are his soldier.. I will wear the top of my ‘uniform’ correctly. I will wear the bottom of my ‘uniform’ correctly. In his office I will revel in hardness and show no pain. .And do not come to him without proof that you at least tried that problem that you can't understand. I know it's hard to do that. But you have to try. Having neat organized attacks on engineering problems visible to other students. Work that is sharp and crisp. Uniform work. Is psychological warfare. Looking neater than everyone else. Is important. I used to put a small logo on the upper right part of the first sheet of my homework so that I would know immediately that it was mine if it was in a stack of homework returned to the class as graded. Other people brag that they finished the engineering homework in only a day or two. Everybody is waging psychological warfare with the class. Trying to subtly reduce others confidence.Do not. Assume that curbed grades will make things easier. In state they say it's curbed, but in no way will it help you.Do not. Date girls in your college. We live in dangerous political climes and it happens often that young men are expelled and have their lives ruined, even though a sexual encounter was consensual.Do. Take on projects when they are offered.Do not. Spend 3 hrs on a project and say it's good enough. You need to put a piece of your soul into it. Like 8hrs. And do involve questioning of professors outside of the class field. I did a project in thermodynamics that took 80hrs, I personally contacted a chemical engineering professor to answer a question and learn more. It was vital.Do not. Take more than 6 years to complete an engineering degree. You will permanently damage your brain through stress and become more or less permanently burnt out.Do. Have personal engineering projects outside of college. You will then have personal vested interest in all course material pertaining to it. The drive and lust for information will always be there.Do not. Be disrespectful to your lab professors. That's an idiotic mistake. They are there to teach you the tricks of the trade. The quintessential teaching. If you are disrespectful to them then you may as well leave.Do not. Miss labs. Labs are hyper sensitive to attendance, even taking role. If you miss 3 of them you fail the course.Do. Take “extra breadth” courses in a community college. It wasn't the engineering courses that killed me and drove me to insanity, it was actually statistics and English courses.Do. Sit at the front of the class.Do not. Pack up your things until the teacher is finished talking. That's rude.Do not. Point your foot soles at the teacher.Do not. Make fun of your foreign teachers accent or complain that you can't understand him. This man is from China the creme of the crop out of their largest state run college. He has proven himself to be invincible. Who better to teach you math? You should hang on his every word.Do understand that in English based paper courses it's not about writing on the subject that gets you good grades, it's about writing what the teacher wants to hear. There are people that do this naturally and you will meet them. You have to understand that in writing for those courses you will have to be dishonest. Using any tactic short of pleagerism to increase that page count. This is not only what you must do, but it is actually expected of you. There is a reason why people regard such classes as bullshitting. Great paper writers are good at overly repeating themselves in subtly different ways and telling half truths. They spin a wonderful world in their papers. I refused to engage in such despicable nonsense and it took me 5 tries to go through English. Get with the game.Do practice every old math problem you've done, in the off season. Research new methods and new types of math. You will find that though you got an A, it doesn't really help much when caught off guard. This will make you the invincible and the legendary. If you are an engineering student math is your life, not only should you be able to do higher math but you should regard it to be as frequent and casual as low level algebra. “somehow there must be a transformation matrix that I can use to solve this problem faster.” says the 200 level engineering student looking at 2a+5a=4b 23b=4b-2 . Once you are taught the matrix multiplication in 100 level math it is now expected of you to own it completely and be prepared to use it at any time. People may think this excessive, but the students who do not keep up with the functionality and vocabulary that they have learned. They do not believe in decisive elegant answers. State is rife with such students who turn in work that is all over the place, one offish, and not reproducible. The graphite is smudged and paper tattered. Zeroes that are not significant dragged all around the problem. After the 200 level you are not an amateur anymore. Be a shark. A slasher, of math problems. Like a sledge hammer. You can't really change it's shape, put by hell or high water you can use it to solve very many problems. It specializes in heavy duty jobs. But gently taps on small work. I would much rather carry one brutal looking tool with me and make it fit and negotiate different jobs, rather than having an endless need to buy and store specialized tools that get lost. The samurai carries two swords and he has his appendages. He does not carry with him bug repellent.Do. Like this post. Please.

