Board Member Profile: Alan Spaulding

If you met Alan Spaulding at a party and asked him “What do you do?” he would say “I’m a crack filler.” Alan is a pillar and pioneer of Indiana’s disability community and has spent his life filling the cracks he almost fell through.

In his school days, Alan was mistakenly labeled as “retarded” because teachers did not realize he had a visual impairment. Doctors had difficulty diagnosing him as the technology to examine the brain’s visual center did not yet exist. However, when a history teacher started giving him oral exams, his grades went from D’s and F’s to B’s and A’s.

Alan was finally diagnosed with low vision when he was in his 40’s. While simultaneously learning Braille and working on getting his first guide dog, he worked through a Vocational Rehabilitation program to receive his GED.

Alan started his disability advocacy at a training at Fort Wayne’s League for the Blind and Disabled, where he learned about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) soon after the landmark civil rights legislation was passed. Soon after, he helped found Differently-Abled Citizens in Action (DACIA), a disability advocacy group covering Marion, Blackford, and Delaware counties. In 1995, DACIA conducted a series of accessibility surveys for low income housing facilities across the state, helping to bring them up to code with the ADA and making them a better place for people with disabilities to live.

In 1992, Alan sharpened his advocacy skills at the first class of Indiana’s Partners in Policymaking Academy.

In 1994, with the help of Senator Dave Ford and Representative Dean Young, Alan worked to pass a bill creating new protections for service animals. This piece of legislation imposed a fine of up to $10,000 or a two-year jail sentence for anyone inuring a service animal. A later amendment added police dogs to the bill, meaning that anyone injuring a service animal in Indiana would face the same penalties as someone injuring a police dog, which are the same as injuring a human police officer.

In 1996, Alan worked with Muncie nonprofit Future Choices. Future Choices built three-story apartment buildings in Muncie with every ground floor apartment designed to be fully accessible to people with disabilities. Later, Alan helped Future Choices start an independent living center, where he spent two years providing information and referral services to people with disabilities.

Alan also spent 15 years on the board of ATTAIN, Inc., the Assistive Technology Through Awareness in Indiana Project. ATTAIN helped to pass the legislation establishing Indiana’s Medicaid Buy-In program. They also worked with Vocational Rehabilitation to provide training for people with disabilities working to reenter the workforce.

From 1999 to 2010, Alan worked as a commissioner on the Indiana Protection and Advocacy Services (IPAS) Commission, advising IPAS on their goals and objectives for the coming year and encouraging them to do more for service animal issues.Currently, Alan works with local businesses in Blackford County to ensure their wheelchair ramps are properly designed and up to code with ADA regulations. He is also a founding member and board member of the Fifth Freedom Network.

This is just some of the work Alan has done for people with disabilities in Indiana. His work has helped Hoosiers with disabilities have accessible homes to live in, and get access to a good education and employment. Just about anywhere Hoosiers with disabilities go, Alan has helped open the door to let them in.