Ensuring People with Disabilities to Have Equality

Dear friends,

I cannot thank you enough for your earlier support! Because you have invested in us, I’d like to update you on key progress on our employment and stigma-busting work – transformative work that YOU helped make possible. Keep in mind that solving the issues of stigma and employment is not an overnight project. Still, major foundations are being laid. Since last November, we have achieved the following:

• Identified and started to promote best practices for inclusive employment to all 50 teams working on state unified and combined plans for implementation of WIOA. In 2016, the federal government will start to distribute $17 billion a year through WIOA to all 50 states to increase employment and job training opportunities.^[1] By educating government and workforce personnel working on employment creation programs about the disability issue and effective ways to include PwDs in the workforce – particularly young people with disabilities (PwDs) transitioning into the workplace – we are dramatically limiting the extension of failed policies that have been so prevalent and so damaging during the past years and seeing them replaced with best practices.

• Identified companies that practice inclusive employment and promoted these examples and their bottom line benefits to other companies across America. Several national companies including EY, AT&T, and Comcast are recognizing the unique talents of PwDs and the benefits they bring to the table as employees. Our work through an online campaign #RespectTheAbility helps leverage market forces to increase well-paying employment opportunities for PwDs.

• Raised public awareness of the abilities of PwDs through earned and paid media and constant promotion of positive images and stories that counter negative stereotypes. Our work includes identification of messaging and images that change perceptions, publication of articles and op-eds in national and local newspapers by well-known thought-leaders, PSA’s and, most recently helping to create A&E’s reality show Born this Way, which was recently renewed for a second season as it now tops 1 million viewers a week.

• Reaching out on issues of voter access as well as directly to presidential candidates about jobs for PwDs. We have raised issues of accessibility in campaign websites, social media, ads, and live events. We have also spoken with 100 percent of the presidential candidates in a non-partisan way about these issues and covered their answers at www.TheRespectAbilityReport.org.

We are hard at work continuing and expanding these projects. However, it is worth noting that RespectAbility still is hampered by the fact that we are understaffed and under-resourced. We are eagerly reaching out to make new relationships with potential funders. We are deeply grateful for your earlier faith in our work. Please email JenniferM@RespectAbilityUSA.org with any questions or comments that you may have. Thanks for your investment in our work – and for the other amazing work you are doing on so many fronts!

^[1]https://www.doleta.gov/wioa/

Links:

• Check out our website!
• Check out our non-partisan coverage of the presidential race!
• Check out this piece about our presidential work!