Disability Benefits 101 (DB101) at the World Institute on Disability has built online benefits calculators  for people with disabilities, their families, as well as service providers and the employers who work with them.  The calculators are available at www.disabilitybenefits101.org/planning/.

They are easy to use, completely confidential, and in plain language in both English and Spanish. There are different calculators to help plan for number of different situations, including:

• Going from Benefits to Work
• Moving from Job to Job
• Turning 18 and going from School to Work
• Getting Medi-Cal through the California Working Disabled Program

After answering a series of questions, each of these calculators produces an individualized results page that shows how these changes will affect the user's income, health coverage, and benefits.  At a recent community presentation on the Benefits to Work calculator, John Riley, Benefits Counselor at AIDS Project Los Angeles affirmed: "That calculator is going to help me a lot!"

The DB101 calculator project is part of a contract with Social Security Administration.   The calculator tools are the result of pioneering design and development support since 2002 from the California Department of Rehabilitation, the Employment Development Department, the California Health Incentives Improvement Project, the Community Technology Foundation of California, and The California Endowment. Key design partners are Eightfold Way Consultants, Berkeley, California, and ECONorthwest, Portland, Oregon.