- This is Steve Bartlett. I'm the Chairman of RespectAbility and ready to start off this webinar on developing and sharing ways to include more persons with disabilities in the operations of the nonprofit world. So I think we're live, is that right?

- [Jennifer] We are indeed.

- Okay. Well my name is Steve Bartlett. I first should say I'm from Texas so those of you who are Texas fans you can applaud now, but those of you who are not, we'll just move on to the next subject. I'm the chairman of an organization called RespectAbility here in Washington and we're involved in searching for ways and finding ways and putting into place ways to reduce stigmas and to increase employment opportunities for persons with disabilities. I've been involved in disability work for some 30 years, maybe longer, I was one of the sponsors and the authors of the Americans with Disabilities Act, but a variety of other legislation when I was in Congress. My goal in life has been in this area to promote independence for persons with disabilities and I think that's a lot of what we're going to be doing in the webinar. So we have about 300 I'm told, nonprofits on this call. The purpose of this call is to share some ways that we have found and developed to help nonprofits to provide additional inclusion, to include people with disabilities into their operations, but also in the services that they offer to their sources. We're joined with a number of sponsors, our webinar series sponsors. As I said we have 300 people on the call. This is going to be interactive. You'll have opportunities to ask questions and have them answered as we go. We're listing on the page right in front of you BoardSource, California Wellness, National Impact Funders, National Center of Disability Journalism and others. The partners that we have in this webinar. So from that point we want to go to the next slide, right? There you go. I don't know how to drive it, okay. So the thesis is here is that organizations, including non profits, are at their best when they welcome, respect, and include people of all backgrounds including people with disabilities. So to get us started I'm going to turn it over to the President and CEO of RespectAbility and the Founder in fact, Jennifer Mizrahi and she's going to kind of lead us through the seminar and simultaneously we will be taking your questions as you ask them. So Jennifer, it's all yours, thank you for being here.