I attended the personal interview in November 2019 in Yadgir, Karnataka. The overall experience has been a mixed one.To begin with, we were informed hardly a week prior that we had to travel to Yadgir. I felt they wanted to check how flexible we were and if we could reach a rural place alone. Two days before interview reporting date, I received a call that the accommodation will be provided by them. I cancelled my hotel booking then and claimed refund. Lost some money there!On reaching Yadgir, I was given a good hotel room with another fellow aspirant. The hotel staff were not given instructions beforehand so there was a little confusion about room allocation.On day one evening, we received an SMS that the next day’s field experience is cancelled due to Babri Masjid Verdict and we could come their teacher training center for orientation about the organization. Exact address wasn’t given and Google Maps let us go around Yadgir quiet a bit before finding the actual center. Since most of us roamed around the town and then reached, the orientation started late. The orientation was good and enriching. It was interesting to know about the growth of the foundation and what their basic principles were.Post orientation, we were asked to go back to the restaurant in the hotel and that the lunch was on them. Once we hungry souls reached the restaurant around 2pm, the restaurant manager denied receiving any information about the food arrangement. We had to wait for the People Function Head of Yadgir to come and explain to them which took another half an hour. During lunch, we were informed by the foundation staff that our food in the restaurant was actually free for our entire stay period. We had already spent for four meals by then. Anyway, finally, our food arrived and we ate. We had nothing else to do for that evening and night.On day three, we were asked to come to ‘Azim Premji School’. Where is it? Google gives you a different location and the auto drivers have no clue. Finally, few of the interview aspirants were local guys who guided us to reach the venue on time. Our interviews were supposed to start by 9.30 am. We went around the school campus and it was beautiful. The infrastructure is fantastic and every corner of the campus has a beautiful vibe to it. Since it was on a sunday there were no children. After exploring the campus, we came back to the library which was opened for us to sit in. From 9.30 AM to 1 PM, we all continued waiting for our interview call. Only the People Function head was around who only said, ‘The interviewers are on their way’. At around 1 PM, they finally arrived and called in the first candidate. By 2PM, it was time for lunch and the interviewing was stopped. Post lunch, they asked among us to choose who wanted to finish their interview that day or would come back the next day for it. The interview was for almost one hour per candidate. My friend and I chose to stay back that day and finish the interview without delaying it further. Since we were the last to be interviewed that day, we looked messy, tired and exhausted.The interview as such was a good experience. The two interviewers in the room had all my exam answer sheets and SOP. They seemed to be impressed with my answers and SOP. I was initially asked to introduce myself and give them a background about myself. Then, I was asked to do my presentation. During the presentation, I felt one of the interviewers was not interested and was looking elsewhere (others said the same too) - may be it is their technique again to see how we perform in such weird situations. After presentation, I was not asked anything about the presentation that I prepared with so much love and enthusiasm. They asked me other questions related to personal life. I think I did pretty well but since I did not know Kannada, they told me it would be difficult for them to choose me. I applied for the fellowship just because Puducherry was one of the placement locations - but no, do not believe that. They have stopped recruiting people for fellowship in Puducherry two years back but they have not updated their advertisement. My heart broke right there as I had high expectations from this fellowship program. And so, yeah, I was not selected.On day four, My friend and I had to go back to Azim Premji School to submit our travel allowance data. We carefully filled in the forms and submitted. Just when we were submitting, we were asked for our bank passbook scan copy. In the list of documents to bring mentioned in the interview invite email, passbook copy was not mentioned at all. Most of us did not have the document. I managed to ask my mother to find the passbook and send in a picture of it. We were told our travel allowance money would be refunded in twenty days. Most of us went that day with the impression that the money would be given in hand as cash. But no! Okay, big organization, big departments, many people. We get it. That night, most of