Rockville, Maryland, April 18 – In a visit to RespectAbility’s office Eleanor Clift spoke to the National Leadership Fellows about the current administration, growing up during the Civil Rights Movement and race-related issues.

Clift is a well known columnist for The Daily Beast and an author; she was previously a reporter at Newsweek for 50 years of her life. She also has appeared in many movies and is a board member of RespectAbility. [continue reading…]

RespectAbility and Norman Lear Center Unite to Help Hollywood Include People with Disabilities

Los Angeles, Calif., April 18 – RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities for people with disabilities, announces a new partnership with Hollywood, Health & Society (HH&S), a project of the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center. The partnership will help educate, inform and support the success of the movie/TV industry in its work to ensure that people with disabilities are included on both sides of the camera in the stories that Hollywood tells. HH&S provides entertainment industry professionals with accurate and timely information for storylines on health, safety and national security. Like RespectAbility, HH&S recognizes the profound impact that entertainment media have on individual knowledge and behavior – ultimately impacting society and lives at large.

“We’re delighted to be working with RespectAbility to help inform and inspire the frequency and accuracy of portrayals of people with disabilities in TV and film,” said Kate Folb, the director of HH&S.

HH&S offers several resources, including quick facts, briefings and consultations with experts, case examples, panel discussions about timely health issues, a quarterly newsletter with health updates called Real to Reel and an expanding list of tip sheets written specifically for writers and producers. The broad range of topics includes disability-specific topics autism and mental health. Some of the TV shows they have assisted include The Fosters, The Good Doctor, Grey’s Anatomy, Orange Is the New Black, Speechless, Switched at Birth and many more.

The creation of this partnership would not have been possible without the financial support of The California Endowment. “Visibility and representation matters,” said Jose L. Plaza, who manages the grant for The California Endowment. “We know that accurate and positive portrayals of diverse people with disabilities will not only empower and educate viewers and program creators but will ultimately lead to a more inclusive, responsive and healthier society.”

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Rockville, Maryland, April 12 – “Nine years ago this week.”

For Dana Marlowe and her staff at Accessibility Partners, those five words are cause for celebration. Over the past nine years, Accessibility Partners has advised clients big and small, in the government and in the private sector. The Kennedy Center, the U.S. Department of Labor, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Dell, Intel and LinkedIn all have turned to her team for advice on how to make their websites and software accessible to the one-in-five Americans with a disability. [continue reading…]

Rockville, Maryland, April 10 – In his third time speaking to RespectAbility’s National Leadership Fellows, Geoffrey Melada, Director of Communications for Hillel International and a former journalist and trial lawyer, said the key to building a successful brand is storytelling.

The same goes for companies as for individuals. Melada told the Fellows that everyone in the room had something in common: being brand ambassadors for RespectAbility and our interest in disability inclusion. [continue reading…]

Rockville, Maryland, March 20 – Aaron Dorfman, the President and CEO of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), visited RespectAbility to talk about integrity and transparency in philanthropy, its benefits, and how to make it diverse and inclusive. NCRP is a research and advocacy organization that makes sure grantmakers are responsive to the needs of those with less opportunity.

Dorfman speaks and writes on diversity, equity, inclusion philanthropy, accountability in the philanthropic sector and the benefits of advocating for community organizing. He has 15 years of experience as a community organizer, a BA in Political Science from Carleton College, and a MA in Philanthropic Studies from Indiana University. He is also a Board Member of The Center for Popular Democracy. [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, Calif., March 20 – As entertainment professionals across all platforms work to become more inclusive of minorities, RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization that fights stigma and advances opportunities for people with disabilities, announces the launch of “The Hollywood Disability Toolkit: The RespectAbility Guide to Inclusion in the Entertainment Industry.” The toolkit, which is available online for free, offers Hollywood professionals the facts and sources they need to get disability inclusion right.

A first of its kind primer for entertainment professionals, it covers a wide array of key issues all in one easy to read place. A Disability FAQ covers topics from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the definition of a disability to concrete steps to ensure inclusivity and sample inclusion language. The FAQ also covers resources for hiring employees with disabilities and tax and other incentives that employers have to hire people with disabilities.