- [Jennifer] Thank you Steve and thank you to all the people who have joined us today as Steve said, we have over 300 people from a variety of foundations, funders, and primarily front line non profit organizations who are with us today and I really want to introduce my co-presenter Tatiana Lee who is right next to me. I'm going to tee up the beginning of the conversation and then she is going to give you the 10 tips so I'm really, really, delighted as Steve said and by the way, our Chairman, he's very modest, but he is co author of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was passed close to 30 years ago, but we still have a really long way to go in terms of including people with disabilities. So the fact that you all are on this call with us is incredibly, incredibly important and so thank you again for joining us. As Steve said, my name is Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi. I myself am a person with disability. You can't see because I'm dyslexic and I have ADHD and most people with disabilities you might know when you first look at them and in fact many people are still quote, unquote in the closet and so I really want to tell you some more about who people with disabilities are. So here are some faces of some people with disabilities. I think that a lot of people think that with disabilities aren't talented, but in fact, some people with disabilities are indeed the most talented people in the world. You see some of them from Steven Hawking who unlocked the secrets of the universe from a wheelchair. Whoopi Goldberg who has dyslexia. You know all these different famous people that have disabilities. Disability is very, very common indeed. 61 million people in our country have a disability. 61 million people and people with disabilities want opportunities just like anyone else. Here's a picture of my colleague Tatiana. Really we have a large population in America, people with disabilities. One out of every four adults has a disability and disabilities can be temporary, because somebody might be in an accident or they might develop cancer and they're going through chemo or they can be visible like somebody who uses a wheelchair, like my colleague Tatiana or invisible like myself. And frankly the most common disability today is probably mental health, which is an incredibly important aspect of disability, mental health is as well as chronic pain. It can be something that you acquire from birth and if you acquire it at birth it's called a developmental disability or something that can be acquired later. Disability impacts everyone. When you see it on television, first of all as I said, one out of every four adults has a disability but when you actually look on television only 2% of characters on television have a disability and when it's shown on television it's almost always shown as a white cisgender heterosexual male as if people with all races or sexual orientations or identities, faiths or backgrounds don't have disability. So where you see the underlined words in blue here, those link to some of the heroes from different demographics whether it's African Americans with disabilities, Hispanics with disabilities, women with disabilities, LGBTQ individuals with disabilities. Disability impacts every community and there's a lot of intersectionality around the issues when people fight for example, racism and ableism together they have very, very big impacts and in fact if you look at who's incarcerated in America it tends to be people of color with disability who were in due to structural racism and how schools are funded often did not get that early disability diagnosis when they were in school. They didn't get the special educator that they needed and they wound up dropping out of school and entering that school to prison pipeline. Additionally just want to say that the people who are killed by the police tend to be people with disability who are people of color where the police doesn't know how to interact with them. So there's so many different issues that are intersectional as we deal with these issues, but one thing it's really, really important to understand is that pretty much everybody has a disability connection. It might be a family member who has autism or who's blind, has a significant learning disability. It might be a close friend. So it really impacts almost everybody in almost every community. It's a community, the disability community is one that people can join at any time due to accident, aging, or illness and it's a very, very innovative community because by definition people with a disability have a barrier to everyday living and in fact that's how it's defined is it's in a sensory, a physical, a cognitive, or other issue that is a barrier to everyday living and because people get used to working with those barriers what happens is that people with disabilities become particularly innovative. So it is important to recognize that. It's also important to recognize how many students in our public schools have disabilities. We're talking you know about millions and millions of children who are in our schools. 65% of students with disabilities finish high school and that only 7% complete college and what's important also is that 7%, which is very small, tends to be white students from two-parent families. There really is tremendous disadvantage for students of color and English language learners with disabilities because they're frequently in these under-resourced schools where people are seeing their disabilities, which are largely invisible, learning disabilities, attention deficit, mental health, etc. and not addressing them with early intervention and so these are the upstream ways of addressing homelessness and criminal justice is to really get a handle on some of these issues. And so the next slide is that one out of every three people with disabilities has a job, but 70% of people with disabilities want to be working and so that's really important to know that there are so many people with disabilities who want to have a job and don't and in fact there are eight million people with disabilities who are eager and ready to enter the workforce. By the way this is some of our young leadership fellows. We have a program for young leaders with disabilities who are very talented and many of them want careers in the nonprofit sector. So if you're ever looking to hire somebody who's really talented and also happens to have a disability please let us know as we have a 169 graduates of this program with a variety of different disabilities and all of them are talented. Now how do you know how many people with disabilities are in your area? How do you know what kinds of other data there is for your location? There's actually a one-stop shop, a website where you can find all of it and what's really interesting to me is the different outcomes for people with disabilities depending on where they live. So for example, in some states like the Dakotas in Montana for example and in the county of Montgomery County, which is the Washington suburbs, literally the majority of people with disabilities have a job. The majority of people with disabilities have a job, which is really a test proven case. that people with disabilities want to work and can work. However some states only 25% of people with disabilities have jobs and if you look at Los Angeles you have a situation where only 22% of adults with disabilities have a job in Los Angeles, which of course correlates very highly and not surprisingly with the very large number of people who are homeless. That when you don't have smart policies around cradle-to-career disability employment first policies in your area you wind up with this large number of people with disabilities who are in that school to prison pipeline or become homeless in many instances. And so looking at your data and understanding that data is very, very important and also something that's important is that problems are solved best by people who have experienced them firsthand and know solutions that work. And this is a faith organization. Many of you who are on the webinar with us may not realize that actually the Americans with Disabilities Act does not apply to faith-based organizations. Faith-based organizations are frequently places that are the least accessible to people with disabilities. So if you're looking for a free place to host an event generally you're going to do better at a public school or library and not in a faith-based organization, because a lot of times they think to get close to God you need to have a lot of extra steps and you need to go up towards God. So here you see where usually the service would be led from up those stairs, but because one of the people helping lead the service is a wheelchair user they've brought the podium down. So this is an instance where people with disabilities, they want to participate fully just like anyone else and they can bring to you solutions that will help you. One of the things that's so exciting also is that people with disabilities can be so very successful and help institutions. So for example, a for-profit company called Accenture just did a major, major study on organizations that hire and include people with disabilities. What did they find? Interestingly they found that for-profit companies that have a disability inclusion employment component to them that are hiring people with disabilities are more profitable than those who don't. And they also found that employees with disabilities are much more loyal to their employers and hence the turnover rate, not only for those employers, but actually there's even a spillover effect on their colleagues, that there's less turnover in companies. And that's really important because in today's organizations you see so much of the revolving door in organizations and if you want to be successful, having people that will stay and be loyal to you is very important and the disability employment and volunteers and board members is a key component of that. Just also say we did a recent national survey of voters. This is 2,000 registered voters. We found that 85% of voters find that it's important for presidential candidates to have campaign events and websites that are open and accessible to people with disabilities just like anyone else. And also we find that two-thirds of voters or almost two-thirds feel that education and employment for people with disabilities is an important voting issue. So let's go to the nonprofit sector. This is a major study of approximately a thousand people in the social sector. People working in foundations, people working in nonprofits. Stared with five focus groups, did in-depth one-on-one interviews, 969 people were involved in the study online and what did we find? What we found first of all is that 75% of the social sector, that's three-quarters of the organizations and individuals working in nonprofits and philanthropy never want to exclude people with disabilities. And that's really a great thing because the will is there, Listen, they wouldn't want to exclude people who are African-American, they wouldn't want to exclude other minority groups so like those other groups they don't want to exclude people with disabilities. But here's where the rubber meets the road. The will is there but the skill is not. They don't know what they don't know and hence this webinar series that so many of us together, so many nonprofits are working together on because we know that you want to include people with disabilities but you don't know how. So today for example, we see that 59% of nonprofit and philanthropy groups are ensuring that their events are physically accessible to people like Tatiana who use a wheelchair. But that means that 40% are not even trying to ensure that their public facing events are inclusive to people who might be a wheelchair user and that is a really big deal. The 40% aren't even trying to enable people like Tatiana to participate. Let's go down to the bottom where we see that only 14% are including captions on videos. Why is this important? Just like we have live captions on this particular webinar and we do on all of ours. Actually when you have a permanent video, it's super easy, just take your video and put it on YouTube and instantly and automatically it will put captions on for you for my favorite price which is free. And yet even though it's free, even though it's instant, only 14% of the nonprofit space is trying to do it and so what we'd like to see is that a 100% are and we see that in the middle around including people with disabilities as board members or volunteers and also making sure that your social media, a lot of these things are really cheap to do, really easy to do and so Tatiana is going to be giving you these 10 tips when we get to her in the presentation. She's going to give you the 10 tips, but she's also going to tell you which specialty webinars we have coming up because you probably have the right people in your office. You probably have someone on your team who's in charge of your events so that person should definitely be on the webinar for events for example. And so really seeing these numbers is pretty stunning, because I don't think there is any nonprofit organization that says hey, we don't want to be inclusive of people who are deaf or hard of hearing. And yet 38 million people, 38 million people just in America alone cannot consume your videos without captions and it's free an instant to make that happen for you. And additionally we see that lots of organizations are serving people with disabilities, but you don't have any people with disabilities on your staff or as volunteers or on your board or in your leadership. And so having people on your team is very important. Making sure if you're a funder that your grantees are a representative of different marginalized groups and this is a question we asked in the study, if they're asking if they're representative of the people they serve. We see that a lot of funders are not doing that yet. We do think it's a best practice, but even if they are doing that in many cases they're not asking about disability. In other words they ask, do you have people of color that are on your team? They're asking do you have women on your team? Do you have people from the LGBTQ community on your team? But they're not asking if there's anyone with a disability on their team or if they are including people with disabilities, if they're giving them any sort of accommodations if they request them so that they can fully participate just like anyone else. And so we also are looking at whether people are intentionally serving people with disabilities and including them. You can find all of this in terms of the study online, but showing people pictures of people with disabilities in your marketing is so, so important. So listen, my colleague Tatiana Lee, she's an amazing leader. She leads our work in Hollywood for a lot of the diversity work where she works with Lauren Appelbaum and others from our team. She's going to take it from here. So Tatiana let me turn it over so that you can give them specific tips on how they can do this right. And then afterwards we're going to take lots of questions and we're really excited to hear from you.

