The Virginia Deaf Leadership and Advocacy Forum is a one-day gathering of Deaf people and allies focused on creating more leadership presence of Deaf Virginians through self, grassroots and legislative advocacy to achieve equality in employment, legal, educational, and legislative advocacy. Among the many issues that impact the quality of lives for Deaf people include:

• Language deprivation of deaf and hard of hearing children due to incomplete access to a natural language during the critical periods of language acquisition.

• Early intervention and provide balanced resources for families with deaf children and the prevention of language deprivation and subpar public education.

• Equal communication access in medical, legal, educational and public settings - receiving the same information and access to communication as people who are not deaf.

• Equal access to the many technologies such as telecommunications, video captioning, movie captioning, online resources, etc., that people who are not deaf enjoy regularly.

• Maintaining and expanding the state school for the deaf as an option for educating deaf children in their "least restrictive environment" (as opposed to mainstreaming in a public school which may be the deaf child's most restrictive environment).

• Access to available resources for mental heath care and substance abuse treatment that meet the specific linguistic and cultural needs of deaf people.

• Access to employment training, opportunities and advancement that frequently alludes Deaf and hard of hearing people due to preconceived myths, misconceptions and overall discrimination against deaf people.

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Come join us for a day of leadership and advocacy. Meet other leaders and advocates of the Deaf community here in Virginia!