Los Angeles, California, Sept. 17 – A new film recently premiered on Netflix that is very intentional about meaningful representation and authentic casting. All Together Now features Anthony Jacques, who is on the Autism spectrum and Gerald Isaac Waters, who uses a wheelchair. Both Jacques and Waters’ characters are multi-dimensional and not defined by their disabilities.

“As an actor with a disability, we get a lot of roles where the role itself is involved with the disability,” said Waters, who plays Chad, and uses a wheelchair on screen and in real life for mobility. “To have one come by where he just so happened to be in the chair, I thought that was really great. It’s really important to see we can do any role and it doesn’t have to be completely circled around our disability.”

Waters’ character Chad is part of the lead character Amber Appleton (Auli’i Cravalho)’s group of friends. Cravalho herself has publicly talked about seeing mental health professionals. The film also portrays the topics of mental health, alcoholism and experiencing homelessness, as Amber and her mother find themselves living in a school bus. Nearly 4.2 million youths and young adults experience homelessness each year but it is not often portrayed in family and teen content. [continue reading…]

Taken from RespectAbility’s “Opening Your Virtual Gates” High Holiday Toolkit

Providing Accessibility Before the Event: On your organization’s sign-up form, ask registrants if they need any accommodations to effectively participate in the event. Additionally, provide a name, Email, and phone number for someone who can assist people with accommodation requests.

Providing Documents to Attendees Prior to the Event: If you are using any documents or a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation for your online event, distribute it to your attendees in advance. This includes online Siddurim or Machzorim, or source sheets for sermons or discussions. [continue reading…]

Washington, D.C., Sept. 14 – With 50 days left until Election Day and with many voters deciding to vote early, candidates across the political spectrum are reaching out to a previously ignored block of voters: people with disabilities.

Polling conducted earlier this year showed that more than half of the electorate in the battleground (59 percent) self-identifies as having a disability (16 percent), having a family member with a disability (32 percent) or having a close friend with a disability (11 percent).

According to Rutgers University, 14.3 million citizens with disabilities voted in 2018. Those voters will be crucial as both Democrats and Republicans vie for votes this year. In response to this opportunity, campaigns and candidates across the country are going on the record about their policies and plans to help Americans with disabilities. Those plans are being documented online by RespectAbility, a national nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities so people with disabilities can fully participate in all aspects of community.

RespectAbility is a non-partisan group and have been thorough in reaching out to Democratic and Republican candidates equally. The team at RespectAbility is still actively soliciting responses to their questionnaire from campaigns that have not yet done so.

RespectAbility has been actively engaging with campaigns to both educate them about disability issues and to get campaigns to complete RespectAbility’s 2020 Disability Voter Questionnaire.  You can find full, detailed converge online at https://therespectabilityreport.org. [continue reading…]

I write you today with a story and a request. It was a year ago this week on the Jewish calendar that RespectAbility decided it was time for me to move from Boston to Los Angeles to take the reins of our Los Angeles-based Jewish projects. Los Angeles (and everywhere else) has a shortage of accessible rental units, and finding one is quite a process. Hence I began my search for accessible, extended-stay hotels and other stopgap efforts, and put out word to our Jewish allies in LA that I was looking for a place to stay with a roll-in shower – a necessary accessibility feature for me.

I promptly heard from the spirited singer/songwriter/music producer and community builder Craig Taubman, whose amazing work at the Pico Union Project is worth checking out. He said that he might have friends who fit the bill. It was thus that I met the lovely couple with whom I would live for the next three months until finding my permanent home in LA. They are truly wonderful, and no doubt would have extended this hospitality just because of their generous spirit, as they had done for previous itinerant Jews. But there was something else. Their accessible shower had been built for a beloved family member who had since passed on. They confided in me their joy, and the joy that they felt she would have had, knowing that this investment in accessibility was providing access for someone else, years later. [continue reading…]

Initiative Highlights Importance of Behind the Camera and Development of Talent Pipeline

RespectAbility congratulates The Academy for their diversity and inclusion initiative. This has the potential to bring about some real change in the entertainment industry. We are especially pleased to see people with disabilities included, as too often disability is not included in diversity conversations.