- [Tatiana] Thank you so much Jennifer. I'm so happy to be joining you guys today. Thank you for tuning in. So we're going to jump right into it. So adding the disability lens to your work and like Jennifer stated earlier,  we are very innovative and when you put the disability lens in the work that you're doing your outcome is going to be greater. And so since we live in a world that isn't adapted to us as someone specifically me as a wheelchair user, sometimes we think outside the box. And I'll just give you a brief example is my colleague Candace and I are both wheelchair users. Well her and I both know how to put both of our wheelchairs and ourselves in a Prius and sometimes when we pick a ride share people say well that's never going to work and then once we show them they say oh wow, that was so easy. So sometimes we know how, we'll not sometimes, all the time we know how to do the things to help us get around and so the first step is committing publicly to inclusion and that should come from the president and the board. So from the top down everyone has a clear commitment to including people with disabilities in the work that you are doing and that can be in so many different ways, whether it's a policy that is on your website, everything. Just as much as you include diversity and saying that you support LGBTQ, you support people of color, women. Include people with disabilities and a lot of time as people with disabilities we feel that we aren't going to be included, so really make a bold statement if you can to say that we welcome you because as people with disabilities when we find spaces that we are welcomed in we're more likely to stick with and stay with and grow with that because we finally have a space where we so we can bring our whole selves. When people with disabilities aren't at the table they're on the menu. And just to kind of explain what that means is when we don't have access to opportunities we are the most vulnerable. So not being able to get into a building or not having access to education or a job, those put us in positions to be more impoverished to end up in the school to prison pipeline like Jennifer stated earlier and the intersection of being an English language learner or a person of color with a disability is actually more likely. Someone can be in school and have ADHD and don't know how to soothe what they're dealing with and so they're banging on a desk then now they're put into detention and then suspended and then now they're in the school to prison pipeline and they're in this vicious cycle of being in prison and it's not their fault. They have a disability and they're not getting the support that they need. So if we have places where we can go to have an education, to get a job and work and live productive lives that's what we want to do. And so if you want to learn more about how to recruit, accommodate, and promote people with disabilities for paid employment, volunteer, leadership, and boards we have another great webinar December 4th. So if you have your HR department or anyone in leadership that want to know have them tune in for that next when we have that. So next it's fostering an inclusive environment. So I get a lot of questions. Some people ask me well how do I refer to you? Call me by my name. So it's really important to think of person first language. You wouldn't say disabled person or you would particularly say person with disabilities or their name. And have an accommodation policy, like I said have a policy that says you're including them and have a statement saying that when you are including us that this is what we need. Give us a free space to ask for what we need to be accommodated, because we know if you just ask us we can tell you what we need to be accommodated. So if you give us the open space to be able to say this is what we need then that takes a lot of pressure off of you and us and then we can go in there and really have a great interview and you can see what value we bring to the table. And make a conscious effort to seek out people who are not just the white person in the wheelchair, think of the Asian person whose deaf or the LatinX woman that is autistic or the black girl in the wheelchair or so many different people. Just don't think that disability is just white and that's all I'm going to hire. Think of people in all intersections, because actually when you have more of those intersections you do see the world differently and you have more layers of things to combat so we're even better problem solvers when someone has the intersection of disability and other minorities or marginalized communities. And for more information on How to Ensure a Welcoming Lexicon and Inclusive Storytelling, which is more language, come back December 11th. We have a great webinar on that that's coming up. We'll talk about first person, first language and so much more. And so some different things about person first language or words to not use is you would say someone uses or rides a wheelchair. You wouldn't say wheelchair bound or confined to a wheel chair or wheelchair person. I am not defined by my wheelchair. My wheelchair is just an extension of me and my wheelchair doesn't confine me, if anything it gives me freedom. It helps me to go about the world and do what I need to do. And if you never know exactly what to say to that person, just ask them. They will be able to tell you exactly what they need, what they're capable of doing, and how they want to be referred to, so when all fails, ask. Work with people with disabilities. So if you want to be able to recruit people with disabilities or you want to learn how to solve some of these problems, work with other organizations that include people with disabilities and helps you work through these issues. Like RespectAbility, we work on best practices for employers so that we can take a lot of the guesswork and make it a lot easier for you to be able to effectively hire talented people with disabilities so that they can go in and do what they are good at doing. And a couple other are TAPAbility, which they can help you source talent. Another great resource which I love referring this one is AskJan.org which they help solve problems with inclusive employment. You can actually type in a person's disability and they will give you accommodations that possibly may be needed for that person, but that's not the end-all be-all because everyone's accommodations is different. That's why it's really important to ask that person what accommodations do you need? Have an inclusive point person. This is really important. You can take a lot of pressure off of the president, off of people who have so many hats to wear. Have an inclusion point person who their sole job is to make sure when you have an event or you're working on hiring and you bringing in a whole bunch of talented people with disabilities to, I was getting ready to say audition them, but to interview them, have a point person that can be the conversation or the middle person between making sure that person with a disability has everything they need to do what they need to do and that it's a smooth transition. That makes everyone's life so much easier. Especially when it comes to events, that as well. Having accommodations for events, because we will show up if we know that you are making it accessible to include us we will show up and we will bring our whole selves. And make sure you have that inclusion statement to let us know that you are making a conscious effort to include us. And there's resources here, there's links. Yes, you guys will be able to get this PowerPoint, so be able to click on the links and any other further resources or information that you may need you will have access to all of this. And Ford's Push for Disability Rights, which should be a model for philanthropy. It was a great study that was done and Ford is doing such great work, so please read up on that. This is my favorite. Include people with disabilities in your market. Me growing up one of the reasons that I wanted to advocate so much is because I literally did not see myself represented when I see an advertisement. And that is not a great feeling and so we want to know that you are consciously including us so include us in the advertisement and do it in a very intentional way where you're not putting us off to the side. We are in the middle in the midst of everything that is going on whether it's an event that's going on, a meeting that's going on, or how you're advertising someone, a team being acknowledged. Have that person with a disability presented in those photos that way it really shows other people with disabilities that you are serious about including people with disabilities and are being very intentional. So we'll come back. We have another webinar on January 7, How to Ensure Accessible Websites, Social Media and Inclusive Photos and there's so much. We can show you how to do websites. Like Jennifer said, captioning and it's so easy, it's free. Like she said you can literally put your video on YouTube and it will give you free captioning. Sometimes you may have to go in and fix a couple little edits but it literally takes maybe 5 to 10 minutes and there you go. You have just opened up your social media content to millions of other people who are being left out of the good that you are doing. And we are going to have a webinar on that on January 9th so make sure you come back and stay tuned for that so people that are in their communications department, people who help with all the communication stuff have them come back and register for our webinar, so that they can learn about how to do captioning, how to think about inclusive photos, how to make all of your social media content accessible. You can put alt text and so much more alternative text and learn more about that when you come out for that webinar. And so ensure accessible office and events. So have a checklist of what needs to be accessible for your event. Are there ramps? Is there an elevator if there isn't a ramp? How is this person in a wheelchair going to get in? How's the person that is deaf going to consume the information? Do I have an interpreter? Do I have closed caption available? Things like that that are just very, very simple easy ways to include us and so we can consume the information and the good that you are doing and the work that you are doing. 

