Power, Passion, and Pride

A mixed-media digital history archive, It’s Our Story is designed to be maintained by and for an exciting, diverse community. To bring the depth and breadth of that community into fuller focus, our “Power Passion, and Pride” image panels highlight a wide array of celebrities who live, work and excel with disabilities.

With the development and dissemination of these panels (which include celebrities as varied as Norman Rockwell, Kenny G, and Daryl Hannah), It’s Our Story aims to shatter all sense of limitation or prejudice that too often plague the depictions of people with disabilities in media. Only by recognizing how deeply disability is integrated into the fabric of our daily lives can we truly acknowledge and encourage fulfillment of our fullest potential.

A Tapestry of Empowerment

The It’s Our Story “Power, Passion, and Pride” project offers its viewers a digital scroll of more than 1,000 panels depicting a world of high-achieving celebrities with disabilities. That’s over 700 feet of visual history content, designed to inspire current and future generations of people with disabilities to reach their own dreams and to surmount their own perceived limitations.

Honoring a range of celebrated figures in the fields of entertainment, science, literature, sports and beyond, these panels fully represent the rich and diverse character of the American experience — all while reflecting disability life as never before.

IOS on Flickr

Using an exciting blend of multimedia engagement and personal stories, It’s Our Story is proud to shed light on the achievements and experiences of people with disabilities. Thanks to the power of social media, it is today easier than ever to share life-changing and thought-provoking content across the globe. We encourage you to download, embed and promote the It’s Our Story “Power, Passion and Pride” photo montages. Each of these tableaus is a one-of-a-kind visual advocacy resource ideal for websites, PowerPoint presentations, classrooms and the workplace.

Although more than 54 million Americans living with a disability, many still feel powerless to confront the stigma, discrimination, and social exclusion that can often impinge upon their daily lives. It’s Our Story draws open the dynamic, powerful and intimate landscape of social media to stimulate social change and to inspire disability rights and advocacy campaigns around the country and across the world. It’s Our Story gives voice to those who are too often voiceless, empowering young people with disabilities to refine and acquire skills relevant to employment opportunities in a digital economy. We focus our efforts on clearing a pathway to the workplace for people with disabilities while enabling them to change their lives and the lives of others.

The density and accessibility of the Internet presents each of us with this generation’s most powerful social asset. We at It’s Our Story believe the Internet is the ideal forum by which millions of people might share in the same song, receive the same message, and learn and grow alongside one another.

Nowhere is this sense of community more relevant, or more needed, than among people with disabilities. There has never been a more ideal time to embrace the challenges we face and to share in the power of shaping a more inclusive future, together. It’s Our Story is excited to join your powerful perspective with a chorus of others from around the world.