Last nightmy accent stopped shifting down to the lowest gear in automatic. It will not let me manually shift it to first either. So it's taking off in second gear at every light. I don't know if it is connected to the problem or not, but the dash gear indicator also stopped working last night. All of the other indicators and gauges are still working fine. It has approximately 117,000 miles on it.

 

When there is a problem that can do further damage to parts of the vehicle it is designed to save itself. It does this by going into what is referred to as "Limp mode".
In limp mode you are permitted to get the vehicle to a shop for repairs. It only starts out in second gear with limited power.
What you need to do now is have your vehicle checked for any codes and go from there. You have the option of trying a place like Autozone that usually will check your vehicle for codes at no cost or just taking it to a shop for diagnosis and repair. If you choose the former and post the code(s) here, we might be able to offer some helpful suggestions. It doesn't sound like anything expensive, but that is pure speculation at this time.