So yes, continue to think about those things and we have a whole bunch of great webinars coming up. Please have your communications team, your HR team, sign up for the respective webinars so that they can learn more about how to do the captioning, how to use alt text on your social media, and how to make your website accessible, how to make your events accessible and things like that. Please, we want to be your resource to help making that all happen. It's super easy, we can help you make it happen. So and also have okay, so then the last one is ADA Accessible Resource. The Community Trust, they have a really great resource. Like I said you're going to be able to get this PowerPoint so any of the links they're going to be clickable, you can check them out. There's so many great resources that we have and the last is if you already don't have people with disabilities that you're working with and you don't have them in your immediate environment, it's totally okay. Don't beat yourself up about it. It's a work in progress and it's baby steps and it's a journey, it really is a learning journey, so don't feel bad. But another thing you can do is use vendors and work with other organizations that do have people with disabilities. One of the organizations that we work with a lot is Sunflower Bakery. A really, really great organization is a bakery that literally hires people with intellectual disabilities. It is great, they are amazing. They run the whole business and learn how to be entrepreneurs and see what it's like to run a small business and so that's just one way that you can include people with disabilities if you don't have them in your immediate organization. So seek out other organizations and vendors that do include or hire people with disabilities. Promote a disability lens among your grantees. Like Jennifer stated earlier, have a meaningful inclusive policy and it's from the top up. What are we going to do--

