{"id":214514,"date":"2026-04-01T13:35:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T13:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/214514\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T13:35:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T13:35:28","slug":"disabled-people-face-unique-challenges-when-getting-ids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/214514\/","title":{"rendered":"Disabled people face unique challenges when getting IDs"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 March marks\u00a0Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month<\/a>, and one obstacle a person with a disability can experience is obtaining something that many people may take for granted \u2013 a government-issued photo ID. One organization in Central Florida is working to help disabled people get those IDs.<\/p>\n

What You Need To Know<\/p>\n

March marks\u00a0Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month<\/a>, and one obstacle a person with a disability can experience is obtaining something that many people may take for granted \u2013 a government-issued photo ID.\u00a0
A\u00a02024 report<\/a>\u00a0from the University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement reported that 20% of people who self-identified as having a disability don\u2019t have a license, compared to just 6% of non-disabled people.
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A\u00a02022 report<\/a>\u00a0by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission reported that nearly 5% of disabled people eligible to vote reported they tried to vote but weren\u2019t able to.
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Quest says people with disabilities can struggle with penmanship, and so if they have to verify their signature at the polls by writing that out, those signatures might not match.<\/p>\n

Quest\u2019s Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Frances Torres, is teaching a class about proving you are who you are.\u00a0Quest<\/a> helps children and adults with developmental disabilities increase their capabilities and overall quality of life. Torres teaches Quest clients the practice of using an ID, by starting with an in-house identification card.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important we keep track of those ID\u2019s. We don\u2019t want to lose them; they have important information,\u201d said Torres.<\/p>\n

Their goal is to take their clients through the steps of maintaining and using a government ID at various places, like doctor\u2019s offices, stores and at the airport. But the biggest challenge for many disabled people is obtaining those IDs in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of our guys, they didn\u2019t have ID\u2019s, they didn\u2019t have a wallet to keep their ID. They really, really wanted an ID,\u201d said Torres.<\/p>\n

A 2024 report<\/a> from the University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement reported that 20% of people who self-identified as having a disability don\u2019t have a license, compared to just 6% of non-disabled people. And an additional 9% of disabled people have a license that does not have their current name and\/or address. That\u2019s often because disabled people have a guardian who takes care of most of their day-to-day tasks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the majority of our population, they don\u2019t have access to those documents, so then we have to go to a list of other corresponding community groups that will assist,\u201d said Crystal Whitelaw, Quest\u2019s Director of Residential. \u201cMaybe they have a guardian or maybe they don\u2019t have a guardian, and then we\u2019ll have to work with our local health department to retrieve some of those documents if they don\u2019t have a birth certificate and if we don\u2019t have a copy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quest can go with their clients to the DMV, where they say even with all the proper documentation. There can still be challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t really understand the population that we deal with until we\u2019re actually there at the appointment, and then it\u2019s like \u2013 oh, okay, this person needs ADA accommodations,\u201d said Whitelaw. \u201cOr, maybe the person isn\u2019t tall enough to take the picture and now we need to make an adjustment on the camera.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quest was able to help Roberto Perez get his REAL ID. Perez had difficulties proving he was an Orange County resident.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing to (be) easier for us to get into doctor\u2019s appointments, or clubs,\u201d said Perez.<\/p>\n

Perez is happy about the many ways he could use his ID. But jokes aside, the ability to carry his own ID is something that has really opened his life up to a new level of independence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like a new person, and I feel proud to do my own stuff,\u201d said Perez.<\/p>\n

Another obstacle disabled adults can face is when voting.\u00a0 A 2022 report<\/a> by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission reported that nearly 5% of disabled people eligible to vote reported they tried to vote but weren\u2019t able to. Quest says people with disabilities can struggle with penmanship, and so if they have to verify their signature at the polls by writing that out \u2013 those signatures might not match. Quest works with its clients on making those signatures consistent and uniform, and they can also provide a legal representative to go with them to the polls to help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 March marks\u00a0Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month, and one obstacle a person with a disability can experience…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1011,274,1190,12716,115,139,141,140,278,835],"class_list":["post-214514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-human-interest","tag-app-top-stories","tag-human-interest","tag-jeff-allen","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}