At BEAR (Blindness Education and Advocacy Resources), we support parents, attorneys and advocates, education professionals, and rehabilitation agencies. We assist with the development activities to provide students with disabilities (including blindness, low vision, and additional disabilities) and help provide access to information and appropriate instruction.
We provide blindness-specific educational resources and services, including comprehensive assessments, independent educational evaluations, and IEP planning and advocacy.
We deliver in-person and virtual instruction in the areas of self-advocacy, education and career counseling, social and independent living skills, and problem-solving to students with visual impairment, including blindness.
We also offer professional development, instructional coaching, and mentoring for educators and rehabilitation service providers serving students with visual impairment, including blindness.
About Carlton Anne Cook Walker
Our principal, Carlton Anne Cook Walker, wears many hats. She is an attorney, the parent of a blind child (now, young adult), and a certified teacher of blind/low vision students.
In her solo law practice in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Ms. Cook Walker concentrates in the areas of education law and civil rights. She also serves as a municipal solicitor, and she assists individuals with estate planning and administration needs.
Ms. Cook Walker heads BEAR (Blindness Education and Advocacy Resources), an education consultancy business. She serves as president of the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC), the proud parent division of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB). She also serves on the board of Professionals in Blindness Education (PIBE), another proud division of the NFB.
For more than a decade, Ms. Cook Walker has provided advocacy for families of blind and low vision children, and she has made presentations on legal topics related to blindness to attorneys, state agencies, education professionals, advocates, and parents throughout the nation. In addition, Ms. Cook Walker worked as an itinerant teacher of blind/low vision students in South Central Pennsylvania for more than six years and then as Manager of Braille Education Programs for the National Federation of the Blind.
Ms. Cook Walker is a graduate of North Carolina State University (B.A., B.S., and B.S.) in Raleigh, NC, of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (M.B.A.), Wake Forest University School of Law (J.D.) in Winston-Salem, NC, and Salus University in Elkins Park, PA (M.Ed.).