us left back to our hometowns.The twenty day mark for travel reimbursement date passed and I did not get any notification from the bank regarding the refund. I waited for a week after that and then sent in an email asking about it. I did not get any reply. I again waited and finally sent another email to multiple other email IDs I had of people from the organization to get some reply. I finally got a reply and my money was refunded after six weeks (not twenty days as promised). Yesterday, one of the fellow interview aspirant called up to tell me that he has received only Rs.630 and not Rs.2500 something which he had submitted bills for. On finding out, he was informed about a new policy in the foundation that for people living within 300 kms from interview location, only sleeper class fare would be refunded and not 3AC whereas in the email inviting us for the interview, we were told sleeper or 3AC ticket amount would be refunded. He sounded so upset. It is not about the money but it is how the foundation actually treats people. Had they not mentioned about any refund, we would not even ask them about it. By transferring some basic amount, it looked as if they were doing a favor and when asked about it, the staff were rude and said, it is our policy - Did they inform us about this policy before? No! Looks like their rules and policies keep changing quiet often.I call the overall experience mixed because I come from a social work background and I know how organizations work. Knowing how big an organization APF is, I expected them to be extremely professional and on point. At so many levels, they were disorganized and confused. Out of some 33–35 people who were called for interview in Yadgir, two or three were selected for round two. Most of us bunked work, left behind families and gave five days (including travel) to the interview process but they way they organized it, in so much lethargy really annoyed us. To this day, most of the people’s travel allowance has not been refunded and they are still wondering which door to knock.If you are selected for the interview, remember you have put in so much effort by sitting through and writing exam, preparing a flawless SOP and actually preparing for the interview, but it does not really pay off. Go with zero expectations and be prepared to give them all the time in the world for them to get organized and conduct an interview. It is a good experience to see their work on the field and also, if you have a background already in social work or social sciences, do not apply. They are looking for people who come from pure corporate background who know nothing about the field and are just too fresh a slate. A girl my batch who got selected was amused with cotton fields and black soil. So, yeah! Just chill and do not expect too much. If you are expecting professionalism, time management and people management - this is not the place for u.All the best!

Your question starts with false headline. Here are a lot of his accomplishments the media never tells you.Defending Rights and Supporting Critical Needs During COVID-19Awarding Funding to Address the Needs of Individuals with Disabilities in Emergency Responses: CDC has awarded $3 million in COVID-19 funding to support the development of resources for people with disabilities who have extreme low literacy and the creation of national standards to inform emergency response communications for reaching people with disabilities. CDC also awarded $10 million in COVID-19 funding to the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the National Association of County and City Health Officials, and the Association of University Centers on Disabilities to address the needs of Americans with disabilities in COVID-19 preparedness, planning, mitigation, and recovery efforts.Unprecedented Support for Independent Living: Through the CARES Act, the Administration for Community Living (ACL) awarded an unprecedented $85 million in direct funding to more than 350 Centers for Independent Living (CILs), community-based organizations led by individuals with disabilities. With this funding, individuals received food and prepared meals, personal care and basic home items, personal protective equipment such as masks and gloves to ensure continuity of support services, housing assistance, and alternative transportation for medical appointments. CILs also transformed direct services to include virtual options and supported people with disabilities by providing access to technology and the Internet.Guidance on Disability Rights Protections: In March 2020, the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a Bulletin on Civil Rights laws and HIPAA during the COVID-19 pandemic, reminding covered entities of their obligations to provide effective communications and reasonable modifications to persons with disabilities. This follows emergency guidance issued in 2017, 2018, and 2019.Preventing Disability Discrimination in Triage Decisions: In April 2020, OCR resolved a complaint against Pennsylvania after the state revised its interim Crisis Standards of Care to prevent disability discrimination in triaging of vital health care.Preventing Disability Discrimination in