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#ADA30 Summit 2020

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi is the President of RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities for people with disabilities. She regularly works with disability organizations, national, state and local policy leaders, workforce development professionals, media, employers, philanthropists, celebrities and faith-based organizations in order to expand opportunities for people with disabilities. Mizrahi has submitted testimony on employment for people with disabilities in all fifty states and at the Federal level. [continue reading…]

Ensuring that your event is accessible is important to more people than you might expect:

• Twenty percent of people in the U.S. are Deaf/Hard of Hearing; that is 48 million Americans.
• More than 1 million people in the U.S. are blind and more than 12 million have low vision.
• More than 5 million people in the U.S. are English language learners.
• While not everyone knows they have one, it is likely that more than 40 million Americans have a learning disability.

The good news is that it is easy to make online events accessible to everyone if you know how. The earlier you start, the easier it will be. This toolkit has some steps you should take before, during, and after your event to ensure it is as accessible as possible for all people.

Download the accessible Word document or view each section of the toolkit by following the links below:

• Before the Event
  • Creating and Sending Invitations
  • Ensuring Accessible Documents
• During the Event
  • Ensuring Everyone Can Participate Including Those Who are Blind, Have Cognitive Disabilities and/or are Nonverbal
  • Live Captioning
  • ASL Interpreters
• After the Event
  • Ensuring Accessible Videos for Websites and Social Media

Want to learn more?

To ask a question or suggest a resource, contact Eric Ascher, Senior Communications Associate, at EricA@RespectAbility.org.

More Resources You Can Use

• Webinars
• Disability Training and Speakers Bureau
• African Americans
• Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
• COVID-19
• Education
• Employers
• Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline
• Entertainment Professionals
• Faith Inclusion
• Fighting Racism and Unconscious Bias
• Hispanic and Latinx
• Inclusive Philanthropy
• Job Seekers
• LGBTQ+
• Policy Makers
• Sex Education
• Spinal Cord Injuries
• Statistics
• Veterans
• Women

During the 49-day `Counting of the Omer,’ we traditionally retrace our ancestors’ seven-week spiritual journey from Exodus to Sinai each evening. Typically together, we count the days until the 50th day, Shavuot, when we commemorate and joyfully celebrate the Giving of the Torah at Sinai. This year, however, in a manner unprecedented in a century, we are additionally ‘counting days’ in a most precarious, daunting, and totally unfamiliar manner.  As we hold our dear families close to our hearts and close in our homes we count the days – yet without any tangible, identified end to the nightmare of this cruel and excruciating pandemic.

For how many days…or months will we be counting until we return to joyous and fulfilling lives of inclusion within the fabric of our Jewish communities?  And even when we gradually do cease counting the horrid days of the past and begin a gradual return to a semblance of normalcy,  we will forever be counting the losses of beloved family members, friends, colleagues, synagogue congregants and neighbors of all ages, and cherishing the lives lost among the heroic frontline workers, both familiar and unfamiliar. [continue reading…]

Washington, D.C., March 27 – President Trump signed into law today the $2 trillion-dollar emergency stimulus aimed at propping up the economy during the current crisis. This law is unprecedented in its scope and is meant to help our nation respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even now, government agencies are going to work to implement the new law.

Millions of Americans living with disabilities are wondering what this new law means for them and whether they will see any benefit. The short answer is yes, but how far the law will go to help people with disabilities who are uniquely at-risk to the impact of the virus remains an open question. [continue reading…]

Washington, D.C., March 26 – Last night Senate leaders voted unanimously to move forward on the $2 trillion-dollar emergency stimulus bill meant to help our nation respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill, originally called the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), now goes to the House of Representatives for a vote. If passed, then it will go to the President’s desk to become law.

You can read more about the bill on the Senate Appropriations Committee website HERE.

However, what does this mean for the millions of Americans living with disabilities? What provisions will specifically impact or help the disability community? What help is there for actual people with disabilities who are uniquely at-risk to the impact of the virus?

RespectAbility and a host of other disability advocacy organizations have been working around the clock to answer these questions for the past several days. Those that lobby have been fighting hard to include key provisions into the law that will help the more than 56 million Americans with disabilities. [continue reading…]

Find a COVID-19 vaccine or booster:

COVID-19 vaccines are widely available across the country. Search vaccines.gov, text your ZIP code to 438829, or call 1-800-232-0233 to find locations near you. More information on COVID vaccines for people with disabilities can be found here.

CDC offers clear information in easy to read formats, communications tools in a wide variety of languages, and entire toolkits in American Sign Language (ASL). [continue reading…]

Read the webinar transcript
Download the accessible PowerPoint
Watch the webinar on YouTube with open captions

Speakers:
Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, President, RespectAbility
Philip Kahn-Pauli, Policy and Practices Director, RespectAbility

[continue reading…]

As the country celebrates the contributions of African Americans during Black History Month, webhost La’Rina Carolina reflects upon her intersecting identities of being a being a deaf Black woman in the United States today, noting each of these three parts of her identities becomes a “barrier.”

“I am proud of being black and I love myself and my heritage,” Carolina said. “But driving while black is real and driving while deaf is even scarier. I don’t understand why, we aren’t treated equally.” [continue reading…]

However, only 29.7 percent of working-age African Americans with disabilities are employed

Washington, D.C. Feb. 25 – As we celebrate Black History Month, which takes place every February, RespectAbility recognizes the contributions made and the important presence of African Americans to the United States. It is important to note this includes more than 5.4 million African Americans living with a disability in the U.S., 3.2 million of whom are working-age African Americans with disabilities. Therefore, we would like to reflect on the realities and challenges that continue to shape the lives of African Americans with disabilities.

New statistics released by the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire show that the employment rate for African Americans with disabilities has continued to grow even as other part of the disability community have lost economic ground. In 2018, the disability employment rate of working-age African Americans with disabilities increased to 29.7 percent compared to 28.6 percent in 2017. While that is an improvement, it lags far behind the 74.4 percent of working-age African Americans without disabilities who have jobs. Indeed, national statistics show that only 37.6 percent of working age people with disabilities overall have jobs compared to 77.8 percent of working-age people without disabilities. Fully 32.3 percent of African Americans with disabilities live in poverty, compared to just 22.4 percent of African Americans without disabilities. [continue reading…]