Image Description: A selfie of Lessa, a white non-binary person with brown hair, tucked in a graduation cap and wearing a blue shirt.
Author Bio
Lessinaydraa “Lessa” Astercourte is a freelance artist and aspiring disability advocate. They’ve lived in Indianapolis for 4 years and intend to stay for a while yet, continuing to work on projects with various homeless and disability causes in the city. Their pronouns are they/them, they identify as a nonbinary lesbian, and their favorite animal is the tarantula.
Image Description: A headshot of a Black man with short hair and glasses, wearing a gray suit jacket, a patterned dress shirt, and a blue plaid tie.
Author Bio
Three words adequately describe the Reverend Doctor Milton Keys: Preacher, Teacher and Producer. Keys uses these three gifts to change the world. Although he was born with cerebral palsy, and a bleak diagnosis, Milton has let nothing stop him from achieving his goals. Despite being given a two-year life expectancy and being supposed to have severe cognitive disabilities, Milton has earned 3 degrees. He has produced and released 13 musical albums, 4 plays, 1 ballet, held 8 youth summits, and completed numerous small projects in the last two and a half decades. As a disability theologian, Dr. Keys has been working to promote the rights of people with disabilities and to create a more inclusive society. His writings and speeches are aimed at inspiring and empowering people to overcome their challenges and to achieve their goals. Keys is the founder and executive director of Advocates Embassy, an organization that helps churches create environments where people with disabilities feel safe, are welcomed, and have access to abundant life. In 2025, AE released Dr. Key’s first book, Finding My Place: A Devotional About Disability and the Human Experience. Dr. Keys is an ambassador from a world without boundaries.
How would I feel supported or empowered with my disability?
My name is Ayden Marietta. I am 22 years old, and I am currently a student in my senior year at Indiana University – Indianapolis. As a student with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and Anxiety Disorder diagnoses I do make use of Accessible Education Services (AES) at Indiana University. This year, the AES accommodation I utilized was extended time provided to complete my exams. This included taking my exams in the AES Lab at the University Library. While I found the accommodation useful and helpful, I found one area of the testing process still presented barriers. As a person on the Autism Spectrum, writing out lengthy answers by hand is not only a challenge due to my poor handwriting/fine motor skills; but also challenging for me to express my thoughts when handwriting answers. For some reason, my mind communicates much more clearly when I type out my answers. Not only that, but with my poor handwriting it takes me much longer to write my answers by hand, making it difficult to complete all test questions to the best of my ability. In this area, I would feel much more supported by being able to type my responses. I did ask about being able to type my responses on a computer with no internet access, but was told that the blue book format was required for grading purposes.
In order to ensure that testing accommodations are more supportive for those with disabilities, I would suggest universities allow more leeway in how testing is done. First, I believe that essay questions should have the option to be typed out. For people like me, typing out our answers is easier as we are able to think and focus more clearly than when struggling with our handwriting and trying to put our thoughts onto paper. Second, asking a student which accommodations they believe they can use to best help them succeed on a test or other assignment, even if different or unusual, should be considered as long as it does not provide an unfair advantage. Finally, allowing a student to navigate at their own pace if they need to slow down to focus on one assignment or an exam can improve their ability to concentrate and allow them to put their best effort in each assignment.
To conclude, I believe that students who are provided flexibility in their choice of accommodations, accommodations that are as unique as the students themselves, allows students with disabilities to feel supported in their coursework and to be able to succeed in their classes.
About the Author
Image Description: A smiling young man standing on a stage, dressed in a black double-breasted suit and a tie.
Artist Bio
My name is Ayden Marietta. I am a senior at Indiana University – Indianapolis majoring in Applied Theater, Film, and Television and plan to graduate in May 2026. Since childhood, I have had a real passion and interest in politics, government, and American history. This passion has led me to volunteer and intern for both local and statewide political campaigns, including Mike Braun’s gubernatorial campaign. I also served as an Indiana State GOP Delegate at the 2024 State Convention. I also co-host, along with my friend Justin George, “The Neurologic Podcast” where we both talk about history, sports, politics, and life on the Autism Spectrum. In my final year in high school, I received the governor’s work ethic certificate in 2022 for my academic performance.
