Chris and Tommy Tiedemann are well-suited to write about disability-friendly colleges. To the best of their knowledge, no one else has even recognized the need for such a guide since the ADA became law in 1990 and they are, by happy coincidence, a college student who is physically disabled and a professional writer. 

Undoubtedly Tommy was not the first high school student with a physical disability to find that no information was available about colleges which would make it possible for him to live on campus. But he turned his lack of information into his Senior Project. When Tommy made the presentation of his Senior Project on Boards Night, the panel of judges from his high school and the community in fact urged him to publish his research.

Tommy’s primary responsibility today is his own college work, but his experience as both as a resident student at Edinboro University and commuter student at Chattahoochee Technical College has helped to round out the picture of what a student with physical disabilities encounters every day at college. 

Chris Tiedemann brings to the project an extensive background in journalism and communications, which has led her to continue the research begun by her son and to venture into other areas of interest to parents of college students with disabilities, such as transition, legal rights of college students and their parents, the Vocational Rehabilitation maze, and independent living issues.  

Chris has worked as a news reporter and as a communicator in the corporate, academic, and government arenas. She now has her own business providing communications services and consulting. In this capacity she has written and consulted for organizations ranging from consumer magazines to Delta Air Lines to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More important, she has accompanied her son on his journey to find the right college for a bright young man with serious physical disabilities.  

See Chris' Professional Page on Georgia Writers Association