National Developmental Disabilities Month Spotlight: Lixon Nelson
MIAMI – March is Developmental Disabilities Month. Lixon Nelson, Co-Founder Alliance Community & Employment Services(ACES) and Imuneek is a champion for those with disabilities.
Lixon Nelson was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1980. He and his family emigrated to the United States when he was two years old. While in college, he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory condition of the gastrointestinal tract.
Lixon struggled to find other individuals with the same disease for support in coping with the challenges of living with his disability. He also learned from personal experience the difficulties disabled individuals face in securing viable employment.
This led Lixon to found a nonprofit organization, the Alliance Community and Employment Services (ACES).
ACES assisted countless disabled jobseekers to secure employment in South Florida. Lixon became increasingly frustrated with the amount of time it took him to find the necessary resources to assist him with his path to a normal productive life.
He discovered that technology could be the catalyst in providing a social networking site that would not only connect him to others with his disease but also serve as a resource for others to connect to a plethora of resources for their own disabilities.
That is how he met Michael Arbitman, a former VP of IT that became blind through a rare bacterium he contracted on a business trip to India. Together they created Imuneek.com in 2010.
The website acts as your personal virtual online assistant that automatically connects you to other people, organizations, support groups, doctors, news, forums, and hash tag postings specific to your medical condition or disability, physical or mental.
Imuneek created algorithms that search social media, Google and Facebook for updated medical information and breakthroughs specific to the user’s particular disability.
The website is 508 Compliant, a set of U.S. government standards for the minimum levels of technology accessibility.
The Imuneek website complies with standards like high contrast for the color blind, the elimination of flashing pages for users suffering from seizures, sophisticated graphic user interfaces ( GUIs) which is screen reader accessible, and has an easy to navigate user experience in case someone is a paraplegic and uses a mouth mouse.
Imuneek is one of the few sites where parents of children with autism can attend online support groups.
Additionally, the website is one of two resources in the country for blind parents and is also the only resource for juvenile type 2 diabetes that is in every community worldwide.
Imuneek has partnered with the Miami Dade County Special Olympics, the American Diabetes Association and the Broward County Lighthouse for the Blind. Disney has been referring guests with disabilities to Imuneek so that they can speak to others who have gone to their parks and cruises who have shared their specific condition.
For those who are first diagnosed with a condition, they can read through the “What To DO First Guides” that are generated by the users of the website.
Imuneek is continually developing new tools to empower individuals and let them know that they are not alone.
Lixon believes that an individual is not defined by their medical condition or disability, and that anyone can achieve their goals as long as they have the correct support system in place.
