Lived experience.
Lasting change.

Rob and Isabelle Harris are taking years of lived experience with blindness, special education, Medicaid, and transition systems directly to the people shaping national policy.

Follow the D.C. mission Why this matters

Rob, Tyler, Susan, and Isabelle Harris smile together at a White Cane Awareness event; Isabelle holds her white cane. — Advocacy starts with family—and grows through community.

“Braille is not dead.”
Rob Harris · OSEP public remarks

The mission

Systems should work for people—not require people to become experts just to survive them.

I did not set out to become an advocate. I became one because my daughter deserved access, opportunity, and a future shaped by her abilities—not by low expectations or inaccessible systems.

Today, I bring a parent’s persistence, a systems thinker’s eye, and years of lived experience to every table where decisions about disabled people are made.

— Rob Harris, father, caregiver & advocate

Rob and Isabelle Harris smile together overlooking the mountains in Vail, Colorado. — Rob and Isabelle—learning, leading, and building independence together.

The work

Advocacy grounded in real life.

From one family’s fight for access to statewide and national systems change.

Close-up photograph of raised braille dots embossed on paper beside printed letters. — Literacy is access. Access is power.

Blindness & literacy

Braille, assistive technology, orientation and mobility, the Expanded Core Curriculum, and the presumption of competence.

Special education

Helping families navigate IEPs while pushing schools toward meaningful access, accountability, and ambitious outcomes.

Medicaid & HCBS

Centering families in decisions about home- and community-based services, caregiver supports, assessments, and public accountability.

Youth leadership

Creating room for blind and low-vision young people to build confidence, self-determination, interdependence, and their own public voice.

The Washington, D.C. delegation

We are taking the story to the people who can change the system.

Rob and Isabelle will join a small delegation of self-advocates and professionals in blindness, low vision, and deafblindness. The goal is simple: pair policy expertise with the truth of lived experience.

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What we are carrying forward

Accessible education and authentic inclusion
Braille literacy and modern assistive technology
Strong transition services and self-determination
Policy shaped with—not merely for—disabled people

The delegation is preparing meetings with national education leadership and policymakers on Capitol Hill.

Why Isabelle’s voice matters

Nothing about us without us begins by making room for us.

Isabelle is not going to Washington as a symbol. She is going as a young adult, a braille reader, an assistive-technology user, and a self-advocate whose experience should inform the decisions that shape her future.

Three-dimensional illustration of an older blind man wearing sunglasses and using a white cane. — Disability is part of every generation—and access must be built for every life.

The standard

“If lived experience is missing from the room, the policy is missing the truth.”

— #AdvocateDad