- [Jennifer] So Tatiana that's an amazing list that you've given to people. I want to thank you for that list. I want to say to the people who are listening that you can do this and it's much easier than you think. A really great role model is the Ford Foundation because three, four years ago they did none of this. In fact, they had a major, major initiative on equity announced on a tweet that was not accessible meaning that people who are blind and use screen readers couldn't access it because it was not accessible. It then went to a video to explain how you apply and the video had no captions, which meant that anyone who was deaf or hard-of-hearing couldn't understand the information. But if you went to their building it was not accessible. So they were doing everything wrong and you know what we brought it to their attention as did others and they fixed all of it and they're a perfect, perfect case study. So there's lots of links here on how they did it and they've got an initiative for philanthropy, but what's important to know is that most of the things that Tatiana just talked about and the things you're going to learn about in the other webinars are free or very, very cheap. And so it's really all about intentionality and so the takeaway that we want to leave with you is that people with disabilities, they don't want to just benefit from the good that you're doing, because everyone who's listening pretty much is that a non-profit or a philanthropic organization, over 300 of you are on this webinar right now. They want to help you in their agenda. So whether you're working on issues around education or homelessness or poverty or you're working around the arts, criminal justice, you're working on climate issues, people with disabilities really want to help. I mean look at one of the great social justice warriors of today, it's Greta. This disability woman, this woman, excuse me with autism who's fighting on climate change. She's only 16 years old, she's very open about being part of the disability community and having autism. Think about the power and the strength that your organization can have when you enable people with disabilities to participate just like anyone else. So we have a toolkit on our website with lots of question and answers where you can put in information and look for the answers. [coughing] Excuse me. You can look at us on social media and follow us, but we have these as Tatiana said, we have many, many webinars coming up. So the next one is going to be on disability history, to learn the history of our movement, and then we have events so that's really, and if you have people in your organization that are event planners, you really want to have them on the event planning session for really including people with disabilities when as volunteers are on your board or for paid employment. You want to have your whole volunteer coordinator and HR team on that webinar. For your communications team and your speech writers, you really want them to learn about the welcoming lexicon and inclusive storytelling. For the people who work on your website, your social media or your photographs you really want to have them do that specific thing and then there's a more advanced one for people who work on social media to make sure that those captions are there for people who are deaf, to make sure that people who are blind can really have access to the work that you're doing. And then of course there's the HR and the legal issues, which is our final webinar. All these webinars are going to have PowerPoints. The PowerPoints are going to be online, the transcripts are going to be online. We really are here to be a resource to your organization. So now it's time for questions. I'm just going to go back to you have the schedule. So we're ready Tatiana and I to answer your questions. Thank you again for being with us today. So we're now going to go to the chat room where I'm hoping that you all are putting questions in for us. And so please let us know if you have any questions. So the first question is the slides, all the slides are going to be on our website. They are screen reader accessible that means that people who are blind can use them. You should also feel free to use those in your own information so that if you want to give presentations yourself you can borrow these PowerPoints for example. So yeah don't be embarrassed to ask any questions on anything and we're looking forward to your questions.

- [Tatiana] Yes.

- [Jennifer] Okay, so how do you create web content that is accessible for screen readers? So that actually we're going to have a whole section of that that I pointed to, we have two of them on accessible, the January 7th and the January 9th, but if you go to our website we already have some tutorials around that that are on our website that'll give some information. But I'll tell you some of the key stuff that you need to know about is that if you are posting a photo on Facebook or Twitter, you need to save the photo with the name of what it is that people are looking at. By the way Eric is sitting next to me. Eric is the guru of this in our office. He does all of it for us. He's really very talented at it. But let's say that you had a chart that said the economic growth is X and that chart was on. You would want to save that document to say what that is or if you're a foundation and you put a photo up that's really a graphic saying for more information of how to apply for the grant contact such-and-such, somebody who's blind, unless you saved the document with those words would never know that that's what it says and so that's discriminatory towards that person. One of the cool things that people don't realize is that off-the-shelf technology today, like let's say you have an iPhone or you have an Android phone. Off the shelf it automatically comes with accessibility tools. And so that somebody who is blind literally on their phone, what they can do is they can click on accessibility and their phone will talk to them through the website. So if you set up your social media or your website to be proper, they can consume everything on your website and everything in your Twitter. In fact people who are blind and people who are deaf are constantly on Twitter and on Facebook, but if you don't set up your stuff to be accessible they won't be able to consume it and so they won't be able to participate in the same way as other people, which means that you won't be able to benefit from having them involved in your organization.

- [Tatiana] So someone said, "What are suggested ways "we can encourage existing staff board members "and volunteers to self-identify as having a disability?" They don't consider ADHD, anxiety, or depression as such. So I think one thing that you can do is have them read what the definition of disability is under the Americans with Disabilities Act. It will literally say that a disability is something that impairs something in your everyday life and yes, ADHD, anxiety, depression is all of that. It is considered a non-visible disability and so I feel once they understand that there's no different correlation between ADHD and anxiety and a wheelchair user, besides the fact that you can see it and not see it, I think once they understand that they will be more open to being more inclusive of other people with disabilities. So I think that's the first step is really understanding and breaking down what disability is.

- [Jennifer] So there's a question, we had a young volunteer who was a wheelchair user who was straight out of college was applying to positions on our website, which that person did not have the qualifications. She was upset that we only offered phone operator jobs. What should we have done differently? Tatiana do you want to take that or you want me to take that?

