The earlier we can touch the life of a child with a developmental disability, the greater the...
LEARN MOREWe have both Self-Advocates and Aktion Club members that are very forward thinking. They decided to name themselves Self-Advocates in Aktion as a collaborative whole. Below you will see the breakdown of each group.
The Huron County Board of Developmental Disabilities has an active group of self-advocates working to give individuals with developmental disabilities the opportunity to make decisions on their own behalf.
The group has named itself The AC Club, which stands for Advocating for Change.
When given the opportunity to make decisions on their own behalf, individuals with developmental disabilities respond by showing a level of confidence and self-responsibility that was previously believed to be unachievable.
The Aktion Club, which was formed in 2009, is an opportunity for individuals with developmental disabilities to give back to their community.
A division of Kiwanis International, Aktion Club is a service-oriented organization designed specifically for individuals capable of these contributions.
Project STIR is a program that stands for Steps Towards Independence and Responsibilities
Ohio Self Determination Association provides the program to encourage people to utilize tools to advocate for themselves, mobilize others in advocacy and gain leadership experiences.
Self-Advocates who have been through a local or statewide STIR program get the opportunity to participate in coordinated events and are also able to instruct others who would like to go through the program in the future.
The Community Integration program is a locally-funded service for people with developmental disabilities.
The participant is required to provide annual recreational paperwork and be eighteen years of age or older. They must also qualify for services through the intake process at the Huron County Board of DD. The recreation program ranges from low impact activities for casual participants to structured athletics.
We offer people the opportunity to participate in leisure activities, such as
We also attend movies, museums, theater productions, indoor and outdoor musical concerts, the zoo, amusement parks, fairs, festivals and professional or high school sporting events.
We do try to encourage the people we support to express themselves and tell us what they would like to do with their time with us. We provide “Name Your Activity” days to allow for that flexibility.
Like stated above, we do provide structured athletics in Special Olympics for Softball and Basketball. We are the home to the Huron County Bears.
We provide Special Olympics opportunities to people who are 18 years of age and older. The athlete is also required to turn in a physical form (good every three years), annual community integration paperwork and must qualify for services through the Huron County Board of DD intake process.
One of the strong aspects of Community Connections is to have employment at a job that highlights a person’s strengths and interests. Huron County Board of Developmental Disabilities follows the State of Ohio Employment First Initiative, which states that individuals with developmental disabilities be directed towards community employment and that individuals with developmental disabilities are resumed capable of community employment.
Huron County Board of Developmental Disabilities will assist individuals with pursuing community employment. We do this by helping people through the Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities (a State of Ohio Vocational Rehabilitation program, also known as OOD) process for job exploration, job development and job coaching services.
The earlier we can touch the life of a child with a developmental disability, the greater the...
LEARN MOREProviding individuals the training and resources needed to ensure a smooth, successful transition from school to work.
LEARN MOREThe Board is committed to providing funding for services that will help individuals or families to maintain...
LEARN MOREWe firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to