In 2023, world-renowned oncologist Dr. Lawrence Einhorn and his highly skilled surgical teammate Dr. Clint Cary removed the last chunk of the formerly 9 pound cancerous abdominal tumor I’d been battling on and off for years. Unfortunately, the next year, I began to be haunted by a condition I’ll call “Ghost of Cancer”: devastating, life-threatening damage related to the grafts that replaced my two largest blood vessels. The best efforts of yet another world-renowned entity- the Mayo Clinic- kept me safe for only a few weeks. The Ghost of Cancer’s fury ravaged my already damaged body, and when the dust settled, my right leg was left with two enormous wounds, and I lost the ability to lift my right foot (a severe case of a condition called drop foot).
When I returned to IUPUI (a name I refuse to stop using despite the messy divorce of IU and Purdue) in the fall of 2025, I had a visible disability: leg wraps up to my knee and a four-wheeled walker for mobility. When the meager progress I’d made over the last 10 months completely came undone, I began to need a wheelchair often, and I was placed back on an extremely visible device called a wound vac, which consists of a long tube connecting my leg to a loud machine worn like a purse. As a longtime member of IUPUI’s tight-knit community, I knew I would be treated kindly, but I never could have anticipated how often my peers would go above and beyond to help.
Whenever I approached a door at a busy time, at least one person who noticed me stopped in their tracks to see how they could assist me, whether that meant holding a manual door, pressing the button on an automatic door, or asking whether I needed help with a large load of items. On one occasion, two strangers very quickly worked together to lift my wheelchair when it got stuck in a doorway. Another time, someone offered to push me up a steep incline, which would have saved a massive amount of time and effort if I hadn’t been feeling well at that moment. Notably, she asked, giving me a choice rather than automatically doing so; many well-intentioned people don’t realize how large of a mental (or even physical) blow getting pushed without permission can be, yet she automatically offered help in a way that maintained my sense of autonomy. Another day, a skateboarder zoomed ahead of me to hit a crosswalk button and followed me to hit the next one, which allowed me to get through the intersection quickly and safely.
These acts of kindness, from small to large, had a profoundly positive cumulative effect; in times of extraordinary pain and discomfort, they allowed me to spare stamina, allowing me to study with a clearer head and save energy for critical chores (such as cooking). Paradoxically, relying on others in a dozen small ways throughout the day let me accomplish more and allowed me to feel more autonomous overall. I’ve become adept at opening stubborn doors by myself, but it’s much more satisfying to save the effort of a dozen doors to make a nice chicken dish.
Despite this positivity, the inevitability of my yearly health crisis greatly diminished my motivation to pursue long-term goals, especially physical goals like building strength. “Why go to the gym,” I asked myself, “if I’m going to lose all of my progress in mere weeks the moment I get sick again?” My first trip was very brief; I didn’t care to stick around once I got tired. On my second trip, a woman who could tell I had no idea what I was doing (after all, I hadn’t set foot in a gym in nearly two years) fixed my form, which made my little routine go from seemingly pointless to satisfying in an instant; it felt amazing to use muscles that had been dormant for months. On the way out of my third trip, the man who held the door told me to keep up the good work and, through a big smile, told me he was really glad to see that I showed up. Their kindness completely defeated the part of me that saw my goals as futile; after being unsure of my willingness to go to the gym even once, I now look forward to trips four, five, and beyond.
Anyone can make people with disabilities feel supported and valued. Any small act can contribute to a disabled person’s sense of wellbeing, community, and independence. I’m deeply grateful for the wonderful people in Indianapolis and beyond who’ve made the ups and downs of my health easier. I’ll do my part to pay it forward for those with mobility more limited than mine. My community helps me automatically, without me even needing to ask, so I humbly ask for just one thing: please show the kindness you give me to everyone, whether they have a visible disability or not. Your impact is far greater than you may expect.
About the Author
Image Description: Portrait of Trevor, a young white man with curly brown hair, wearing a gray collared shirt against a beige background. He is looking into the camera with a slight smile.
Author Bio
Trevor is a 24-year-old student from the Indianapolis area. He lives with a leg disability due to damage caused by stage IV cancer. Passionate about disability and health advocacy, Trevor is studying Computer Science to make medical software more efficient and accessible. When his health allows, he also participates in other forms of activism on campus, such as sexual assault survivor advocacy. In his free time, Trevor enjoys photography and working on creative projects, including a guide to cancer.