- [Tatiana] I can take that because that is an experience I personally had myself. I don't have a full thorough college education and so because of lack of opportunity and discrimination I don't have the background or experience needed for a lot of jobs, but I think what you could have done differently is at least talk to her. Had an interview with her to see what she is capable of doing, you probably would have been very surprised. I don't even myself, haven't even finished college due to lack of access of education, but that doesn't mean that I can't be in a position to have a job to do what I can do and because I have learned about marketing, I have learned about branding, and I've learned about so many other things and I feel like even with my job at RespectAbility they have really fostered an environment where I can bring my whole self and bring what I do know and really support me in what I don't know. And so that's why I having an inclusion point person in HR also is really important because they can help you really do the team-building and the skill building that is need because a lot of times we just need help with getting professional development because we don't have that, we have that lack of access.

- [Jennifer] Please keep sending us questions.

- [Tatiana] Yes, someone said any thought about using differently-abled instead of disabled. I just had this conversation with someone. There is a law, the Americans with Disabilities Act, earlier you heard about Steve Bartlett he was one of the co-writers. That gives us civil rights to access. Under that law we have a right to be employed. We have a right to education and so once you don't use that word disabled you're no longer seen as a person with a disability so don't use that word. I mean, also there are people that do like it, so like I said ask them, but I personally like to be called a person with a disability because that word disability gives me civil rights and to have access. But then when you also say differently abled, you aren't acknowledging the accommodations I need to be included. You're not going to think about the fact that I need a ramp or the fact that someone who is deaf needs captioning or someone who is blind needs something that is screen reader accessible. So say disability so that, because of that they have a legal right to have accommodations. And then there was another question about language. So all of these questions are asking you can come back to our other webinar. We're going to dive deeper into so much of these, but one said, "What language should we stop using?" You should just have a regular, just posting whatever you're going to do, but like I said have that policy that says we do not discriminate against you for X, Y, Z. We don't discriminate because you're a person of color, we do not discriminate because your religion, your creed, and your disability. And I think when you have that policy down there that's saying let us know what accommodations you need. I think that's a really great point, asking people what accommodations do you need? Even from the door when you're ready to interview them. What accommodations do you need so that you can have a successful interview? I think that is a really huge step for you to really show that you're having an inclusive welcoming environment for that person with a disability.

- [Jennifer] So there were some questions around whether or not there are consultants that can help you and yes there are, there are lots of consultants, but actually you'd be amazed how much you can find for free either on our website or AskJan.org for example on how to do this and also we're available as sort of your one-stop shop for answering questions on these issues. But I think it's really important to be very intentional about showing people with disabilities in your marketing materials. Every single event that you have that you have an event application for you should let people know that they can request an accommodation and just put that at the bottom of the event.

- [Tatiana] Okay, as you can see we are having some technical difficulties, but thank you so much for being so patient with us. And yeah, so like she said there's so many different layers, but we are going to have continuous more webinars that are going to be a lot smoother in doing this and we're going to be able to answer all those questions. And I just put on here for anyone who is deaf or hard-of-hearing we will have this webinar available... Oh, yes, a lot of people battle with that term because you want to show that someone is capable, and you know there are a lot of stigmas around the word disability and we want to really shatter that notion that disability is meant a negative thing. If anything it's an empowering word to me. So I like that word and I think we need to get to a point where that word is okay and it's accepted and it's seen as something powerful and of strength and not something negative that you want to use differently abled or different abilities or something like that.

- [Jennifer] But this is we call it ATP, ask the person. If somebody has a disability and they prefer to use a different term, just use whatever term is comfortable to them. The term is usually a person first person with a disability, but some people like to use disabled persons so if they want to do something different it's their identity, you should respect what they do, so that's one of the things. Somebody also is asking how do we sign up for the other webinars? If we signed up for this one, does that mean we're signed up for the others? No, you actually had to click that you wanted to sign up for the others, so if you only signed up for one just go back to the website and sign up for the others where you can click on the other ones so that you can sign up for them. You need to also there's a lot of questions about what if somebody has a non visible disability like mental health. What you have to have is a very clear process and we have a whole session on HR issues and legal issues. There are a lot of legal issues frankly around this. What you want to do is have a clear process where people can request accommodations. For example, if somebody's disability issue is mental health, their accommodation may be for example, that they want to see their therapist every Wednesday afternoon and so you're going to give that person flex time so that they might come in early a few morning's a week and then they will leave early every Wednesday for example. Or maybe they have the ability if they have a more significant mental health issue or chronic pain issue for example, that if they need to work from home on days when they want to work from home that you let them work from home. It really is very helpful to the productivity of your team if you can be flexible to their individual needs. By the way there is also issues around parents of children with disabilities because children with disabilities, their parents have legal rights to meet with their teachers at something called an IEP, an individualized education plan. So your disability inclusion policy should not just be for your volunteers or your staff that has a disability, but if you're the parents of a child with a disability to enable that parent to take off work to attend, for example, their child's individualized education plan meeting with their teachers, which is very, very important. Now Kimberly is asking us, "What language should employers stop using in job postings "that may intentionally or unintentionally "exclude people with disabilities?" You would be surprised how many job openings talk about how you need to be able to lift 25 pounds. Have you ever seen that Tatiana?

- Yes.

