Hello, my name is Maria Bell and I work at the Disability History Museum of People and I also do parts for public and research on the computer, looking up artifacts to put it different in the library.

And I give tours for the new employees of people and when I was really, really young, I lived in three different institutions in New York City.

In these places, there was a large number of people and little to no personal belongings.

The care was mainly from the nurses aides and you were constantly being watched over and they only let you know what they felt you needed to know.

Early asylums were meant to be educational, but unfortunately, throughout time they would drift into what we'd call custodial or basically warehouses for people who are different and that drift from helping and educating to just stockpiling people away from their community, away from their family led to some severe problems for people with disability.

It led to some degree of a loss of personhood.

In 1992, it was moved to a group home with people agency.

I lived there for about 17 years with 14 other people.

We had staff come in and help us out when we needed it in a group home.

Like I said, you had staff carrying crew.

They didn't give you the opportunity back then to make your own decisions.

And now that I'm older, I make my own decisions.

There's nobody to tell me what to do, when to eat, when to go to bed, when to wake up, when to take a medicine.

There's nobody there to tell me that I do it myself.

I like living by myself.

I've done it for five years and it's the best thing I've ever done for me.