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 May, we have achieved the following:

• Released a white paper on the intersectionality of the criminal justice system and people with disabilities at an event with stakeholders on Capitol Hill. The report – entitled Disability and Criminal Justice Reform: Keys to Success – as well as the recording of the event, is found here: http://respectabilityusa.com/new-report-shows-750000-people-with-disabilities-behind-bars/ 
• Identified and promoted best practices for inclusive employment to all 50 teams working on state unified and combined plans for implementation of WIOA. This summer, the federal government started 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, as well as effective ways to include people with disabilities (PwDs) in the workforce, 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. To see our suggestions please go here: http://respectabilityusa.com/resources/for-policy-makers
• 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 helping to champion A&E’s reality show Born this Way, which recently began its second season.
• 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. Candidates also answered our substantive questions about public policy in our candidate questionnaires. We hosted a summit on August 8^th on Capitol Hill about the importance of voters with disabilities, which was aired live on C-SPAN 2.

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!

Links:

• Check out our website!
• Check out our nonpartisan coverage of the presidential race!