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Washington, D.C., March 19, 2018 – The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation joined a small cadre of exceptional champions for inclusion and equality by awarding $145 million in grants to groundbreaking projects that will include people with disabilities equally in their work. MacArthur’s initiative, 100&Change, asked grant applicants – no matter their sector or project goals – to review a series of questions and a check list to ensure the inclusion of people with disabilities in multiple aspects of the grant recipients’ proposed projects. Never before has a grant program anywhere near this size asked grantees to address how they plan to ensure access to benefits for persons with disabilities.

The Rice 360° Institute for Global Health (Rice University) received $15 million to prevent newborn babies in Africa from dying. Indeed, every year, 1.1 million newborns die in Africa alone, mostly from preventable causes — pre-term birth, complications of labor and delivery, and infections. The grant from MacArthur will enable Rice and their partners to providing quality, comprehensive hospital care during birth, labor, and the first weeks of life with a goal of reducing newborn deaths in certain areas by 75 percent.

RespectAbility had the opportunity to ask the winners of the grants about how they ensured their project will include people with disabilities as equals. Professor Maria Oden, a Professor in the Practice of Engineering in the Department of Bioengineering at Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering and Director of the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen at Rice University and co-director of Rice 360°: Institute for Global Health, gave us her insights: [continue reading…]

Rockville, Maryland, March 16 – In a presentation to RespectAbility staff and Fellows, Michael Murray spoke about the world of disabilities, employment opportunities and overcoming stigma as a person with a disability. Murray is the Director of the Employer Policy Team at the Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy. He happens to have more than one disability and is passionate about advancing opportunities for people with disabilities joining the workforce.

Murray shared his experiences growing up with dyslexia as a child. He eventually learned to read and write thanks to his own dad. He spoke about how he saw his disability as a positive factor and his motivation to strive for success as a person living with a disability. His dad, who also had a disability, was very encouraging growing up. His father inspired him and served as a great role model; he was very accepting and loving toward him. He encouraged Michael to run because he knew that’s what he loved. Even though his had chronic fatigue syndrome, he joined Murray on his first 5k race. [continue reading…]

Oksana Masters reacts to winning the women’s sitting cross-country 1.1-kilometer sprint at the Paralympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 on March 14, 2018 in PyeongChang, South Korea.Washington, D.C., March 15 – Oksana Masters won a long-awaited Paralympic gold medal yesterday in a thrilling day of action that saw Team USA win three medals in the cross-country sprint. Masters, who already owned five Paralympic medals (two silver and three bronze) in rowing and Nordic skiing, grabbed the title of Paralympic champion for the first time in her career.

But Masters’ life did not start out easily. Like more than 3 million other children with disabilities around the world, she had been abandoned to an orphanage. Indeed, more than 80 percent of the more than 8 million children living in orphanages around the world have a living parent who would prefer to care for their child if they had the resources to do so. Children with disabilities are often placed in orphanages because of stigmas, poverty and their families’ inability to access basic services such as education or specialized assistance for children with disabilities. Research demonstrates that residential care has a negative impact on children’s cognitive, physical, emotional, and intellectual development. In addition, well-meaning people donate millions of dollars to orphanages, while funds spent on orphanages could support integration of ten times as many children into families and achieve better results.

Thankfully for Masters, she found a “forever family” in the United States who adopted and believed in her. Now, thanks to a major investment by the MacArthur Foundation, many other children with disabilities and others at orphanages around the world will also have a chance to have a permanent family and home. That is because the MacArthur Foundation joining a wave of enlightened philanthropists by asking finalists for its major 100-million-dollar challenge to include people with disabilities in their work. Their initiative, “100&Change,” is a competition for a $100 million grant to fund a single proposal that promises real and measurable progress in solving a critical problem of our time. Never before has a grant anywhere near this size asked grantees to address how they plan to assure access to benefits for persons with disabilities. [continue reading…]