LILA:Living Independently in LA

LILA offers the following resources – free - to the public, especially to those who have disabilities themselves or have family members with disabilities or who work with or advocate for the disability community in Los Angeles County and our region.

• For the first time ever anywhere, LILA now maps City of Los Angeles subsidized housing and detailed owner-provided accessibility information. There are hundreds of properties, representing thousands of units, mapped and described on LILA. Thanks to support from the City of Los Angeles Department on Disability and the LA Housing Department, we are able to bring you this great new housing information resource. Right now, information on hundreds of additional properties is being prepared to upload into the database.
  
• LILA has a new Community Calendar available to any who want to post events relating to the LA area disability community.
  
• There is a Survey instrument, also available for use by advocates and agencies who want to get sample opinions about issues and current events.
  
• An Advocacy tool allows activists and organizations to also use LILA to help the community connect with their local and state representatives.
  
• LILA now has almost 2700 mapped independent living resources in its database. These are shown in categorized lists or in a “map room” that is interactive and searchable. The resources maps can be queried by various geographic criteria (city, zip code, political districts, etc.) as well as by resources categories.
  
• LILA now offers disability demographic mapping, with two overlapping layers and user-selectable query options. So, for example, you can create a map showing where Latinos live, show where there is a high incidence of disability and then show where services for people with disabilities are located. Agencies and advocates can use these tools to help tell their stories to funders or policy makers.
  
• LILA is still a resource that you can add to as well as get information from. There is a template that allows users to add and edit their own resources pages, subject to administrative approval.
  
• LILA has a coordinated discussion Forum. Now you can upload documents with your comments, so, for example, if you have a hand-controlled van to sell, you can add a picture of it.
  
• LILA has hundreds of categorized and annotated Links to a wide variety of Web sites useful to the disability and senior communities.
  
• As always, LILA appreciates user feedback, so there are a variety of ways to give your input and suggestions for site improvements

LILA also offers a number of access features for users, including:

• Font size adjustment options to promote user accessibility;
• Text only versions for access by those using screen-reader technology;
• Site search engines;
• Color-differentiated sections.

All of these are free resources, brought to you by supporters such as The California Endowment and the City of Los Angeles. Other supporters include the County of Los Angeles, the California Community Technology Foundation and Microsoft. We appreciate their sponsorship and help.

So, what are you waiting for? Check it out: http://lila.ucla.edu

Thanks,
The LILA Team

(LILA is a project of the Westside Center for Independent Living and the UCLA Institute for Neighborhood Knowledge.)

P.S. We are now developing a statewide project to bring LILA’s community tools to all Californians. Stay tuned.

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