- So many job listings say you need to be able to lift 25 pounds. Now Tatiana is not as a wheelchair user going to run around lifting 25 pounds in her job, but you know what they put this on jobs where it has nothing to do with what the job description is or what the job requires and so there's a tremendous number of jobs, there's a large number of jobs where it says that you absolutely must have a driver's license. But have they really thought through, well what if that person is blind? They don't have a driver's license. What if they have epilepsy? They don't have a driver's license if they have epilepsy. Why can't that person take the bus or the subway or Uber just like other people? So why are you saying unless it's the job of being a messenger person or being an Uber driver that you need to have a driver's license to do that job? So those are some really specific things that people do and in terms of collecting data on staff, there's a question about is it, somebody asked, "Can you really ask?" Well a lot of people do it anonymously and other people they sort of do it by what they think it is. There's a lot of privacy around disability. A lot of people, they do not self disclose. We say in the disability community is sort of where the LGBTQ community was 20 years ago, where people are still very much in the closet particularly around things like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, etc, and so people are often in the closet. And by the way somebody with a disability doesn't need to disclose all the details of their disability, they can just say to their HR person in confidence and it needs to be in confidence. This is not something that goes out on the list service for the entire staff to know. They talk to HR and they say hey, I have a disability issue and that means that I need to get off work on Wednesdays. What can we do to accommodate my disability needs? They don't need to say because I have bipolar disorder and I take six medications and this is what my specific need is, no. They just need to say I have a disability and on Wednesdays I need to leave early and so one of the things you can do is you can just showcase people on your team who have disabilities who are really value at it. I'm just going to give you an example that I really like. So I on television when I watch TV there are so many channels and so many options I never know what channel they want to watch, but I know what show I want to watch. so I have a remote control and on Comcast you can push a button just like on Siri and you can say turn to CNN or turn to NBC. You know who is responsible for that? That was invented by a guy named Tom who's a really talented engineer who works at Comcast and he happens to be blind. He happens to love to listen to sports, he loves to listen to the news, and he wanted to be able to find it and he could never find it because there's hundreds of channels. So Comcast has a blind engineer who invented the ability for anybody who wants to find what channel they want to be able to do it by talking to their remote control. Comcast has that because they have a blind employee who's an engineer and I think that organizations that lift up the successes to find people, catch them in the act of doing something good. Catch them in the act of being successful and make sure that they're lifted up just like anybody else when they do something that is successful. Yeah, so there's other questions. Tatiana, did you want to add on to that?

- [Tatiana] No, I didn't have anything to say on that. Someone said about can they ask about you lifting? No, but a lot of times if you go into an interview people have assumptions. So when you go into the interview, they've automatically X'd you out once they see that you do have a disability if it is visible. And someone asks the question is there a specific staffing number for a business? 1 to 10 employees you do not need to follow accommodations. It should be case-by-case. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act we have a right to reasonable accommodation. It's called reasonable accommodation. So the accommodations we need to be able to do our job effectively, so yes it should be handled case-by-case and that person has to disclose that they need the accommodations. But once you leave it to be a welcoming environment for that person to be able to disclose it makes it a lot easier for both parties and the work can be done and that person can bring their selves to the job and do the work that they are there to do. So I think that's what it is. It's you making a clear statement that I am being inclusive of you and giving that person permission to feel comfortable with disclosing their disability.

- [Jennifer] So there's a question about what are some examples of sort of some epic fails? Some nonprofit things that have made mistakes. So I'll start off and then Tatiana can maybe add on to this. So people with autism and people with sensory issues, they frequently have challenges with super bright lights or with really loud music. So a lot of different events nowadays though, they think well we're going to pump up the crowd when we're starting, so we're going to play really, really loud music, like that's like almost a parlor game that people play is what is your entrance music that the speaker comes in that they play a certain song really, really loud. Well a lot of people with sensory issues, they just can't take that super loud music so what they try and do if you're being inclusive is not to have super, super loud music or if there is super loud music to have a place where you can enjoy the content from perhaps a quieter place. So that's something that is often a case. If somebody has significant ADHD they may need to get up and walk around every now and then so just don't give people a hard time and wonder if they're misbehaving or not paying attention just because they're walking around because people who have ADHD sometimes walking around or fidgeting actually helps them focus and they're listening more intently when they're moving or they're rocking and so don't think that we need to punish people's behavior because they're rocking or because they're walking around for example. For you Tatiana what's it like when you go to an event? Sort of getting into the building and then once you're inside the building, what are some of the things that you've seen as barriers?

- [Tatiana] So getting inside the building usually is one. I have been to invited to numerous events where I literally could not get in the room. So being conscious of making sure the place is accessible. Other fails are when I get in there, the way tables are set up and chairs. It's hard to maneuver and my goal is to go there to network. If I can't maneuver through these tables and all these chairs and to you, you think it's pretty and it's nice and it's going to fit all these people, but to me it's a nightmare and it makes me feel like why am I even here? I can't even get to the other side of the room to even network with people. Or if you're providing lunch and you have those chafing trays and they're really up high I can't even see what I'm grabbing to eat and so therefore now I have to ask someone to help me and sometimes that, I don't want to do that, because I want to be independent and do it myself. So thinking about little things like that and also places that have carpet. It's a nightmare sometimes for people who are specifically manual wheelchair users. Rolling through carpet at an event, at a conference is so annoying sometimes. So thinking about conscious efforts to think about things like that and one of the things that I suggest people to do is find someone that you know that's a wheelchair user and have them do a roll through. I call them roll throughs, so that way you can literally have a person with a disability say well, this may not work or why don't you think about it this way and that way we have a totally different lens that we can help you accomplish that work.

