Please listen to me now....

If you let other people without speech be helped as I was helped they will say more than I can say.
They will tell you that the humanity we share is not dependent on speech.
They will tell you that the power of literacy lies within us all.
They will tell you that I am not an exception, only a bad example.
Many are left behind. We still neglect people without speech.  We still leave them without a means of communication.  It should be impossible to miss out on literacy training, but thousands of Australians still do.
As Stephen Jay Gould wrote:
We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of a life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.”  

 (Anne McDonald, Acceptance Speech, National Disability Awards, Parliament House, Canberra, 2008)
 

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