#RespectTheAbility

Honoring Women with Disabilities During Women’s History Month

Selena Gomez

Three years ago, pop star and actress Selena Gomez strutted onto Ellen DeGeneres stage wearing a black floor-length dress and heels. Her hair was slicked back and wavy. Her face held a look of intention. She sat with both a stiff back and smile and told Ellen and the world what it is like to live with Lupus.

“It is an autoimmune disease; I will have it forever and you just have to take care of yourself,” Gomez told Ellen and the audience. “I can relate to people.”

Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease that causes the body to attack itself, unable to differentiate between its own healthy tissue and invaders. According to the Lupus Foundation of America, 1.5 million people have Lupus in America and five million have it worldwide. [continue reading…]

Honoring Women with Disabilities During Women’s History Month

Haben Girma

Haben Girma has been advocating for herself since she attended elementary school in Oakland, California. She became the first Deafblind person to graduate from law school when she earned her degree from Harvard Law School in 2013. She is a civil rights attorney who advocates for disability rights, a public speaker who travels the country changing people’s perceptions of the disability community in the media and has been featured in Forbes “30 Under 30” and on NBC and NPR.

In 1983, five years before Girma was born, her mother Saba Gebreyesus fled Eritrea, a city in Africa with approximately six million people, taking two weeks to walk to Sudan and sleeping in trees “surrounded by hungry hyenas.” But she was determined to give Girma the opportunities her son wasn’t given; he also was born deafblind. [continue reading…]

Honoring Women with Disabilities During Women’s History Month

Barbara Corcoran

Barbara Corcoran is an American business woman who started a real estate brokerage business, The Corcoran Group, at the age of 23. Famous for her TV personality on ABC’s Shark Tank as an entrepreneur and judge, she credits her determination and drive to her childhood diagnosis of dyslexia.

“When you cannot pronounce the other words that other kids are reading readily and the kids are laughing at you or are shouting the wrong letter to you, or the wrong syllable to you, it’s as painful as a child that I have never gotten over it. Honest to God, I’m sure of that. And so, when I got out of school, I really decided that I’m going to prove once and for all that I am not stupid,” she said in an interview with Spectrum News NY1. [continue reading…]

Washington, D.C., Feb. 27 – “What’s a leg got to do with it?” This is the question Donna Walton poses to her audience in speeches regarding her experience as a woman with a disability. As an amputee, Walton has experienced her fair share of people mistaking her disability for a weakness that supposedly makes her less of a woman. She works to reject that misconception and answers the question she poses to her audience: “Not a thing.” Walton has dedicated her life to reshaping the perception of what a disability looks like and stressing that a disability is not a person’s sole defining trait.

As we celebrate Black History Month, which takes place every February, it is important to recognize the contributions made and the important presence of African Americans to the United States, including the more than 5.6 million African Americans living with a disability in the U.S., 3.4 million of which are working-age African Americans with disabilities. [continue reading…]

In support of GLAAD and Disney | ABC Television Group Be Inspired’s #SpiritDay campaign to end bullying, RespectAbility staff and Fellows created a video about the importance of stopping bullying and choosing kindness instead.

RespectAbility, a national nonprofit working to fight stigmas and advance opportunities for people with disabilities, recognizes the importance of ending bullying against LGBTQ individuals, including against those who identify as a member of both the disability and LGBTQ communities. Read about some of RespectAbility’s staff and Fellows’ experiences:

• Gay and on the Autism Spectrum: My Experience Growing Up in the Closet
  Eric, Communications Associate and Spring 2018 Communications Fellow
• Learning About Myself and Coming Into My Own
  Lily, Summer 2018 Communications Fellow
• A Reflection on Truth and Acceptance: When Fear Finds a Home
  Daniel, Summer 2018 Communications Fellow
• At the Intersection of Deafness, Queerness and Being an Asian-American Woman
  Kaity, Summer 2018 Communications Fellow
• Having a Visible Disability While Coming Out as Gay
  Ben, National Leadership Director

