KALAMAZOO, Mich. — An eye-catching campaign is usually a successful one.

Allison Leece hopes that’s the case with the latest Disability Network Southwest Michigan campaign.

There’s no doubt it’s eye-catching.

This past month, it started popping up on 14-by-48-foot billboards towering over downtown Kalamazoo, and along U.S. 131 and I-94 with a gigantic “#DWord” as the dominant visual. The billboards were made possible by Adams Outdoor Advertising, who donated the space to the nonprofit for 2025.

The idea is to make viewers pause. That’s after all, the intent behind the message, said Leece, the communications and outreach manager with DNSWM.

If people follow the billboard’s suggestion and visit dwordpride.org, they can learn more about the campaign, which states emphatically: “Disability is not a bad word.”

“For a long time, people have shied away from using the term ‘disability’ because they don’t want to be offensive,” Leece said. “People don’t know that it’s an OK thing to talk about disability. So, they use euphemisms or words that make them feel better like special needs or handicap-able.

“We just want people to know that there’s nothing wrong with saying ‘disability.’ The more we talk about it, the more normalized and accepted disability becomes. It’s not a bad thing to have a disability, so just say the word. That’s kind of our goal behind the campaign.”

Leece, 37, has been with DNSWM for 12 years.

Growing up, her older brother, Larry, was diagnosed with autism as a young child — inspiring Leece to get involved. Doctors in the 1980s told her parents her brother would never be able to do anything, she said.

“It’s made me very passionate about trying to make sure that he could live life in the way that he wanted to and that opportunities weren’t going to be denied to him simply because he’s autistic,” Leece said. “Going through elementary, middle and high school, I would see people make assumptions about what he could do.

“They’d say, ‘He’s probably never going to be able to do this or that.’ And we would say, ‘He’s already doing those things, you’re just counting him out.’ So, advocacy just became part of our lives and it just continued.”

Leece lives with a disability herself.

Diagnosed with ADHD at 25, she didn’t know growing up that mental health needs can also be considered disabilities.

“A lot of people have mental health needs, but they have no idea that they have a disability,” she said. “And that goes back to the fact that in our society and our schools and places we grow up, we don’t tend to talk about disabilities.”

Disability Network Southwest Michigan helps people of all ages with any type of disability to navigate life, with a goal of helping people live more independently.

They do that through weekly peer support groups for adults with autism, people with brain injuries and people dealing with chronic pain. They also have a group for women with any type of disability.

“A lot of organizations require some type of proof of disability and we don’t, which makes us really unique,” Leece said. “If you say you have a disability, then we help you.”

DNSWM also has programs to support people when rights are being violated. In addition, the organization works with clients on self advocacy and helps connect people to community programs that assist with basic resources such as transportation, housing, health care and food.

Disability Network also offers free consultations to businesses and nonprofits who wish to become more disability-friendly and accessible. That can be as simple as helping design spaces to become easier to get in and out of. Another example is helping select lights with people who have sensory issues in mind.

“Disability impacts everybody,” Leece said. “Every gender. Every race. Every socioeconomic status. You can live your entire life and never think about disability and then because of a health condition or an accident, disability can become the center of your world.”

When that happens, Leece said, she hopes they turn to DNSWM first.

“A couple years ago, somebody told us that we are one of the best kept secrets in Southwest Michigan and that really stuck with us,” Leece said. “We don’t want to be a secret.

“We think about ourselves as the first stop for people with disabilities. … If we don’t have a service or a program that supports what somebody is in need of, we can connect that person to another program or organization.”

The Kalamazoo-based disability services and support organization has been serving the community since 1981, born out of the disability rights movement of the ’70s.

A rallying cry of the movement, Leece said, was “nothing about us without us.”

People with disabilities were tired of people without disabilities making decisions for them on how they should live their lives without their input, she said.

As a result, disability networks, such as the one in Kalamazoo, started popping up all over the country.

Known as centers for independent living, a requirement at each is that a minimum of 51% of staff and board members must have a disability, Leece said. Of the 34 people that make up DNSWM’s staff and governing board, that number hovers just above 80%.

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