Access Living releases recommendations to help people with disabilities from gun violence

CHICAGO (WLS) -- After two and a half years of research, Access Living released insights and recommendations to help people living with disabilities due to gun violence.

Thursday the group presented the findings of their Access Living's Disabled Gun Violence Survivors in Chicago survey. They spoke with more than 100 survivors to craft their recommendations.

"Now they have to learn how to navigate the community in a different way and most often the community is in accessible," Candace Coleman, Access Living community strategy specialist, said.

Among their recommendations was creation of peer support, offering disability inclusion training for healthcare, offering employment and financial resources and helping survivors access mental health support.

"So many times people focus on the death toll and how many people didn't make it, but what are we doing for those who did make it," said Michael Walthall, program coordinator for Michael Walthall.

Walthall was a peer facilitator on the survey and will help build the peer support program. In 2016, he was a college student with a fulltime airline job when he was paralyzed by an unprovoked, unsolved drive-by shooting.

Now he is eager to help others so they do not have to face the same struggle to navigate red tape.

"I still have a purpose but for a while after the injury I didn't know what I was going to do I didn't know what the rest of my life was going to look like," Walthall said. "I'm here now talking about that eight years later, but we could have been having that conversation year one. And that's what I'm hoping to do for the others."

Access Living is currently looking for peer mentors and navigators as they build their program to support those living with disabilities from gun violence.