Stephanie Farfan

A young Latina, Stephanie Farfan is both completing her master’s degree and working at RespectAbility, a nonprofit fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities for people with disabilities, as the Policy, Practices and Latinx Outreach Associate. Farfan first joined RespectAbility as a Fellow in the Spring 2018 Cohort. She returned in August as a full time staff member and already has made quite an impact. She was instrumental in the launch of RespectAbility’s new Spanish-language resource guide. She also represented RespectAbility at a Fiesta Educativa conference in California and even appeared on CNN Español to spread the word.

But before she started working at RespectAbility, she participated in interviews for other jobs. One of them, at a nonprofit near her school, sticks out in her mind. She excelled during the first part of the interview. Then, as Farfan puts it:

“The person who would be my direct supervisor came in and her eyes got really wide when she saw me because I’m a Little Person. Suddenly, she believed I couldn’t do the job, even though I was very qualified and it was just a data entry position. She kept telling me ‘I don’t think you’re smart enough. We really need to hire someone who is very intelligent and has very good attention to detail.’ I quipped ‘Well, I have a 4.7 GPA, I think I’ll be fine.’”

Farfan has been more than just fine. She has taken advantage of her unique perspective on life. In fact, she thinks that having a disability has improved her life in certain ways. Being a Little Person has “given me a community and a sense of culture,” she said. “It also shapes the way I see the world around me and how I react to things. If I didn’t have a disability, I wouldn’t have this personality.” [continue reading…]

#RespectTheAbility campaign spotlights model employers that demonstrate how hiring workers with disabilities benefits the employer, the employee and society

As we celebrate the contributions of workers to our nation’s history and enjoy one last summer weekend, RespectAbility invites you learn about the incredible talents of people with disabilities. We hope you enjoy the amazing success stories captured in our #RespectTheAbility campaign which highlights the benefits companies reap when they hire talented people with disabilities.

“Many companies hire the best talent out there, no matter what package that talent comes in,” said Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, president of RespectAbility. “Employers’ focus should be on the abilities an individual brings to the table to better the organization, not any disabilities the individual may have. It is time for all employers to look beyond the disability and understand the true value of these employees.”

The #RespectTheAbility campaign began by celebrating the success of Ernst & Young LLP as a case study and featured a conference call with Lori Golden, Abilities Strategy Leader from Ernst & Young, on “Disabilities to Diverse Abilities: Changing the Workplace Paradigm.” Arthur Young, co-founder of EY, was deaf and exceptionally talented. [continue reading…]

Rockville, Md., Aug. 29 – Sean McElwee and Megan Bomgaars are talented designers who have sold products featuring their designs to make a living. These entrepreneurs also happen to have Down syndrome.

McElwee and Bomgaars are cast members on Born This Way, an Emmy award-winning unscripted reality television program created by Bunim/Murray Productions and airing on A&E Network. Born This Way stars seven young adults with Down syndrome and their families, and showcases their lives in a positive, accurate way. The fourth season of the hit docuseries highlights McElwee’s and Bomgaars’ businesses, both of which have made remarkable progress in recent months. [continue reading…]

26 July 2018

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Washington, D.C., July 26, 2018 — A panel of diverse leaders with disabilities and their allies are gathering next Monday, July 30 to discuss key insights into the unprecedented success of hundreds of thousands of Americans with disabilities who entered the workforce last year. This panel, composed of disability employment and workforce development leaders, will be presenting between 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. as part of a day long summit sponsored by RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities for people with disabilities.

The focus of their discussion will be the fourfold improvement in employment opportunities for Americans with disabilities over the past year. According to Census Bureau data, 343,483 more people with disabilities joined the American workforce in 2016. This compares to only 87,201 in the previous year. The panel will explore the key factors driving these unprecedented successes. [continue reading…]