Ventilator Allocation Decisions During COVID-19: In April 2020, OCR resolved a complaint with the state of Alabama concerning ventilator rationing guidelines that categorically excluded persons with profound intellectual disabilities.Preventing Disability Discrimination in Hospital “No Visitor” Policies During COVID-19: In June 2020, OCR resolved a complaint with the state of Connecticut after the state issued an executive order on no-visitor policies in hospitals to ensure these policies do not deny reasonable access to needed support persons for people with disabilities. OCR also resolved a complaint with Hartford Hospital after it agreed to grant a 73-year-old woman with aphasia access to support persons to help with her communication and comprehension in her treatment.Protecting Rights and Preventing Abuse in Long-Term Care: ACL began issuing guidance in March to help State Long-Term Care Ombudsmen continue working to protect the health, welfare, and rights of nursing home residents, most of whom are protected under the ADA.Protecting Against Disability Discrimination in State Triage Plan: In June 2020, OCR resolved a complaint against Tennessee after it updated its crisis standards of care plan to ensure that the criteria does not discriminate against persons based on disability or age. Through technical assistance, the state updated its policies to ensure that hospitals do not deny life-saving care during a crisis based on stereotypes about disabilities or other impermissible factors.Protecting Rights in HealthcareAccess to Health Care for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities: In February 2019, OCR resolved a case in North Carolina alleging discrimination against an individual with autism who was deemed ineligible to be on a heart transplant wait list because of his disability. After OCR intervened in the case, the medical facility reversed course and allowed the individual to be eligible for the waiting list.Access to Sign Language Interpreter for Deaf Child: In July 2019, OCR resolved a case with Mid-Maryland Musculoskeletal Institute to protect a 6-year-old patient’s rights to effective communication while attending physical therapy sessions.Preventing Discrimination in Human ServicesEnsuring Beneficiary Safety in Group Homes - PDF: In January 2018, OCR, the HHS Office of Inspector General, and ACL jointly published a report: “Ensuring Beneficiary Health and Safety in Group Homes Through State Implementation of Comprehensive Compliance Oversight - PDF.” ACL has subsequently invested nearly $10 million in projects that seek to enhance the quality, effectiveness, and monitoring of home- and community-based services (HCBS) for people with developmental disabilities; to improve the quality of community living; and ensure health and safety.Disability Discrimination Protections for Individuals with Opioid Use Disorder: In May 2020, OCR secured an agreement with West Virginia to protect persons in recovery from opioid use disorder, resolving an uncle’s complaint that he had been denied the ability to gain custody of his young niece and nephew (in state custody) due to his enrollment in a medication-assisted treatment (MAT) program.Protections for Individuals with Disabilities in State Child Welfare Systems: In November 2019, OCR entered an agreement with Oregon to protect the rights of parents with disabilities. OCR’s investigation was spurred by allegations that the Oregon Department of Human Services removed two children from their parents because of stereotypical beliefs and assumptions concerning the parents’ intellectual disabilities.Empowering Americans with Disabilities to Live in the CommunityHelping Veterans with Disabilities Remain in Their Homes: ACL has worked with the Department of Veterans Affairs to expand the Veteran-Directed Care program, which allows veterans to use VA benefits to work with ACL-supported aging and disability networks to access the services they need to live independently.Training and Assistance under the ADA: ACL’s ADA National Network provides training and technical assistance on the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 2019, the Network hosted over 1,100 training activities and nearly 17,000 individual consultations with people with disabilities, agencies, businesses, and state and local governments. During the pandemic, the ADA Network has provided technical assistance to consumers and employers on the implications for disability-related services and return to work.Promoting Innovation to Combat Isolation: In partnership with the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, ACL launched a prize competition to combat social isolation for people with disabilities, veterans and older adults. The Mobilizing and Empowering the Nation and Technology to Address Loneliness & social isolation (MENTAL) Health Innovation Challenge will award $750,000 in prizes for development of an easy-to-use online system that offers recommendations for programs, activities, and resources that can help users connect to others and engage in the community, based on their individual needs, interests, and abilities. The winning system will be announced and demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2021 and will become the centerpiece of a national public awareness campaign.Improving Home- and Community-Based Services (HCBS) in Medicaid: CMS issued several pieces of guidance to assist states in implementing the criteria defining a home and community-based setting, balancing the need to ensure settings facilitate and empower beneficiary autonomy and community integration with the need to ensure a workable implementation approach for states and providers. CMS has developed an HCBS quality framework, strategy, and work plan to align and coordinate activities within CMS and with other partners related to HCBS quality measurement, in order to ensure the health and safety of people receiving HCBS; promote high-quality and accessible HCBS; and promote value-based care and services for people receiving HCBS.A New Center to Combat Health Inequities: In September 2019, ACL launched the Center for Human Dignity in Healthcare for Individuals with Disabilities to reduce life-limiting healthcare inequities faced by people with disabilities. The center, based at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center at the University of Cincinnati, increases education around four focus areas: Prenatal Genetic Testing, Mental Health and Suicidality, Organ Transplantation and Aging and End of Life. The Center is conducting an analysis to identify gaps and investigate the impact of discrimination and disparities on the medical treatment outcomes of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (ID/DD). In response to COVID-19, the Center developed two fact sheets on medical discrimination: one for people with disabilities and one for medical practitioners.Promoting Physical Activity for Americans with Disabilities: ACL refocused the I Can Do It program, returning it to its roots as a program that partners with schools to encourage and support physical activity for children with disabilities.Expanding Work OpportunitiesA First-Ever Task Force to Boost Employment for Americans with Disabilities: ACL launched a historic government-wide task force focused on expanding employment for Americans with disabilities, to build on the historically low unemployment rates for Americans with disabilities in the booming Trump economy before COVID-19. Fourteen federal agencies actively participate in the task force’s work on key issues, particularly the removal of barriers that inhibit employment and, recently, the anticipated difficulty of post-COVID-19 employment and reentry.A Prize to Boost Private-Sector Support for Employment: As part of National Disability Employment Awareness Month 2019, ACL announced a national prize competition, Inclusive Talent Pipeline for American Business, which drew nearly 60 applicants from the private and nonprofit sectors to create and operationalize innovative and market-disruptive approaches to recruiting, retaining, and advancing employees with disabilities. Five Round One prize winners were announced in April 2020 and are currently preparing to pilot their proposed models in the fall of this year.Improving HealthcareNew Wheelchair Options in Medicare: Medicare expanded coding and increased payments for complex rehabilitative wheelchairs to ensure access to newer, expensive complex rehabilitative wheelchair options and accessories.Broader Access to Therapy: Medicare allowed therapy assistants (rather than only therapists) to perform maintenance therapy under the Medicare home health benefit starting in 2020, helping to expand access to this important service for all beneficiaries, including individuals with disabilities.Reforming Payment for Medicare Advantage Beneficiaries with Disabilities: Starting in 2017, CMS modified the Medicare risk adjustment model used to pay beneficiaries enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans to have separate factors for disabled (versus aged) beneficiaries, to better reflect their expected cost to the plans, allowing payments to be better targeted to plans based on the cost of their enrollees.Expanding More Flexible Preventive Services: For 2018, CMS finalized billing codes for “prolonged preventive services,” allowing for additional Medicare payment for preventive service visits that extend beyond the typical time, which can be important for beneficiaries with mobility or cognitive disabilities who may take extra time to complete these visits.Closing the Life Expectancy Gap: In June 2020, ACL announced a funding opportunity to improve health outcomes for the ID/DD population, who have significantly lower life expectancy than their non-ID/DD peers. Funding will support a national consortium that will build upon existing efforts to collaborate with medical and allied health schools to embed ID/DD content into their curriculum.Expanding Research on Disability IssuesEstablishing Prevalence of ID/DD: ACL is leading an interagency effort to establish and maintain valid and reliable prevalence rates of intellectual and developmental disabilities and to improve data about health status and factors that influence health outcomes of individuals with ID/DD.A First-Ever Government Wide Inventory: A partnership between