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Born This Way Fan Guide: Free Resources You Can Use

Toolkit Includes Free Resources for Job Seekers with Disabilities and Employers Embracing Employees with Disabilities


Washington, D.C., June 4 – In coordination with this Tuesday’s episode of Born This Way, RespectAbility has released the Born This Way Fan Guide with free resources for a variety of individuals with disabilities. The guide includes free tools, contacts, information and services around:

cover art for the cover for the Born This Way Fa Guide includes photos of the cast of Born This Way

Born This Way Fan Guide: Free Resources You Can Use

Download a PDF of the guide: Born This Way Fan Guide – Free Resources You Can Use (PDF).

Download an accessible Word document of the guide: Born This Way Fan Guide – Free Resources You Can Use (DOCX).

Born This Way, which won an Emmy for being the best reality show on television, is a breakthrough show starring seven young adults with Down syndrome who are striving to gain jobs, independent living, love, fun and friendships. It shows the casts’ real-life quests to achieve employment and/or start their own companies.

Tuesday’s episode shows when several members of the cast attended a summit, entitled “Ending Stigmas & Bigotry: Expanding Employment for People with Disabilities,” co-hosted by Rep. Brad Sherman and RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities for people with disabilities. Together, participants brainstormed new ideas and made connections to move the needle forward on the employment of people with disabilities.

Today companies including Ernst & Young (EY), AT&T, Starbucks and others have shown that employees with disabilities are loyal, successful and help them make more money. That’s because people with disabilities bring unique characteristics, talents and loyalty to the workplace that benefit employers and organizations. People with disabilities can work in hospitals, eldercare, retail, hospitality, start companies, computer programming and other fields.

The Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Wired and other publications have extolled the “disability-advantage” to companies that hire talent that includes people with disabilities.

The episode will air on Tuesday, June 6 at 10 PM ET/9c on A&E Network.

For more information visit www.RespectAbility.org or email LaurenA@RespectAbility.org.

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Meet the Author

Lauren Appelbaum

Lauren Appelbaum is the VP, Communications and Entertainment & News Media, of RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities so all people with disabilities can fully participate in every aspect of community. As an individual with an acquired nonvisible disability – Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy – she works at the intersection of disability, employment, Hollywood and politics. She regularly conducts trainings on the why and how to be more inclusive and accessible for entertainment executives throughout the industry. Appelbaum partners with studios, production companies and writers’ rooms to create equitable and accessible opportunities to increase the number of people with lived disability experience throughout the overall story-telling process. These initiatives increase diverse and authentic representation of disabled people on screen, leading to systemic change in how society views and values people with disabilities. She has consulted on more than 100 TV episodes and films with A&E, Bunim-Murray Productions, NBCUniversal, Netflix, ViacomCBS, and The Walt Disney Company, among others. She represents RespectAbility on the CAA Full Story Initiative Advisory Council, Disney+ Content Advisory Council, MTV Entertainment Group Culture Code and Sundance Institute’s Allied Organization Initiative. She is the author of The Hollywood Disability Inclusion Toolkit and the creator of an innovative Lab Program for entertainment professionals with disabilities working in development, production and post-production. She is a recipient of the 2020 Roddenberry Foundation Impact Award for this Lab. To reach her, email LaurenA@RespectAbility.org.

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