It is important, however, to ensure that the narrative is good. It’s not enough to just be included – we have to be included in an authentic way. And by having one its categories focus on behind the camera roles, this initiative has an opportunity to prevent this – by truly hiring people with disabilities behind the camera in an inclusive way. This presents a huge opportunity to tell diverse, complex stories of the disability experience, and avoid falling into the trap of inspiration porn, which assumes that anyone with a disability must have it so much worse, and uses people with disabilities to make nondisabled people feel good about themselves or to make them do something, like exercise.
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Authentic Portrayal of Deaf Chimpanzee Sibling Throughout Entire Series

Los Angeles, California, Sept. 8 – The lovable foursome Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, Melman the Giraffe and Gloria the Hippo return to our screens once again in Madagascar: A Little Wild, this time as kids residing in their rescue habitat at the Central Park Zoo. Two additional characters in this series, Dave and Pickles, however, deserve attention. Chimpanzee siblings Dave and Pickles are breaking barriers and are part of a movement changing the landscape of disability representation in children’s television and streaming content. [continue reading…]

There are more than 22 million working-age people with disabilities in America, and today fewer than 1 in 3 has a job. Learn from top experts who are enabling employers to thrive by bringing in the talents of people with disabilities. 

Washington, D.C. Sept. 6 – This Labor Day, it is important to look beyond the headlines and the current economic crisis, and see where there is hope for the future. Yes, people with disabilities have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, across the country, there are professionals in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors dedicated to finding solutions and making the future of work better for the 22 million working-age Americans living with a disability.

Some of those leaders spoke earlier this summer during RespectAbility’s ADA30 virtual summit. On Thursday, July 30, leaders from across the economic and political spectrum gathered to discuss strategies, emerging practices and advancing inclusion for workers with disabilities.

This Labor Day, the RespectAbility invites you to learn from this insightful commentary and conversation brought forward by those leaders. The conversation that RespectAbility hosted that day reflects critical lessons that employers, large or small, as well as people with disabilities need to learn. With the annual celebration of Labor Day, now is a good chance for decision-makers to reflect on what advancing opportunities for people with disabilities really means.  [continue reading…]

Michelle Friedman, vice chair of the board of Keshet and on Keshet’s board of governance and development committees

As a woman who grew up in a strongly identified observant family, attended Jewish day school and camp, and had a bubby who devoted herself to Jewish organizations, the obligation of tikkun olam, chesed and serving the community were engrained since childhood. So, when I left my career to be a stay-at-home mother in the mid 80’s, I sought an opportunity to serve. I became involved in my synagogue and children’s school, and eventually a friend invited me to serve on the board of Shalva, which provides service to Jewish victims of domestic violence in the Chicago area. (Not to be confused with Shalva, the Israel Association for the Care and Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities.)

This began my 32-year career as a professional volunteer, which I am proud to say has included service on nine nonprofit boards, eight of which are in the Chicago Jewish community. I am even prouder that every one of those organizations sought my leadership and saw my capability, even after I became blind 28 years ago.

They did not focus on my blindness, but focused on my value as a board member, and reaped the benefits. I have served as fundraising chair on six boards, and as Board President of three – soon to be four.  

This means that I have attended countless meetings, conferences and seminars, and I always seem to be the only person at the table with a disclosed disability. As I have become more knowledgeable about board governance best practices, and as our boards have become more professional, strategic, and intentional, I noticed that the conversation about board diversity has never included the disabled community. [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, California, Sept. 3 – With one-in-five people having a disability in the U.S. today, the lack of representation – just 3.1 percent on screen and even less in children’s television (less than one percent) – means that millions of people are unable to see themselves in media today. DreamWorks Animation and voice actress Cassidy Huff, who has Conradi-Hunermann syndrome, is helping to change this statistic.

“The reality is, the disability community is facing extreme underrepresentation in this industry and it’s time to change that,” Huff said in an interview with RespectAbility. “In order for disability to be normalized in society, we have to start by introducing it to the youngest ones in this generation and letting them ask questions!”

Spirit Riding Free: Riding Academy’s Season 2 premiere introduces a new character who uses a wheelchair and voiced by Huff, a part-time wheelchair user. While Huff has a variety of disabilities, she does not want to be defined by them.

“I’d like to just be an actress without a label,” she said. “I want to be able to work in an industry where disability isn’t the only thing people see about me or the characters I portray.”

This animated series features Lucky and her horse Spirit while she embarks on adventures with her friends while living and learning at the prestigious Palomino Bluffs Riding Academy. In the Season 2 premiere, Lucky gets a run for her money when she meets a new addition to the academy: Eleanor, a horseback rider who uses a wheelchair. I had the pleasure of talking with Huff, the actress behind the voice of Eleanor, about playing this role.

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