Sen. Chandler, who served the Worcester area, has been a long-time supporter of our assistive technology program and other disability-related services including healthcare, housing, and employment services. She has attended all our roundtables in Worcester and has supported many of our advocacy initiatives. She has supported increasing funding for our programs and for the DME Reuse Program.
She supported transportation priorities, such as Zero Fare. Senator Harriette Chandler has been a strong supporter of zero-fare public transportation. She has argued that making public transportation free would help to improve access to jobs, education, and healthcare for people of all income levels, and would also help to reduce traffic congestion and pollution. She has sponsored or co-sponsored transportation-related legislation to benefit public transportation for many years.
She also attended and spoke at our Transportation Roundtable that Easterseals ran in 2018. The purpose of this roundtable was to provide education on various ways people with disabilities and older adults could participate in the transportation planning process in the Worcester area.
Senator Chandler challenged Worcester area human service organizations to collaborate with local higher education institutions around creating solutions for everyday problems in the elderly and disabled communities of Worcester. Her efforts helped create a grassroots Assistive Technology group call Woo AT.
The goal of this group is to:
- Make information pertaining to available Assistive Technology resources accessible to the public.
- Increase awareness of AT needs in our local community.
- Engage the Worcester AT community, both non-profit and higher learning institutions, to work together in developing new and/or customizing existing AT products.