the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and ACL’s National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) aims to create a government-wide inventory of all federally supported disability research, launching in the fall of 2020, housed at the NIH Library.Building a Limb Loss and Preservation Registry: In 2018, NIH and the Department of Defense announced plans to establish a registry to document the number of people in the United States living with limb loss and to provide insights on their challenges and needs.Studying Conditions that Affect Americans with Down Syndrome: In June 2018, NIH launched the INCLUDE (INvestigation of Co-occurring conditions across the Lifespan to Understand Down syndromE) project to study conditions that affect both individuals with Down syndrome and the general population. The goal is to learn more about these conditions in both populations so that new treatments can be developed in both groups. People with Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities have often been excluded from participating in clinical research and clinical trials because it was thought that it would be too difficult to include them in complicated research studies, or the process to provide informed consent would be too challenging. People with Down syndrome are now being invited to speak up about their research needs, and new clinical trials supported by INCLUDE focus on topics such as sleep apnea, Alzheimer’s disease, and treatment of co-occurring ADHD.New Hope for Turning Thoughts into Speech: The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders (NIDCD) supported groundbreaking research on augmentative and alternative communication devices, which help people with voice, speech, or language disorders communicate. This includes people with ALS or brainstem stroke who lose their ability to move their muscles for writing or speaking, even as they are able to think and reason normally. In an important advance, NIDCD-supported researchers developed an approach to turn a person’s thoughts directly into speech. The scientists trained a computer algorithm that is typically used to interpret voice commands to decipher brain activity instead. Individuals with epilepsy undergoing brain surgery listened to sentences spoken by different people, and the researchers used the neural patterns measured from these patients to train the computer algorithm. When the patients simply thought of the words they had heard, the algorithm was able to accurately decipher the thoughts 75 percent of the time.Making Hearing Aids More Accessible and Affordable: Approximately 28.8 million adults in the United States could benefit from using hearing aids, yet only one in four has ever used one. Research funded by NIDCD directly contributed to a measure included in the 2017 FDA reauthorization act to create a first-of-its-kind category of direct-to-consumer hearing aids for adults with perceived mild-to-moderate hearing loss, which is expected to spur innovation, reduce consumer costs, and improve hearing health care for millions of Americans who have hearing loss by making hearing aids more accessible and affordable.Designing Visually Accessible Spaces for People with Low Vision: Mobility challenges are one of the most serious consequences of impaired vision, and one approach for dealing with this problem is to make public spaces more accessible for people with low vision. Building on the concept of environmental modifications that enhance physical mobility (such as ramps for wheelchairs), the National Eye Institute (NEI) supported a combination of empirical and computational research to extend the concept of environmental modifications to “visual accessibility” (i.e., to what degree one can use vision to travel safely through an environment). In the final phase of this project, the models developed to predict low-vision visibility and navigability of real-world spaces are being translated into a set of open-source software modules to enhance architectural and lighting design for visual accessibility. The intended use is for architects and lighting designers to submit a design to the software and get a labeled output indicating what is likely to be a potential mobility hazard for pedestrians with reduced acuity and/or contrast sensitivity.Advances in Turning Thoughts into Computer Control: NEI is supporting work aimed at helping quadriplegic people use computer interfaces. By implanting recording electrodes in visual and motor areas of the brain, the researchers are able to turn the person’s intentions for cursor movements on a computer screen into action.Progress on Restoring Visual Perception to the Blind: NEI is supporting work aimed at helping blind people achieve useable visual perception. By placing stimulating electrodes on the visual cortex of the brain, the researchers are able to turn images recorded by a camera mounted on the head into the sensation of a rough pattern of light and dark. This interface is being gradually improved by training computational algorithms to optimize the pattern of stimulation. The blind patient also has to be trained to work with the brain-machine interface, but good progress is being made.