- [Jennifer] Right, Nicole is saying that she just came from a diversity inclusive council and noticed that there aren't any people with disabilities unless they're invisible disabilities and they're not self disclosing on the diversity council and that most days people with disabilities are not included in most businesses or general events. And that is really, really true. If you are a nonprofit organization that works on issues for people who are homeless or people and who are involved in the justice system, the majority of the people that you're interfacing with do have disabilities. They may have a learning disability that caused them to be frustrated in school and then as we discussed before when they were frustrated, they did not get the early intervention that they needed, they wound up getting suspended or dropping out, so they lack literacy. Then they wound up perhaps with a criminal record or mental health condition and may have an addiction. So there are many, many different intersections that if you're working on criminal justice or homelessness with disability, even if it's an invisible disability, but there are 750,000 people in our country with disabilities that we know of that are incarcerated. That includes a 150,000 that are deaf, 150,000 that are blind, 200,000 with mobility impairments. So in America today we have really criminalized disability. So really particularly for people with disabilities who are people of color or immigrants, we really need to decriminalize disabilities so that's a really big issue and we need to remember that people with disabilities want to work, want to be successful, and a part of workforce agendas just like anyone else. So I'm looking for more questions, are there--

- [Tatiana] So here's one, I'll answer this. It says, "What if the person has a chronic disability "that didn't have a set time that they needed off?" I think that is something that you need to discuss with your HR point person. That's why it's great to have an inclusion committee or a point person or an HR point person that way that is a conversation that you and that person can have. And yes, the other question someone said, "If someone who falls under the umbrella of the ADA, "but they didn't put on their job application." You don't have to put it on your job application, you don't. You just tell them these are the accommodations I need and yes, if you didn't say it before, you can say it at this point. You say there are some things going on that I didn't anticipate. This is what I need, this is the accommodation I need. Can you work with me? And that's why again, it's important to have that HR point person or that inclusion committee because those are conversations that you can have with one another to help you really succeed in this job.

- [Jennifer] And disability, you can't ask in a job interview, do you have a disability? That actually is not something that you're supposed to do to ask them if you have a disability. What you can say is, do you have the skills and ability to do X? So if indeed you need something to be an Uber driver then you do want them to be able to have a driver's license for example, but you're not supposed to ask people in the interview process do you have a disability. And people with disabilities after they have that job off offer, after they've accepted, then it's up to them to say to their employer, "Hey, this is what I need for an accommodation." But really the best practice is for employers to have all those policies in their policy kit that they give to new employees so they have the form to fill out to request whatever. So Joann is asking, "Dietary disabilities are also an issue. "Besides being mobility challenged, "I also have celiac disease. "Sometimes there are gluten-free rolls available, "but they're on the same tray as the gluten bread. "Usually I skip eating at events, "because catering does not take the steps in the kitchen "to keep my food from being cross-contaminated." Tatiana, you want to take that?

- [Tatiana] Hey, ask for food accommodations. Tell them that is you know something you need. Can you make sure you have gluten-free options somewhere else on the other side? I mean there's no problem with asking that. Hey, for me to be here this is the food I need. Yes, ask for what you need and feel confident in it.

- [Jennifer] Yes and I will just say since we're wrapping up on our amount of time that if you want to make people really welcome because so many people are gluten-free and so many people are vegan or vegetarian that you should automatically have options and make those options very clearly identified on separate plates or separate serving trays always. Look, there's going to be great, great events coming up in the webinars. We're really at time and so I want to turn to the upcoming events and just say that I really, really hope that you will sign up and that you will share the word. We are going to put all of the training seminars up on the website, so after this you'll have all the captions, you'll have a transcript, you'll have the PowerPoint, but please do sign up for the other sessions because the only way to ask questions at the live things is to be at the live thing. So go ahead and sign up for the other sessions. You can see them on your screen now. The next one is Disability History. Then after that is How to Ensure Accessible Events and then How to Recruit and Accommodate and Promote People with Disabilities for Paid Employment, Volunteer Leadership, and Board Positions. And then the welcoming lexicon and the storytelling for your communications team and then your social media and website team has two of them just really for them. And then the HR and your legal team to be on the one on January 15. Our Chairman Steve Bartlett welcomed you at the beginning. Tatiana Lee is just amazing and she's happy just like I am to answer any questions that you have. I want to really round it out by thanking the different co-sponsoring organizations. Maybe we can bring them on the screen again. We have 18 organizations who really stepped up to the plate and said that they would share this information whether it was BoardSource at the beginning of the alphabet or the Weingart Foundation at the end of the alphabet. All of the groups in the middle really stepped up to help share this resource with their folks, but let me just say that we really want to get the word out so everybody who's on this webinar, first of all thank you so much for joining us. We think that's fabulous. We're here to support your success and please share the word with other people on your team or other teams that we are here for you. We want to be helpful to you and that your success is the success for all people with disabilities. So I want to thank all of you who are joining us. Yes, Tatiana's giving two thumbs up. I want to apologize for the technical difficulties that we had with the intermittent webinar stuff, but we'll get it fixed for the next one and thank you so much for joining. Have a wonderful, wonderful day.