Los Angeles, Calif., March 20 – As entertainment professionals across all platforms work to become more inclusive of minorities, RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization that fights stigma and advances opportunities for people with disabilities, announces the launch of “The Hollywood Disability Toolkit: The RespectAbility Guide to Inclusion in the Entertainment Industry.” The toolkit, which is available online for free, offers Hollywood professionals the facts and sources they need to get disability inclusion right.

A first of its kind primer for entertainment professionals, it covers a wide array of key issues all in one easy to read place. A Disability FAQ covers topics from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the definition of a disability to concrete steps to ensure inclusivity and sample inclusion language. The FAQ also covers resources for hiring employees with disabilities and tax and other incentives that employers have to hire people with disabilities.

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Washington, D.C., March 19, 2018 – The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation joined a small cadre of exceptional champions for inclusion and equality by awarding $145 million in grants to groundbreaking projects that will include people with disabilities equally in their work. MacArthur’s initiative, 100&Change, asked grant applicants – no matter their sector or project goals – to review a series of questions and a check list to ensure the inclusion of people with disabilities in multiple aspects of the grant recipients’ proposed projects. Never before has a grant program anywhere near this size asked grantees to address how they plan to ensure access to benefits for persons with disabilities.

The Rice 360° Institute for Global Health (Rice University) received $15 million to prevent newborn babies in Africa from dying. Indeed, every year, 1.1 million newborns die in Africa alone, mostly from preventable causes — pre-term birth, complications of labor and delivery, and infections. The grant from MacArthur will enable Rice and their partners to providing quality, comprehensive hospital care during birth, labor, and the first weeks of life with a goal of reducing newborn deaths in certain areas by 75 percent.

RespectAbility had the opportunity to ask the winners of the grants about how they ensured their project will include people with disabilities as equals. Professor Maria Oden, a Professor in the Practice of Engineering in the Department of Bioengineering at Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering and Director of the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen at Rice University and co-director of Rice 360°: Institute for Global Health, gave us her insights: [continue reading…]

Rockville, Maryland, March 16 – In a presentation to RespectAbility staff and Fellows, Michael Murray spoke about the world of disabilities, employment opportunities and overcoming stigma as a person with a disability. Murray is the Director of the Employer Policy Team at the Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy. He happens to have more than one disability and is passionate about advancing opportunities for people with disabilities joining the workforce.

Murray shared his experiences growing up with dyslexia as a child. He eventually learned to read and write thanks to his own dad. He spoke about how he saw his disability as a positive factor and his motivation to strive for success as a person living with a disability. His dad, who also had a disability, was very encouraging growing up. His father inspired him and served as a great role model; he was very accepting and loving toward him. He encouraged Michael to run because he knew that’s what he loved. Even though his had chronic fatigue syndrome, he joined Murray on his first 5k race. [continue reading…]

Oksana Masters reacts to winning the women’s sitting cross-country 1.1-kilometer sprint at the Paralympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 on March 14, 2018 in PyeongChang, South Korea.Washington, D.C., March 15 – Oksana Masters won a long-awaited Paralympic gold medal yesterday in a thrilling day of action that saw Team USA win three medals in the cross-country sprint. Masters, who already owned five Paralympic medals (two silver and three bronze) in rowing and Nordic skiing, grabbed the title of Paralympic champion for the first time in her career.

But Masters’ life did not start out easily. Like more than 3 million other children with disabilities around the world, she had been abandoned to an orphanage. Indeed, more than 80 percent of the more than 8 million children living in orphanages around the world have a living parent who would prefer to care for their child if they had the resources to do so. Children with disabilities are often placed in orphanages because of stigmas, poverty and their families’ inability to access basic services such as education or specialized assistance for children with disabilities. Research demonstrates that residential care has a negative impact on children’s cognitive, physical, emotional, and intellectual development. In addition, well-meaning people donate millions of dollars to orphanages, while funds spent on orphanages could support integration of ten times as many children into families and achieve better results.

Thankfully for Masters, she found a “forever family” in the United States who adopted and believed in her. Now, thanks to a major investment by the MacArthur Foundation, many other children with disabilities and others at orphanages around the world will also have a chance to have a permanent family and home. That is because the MacArthur Foundation joining a wave of enlightened philanthropists by asking finalists for its major 100-million-dollar challenge to include people with disabilities in their work. Their initiative, “100&Change,” is a competition for a $100 million grant to fund a single proposal that promises real and measurable progress in solving a critical problem of our time. Never before has a grant anywhere near this size asked grantees to address how they plan to assure access to benefits for persons with disabilities. [continue reading…]

Rockville, Maryland, March 13 – This week, the Fellows of RespectAbility’s National Leadership Program had the privilege to listen to Rodney Hood speak about corporate philanthropy and the inclusion of people with disabilities in the workplace. Hood is a Corporate Responsibility Manager for JPMorgan Chase and is responsible for finding nonprofit organizations that do good in the world to fund their organization or specific programming or enlist experts from JP Morgan to work pro bono for them. His job is difficult because the organizations must match the mission of JPMorgan Chase and be effective in advancing inclusion of people with disabilities; the number of applicants is large. As difficult as his job may be, he is passionate about his work. He gets to help causes he personally believes in, which allows his work to be intrinsically rewarding. [continue reading…]

• Best Actress in a Leading Role makes call for more inclusion.
• Authentic representation of disability wins Best Live Action Short.
• Best Picture Winner goes to film with actor playing a disability she doesn’t have.
• Diversity and inclusion segment omits people with disabilities.

Los Angeles, Calif., March 5 – In a historic call for more information, Academy Award winner Frances McDormand called for an inclusion rider in contracts – a provision that ensures diversity and inclusion in not only the cast of a Hollywood project, but also the crew. The result can lead to a Hollywood A-lister ensuring gender, racial, LGBTQ and disability equality via his or her contracts.

“For those of you asking about the #InclusionRider, it’s designed to ensure equitable hiring in supportive roles for women, POC [people of color], the LGBT community, & people w/disabilities,” the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative tweeted. Stacy Smith, its Founder and Director, previously talked about this concept during a 2016 TED Talk.

An inclusion rider “has always been available to all – everybody who does a negotiation on a film – which means you can ask for or demand at least 50 percent diversity in not only the casting but the crew.” McDormand, who won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role, told The Hollywood Reporter backstage after the Oscars. “The fact that I just learned that after 35 years in the film business – we aren’t going back.”

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Long Beach, California, Feb. 22 – Los californianos con discapacidades son dramáticamente menos propensos a encontrar empleo en comparación con la población en general. Recientemente se publicó el Compendio de Estadísticas sobre Discapacidades realizado por La Universidad New Hampshire. El compendio revela una brecha de 40 puntos porcentuales en las perspectivas que existen entre las personas con y sin discapacidades. A pesar de la exitosa economía de Golden State, la cual incluye la tasa de empleo más baja en más de 40 años. Tan solo 707,791 o el 34.8% de los californianos con discapacidades tienen un empleo. Por otro lado, el 74.4% de personas sin discapacidades tienen un empleo.

Según RespectAbility, una organización nacional que lucha contra los estigmas y genera oportunidades de avances para las personas con discapacidad, California ocupa el puesto 34 en puestos de trabajo para personas con discapacidades. Incluso estados con economías más pequeñas como Minnesota y las Dakotas están en puestos más altos que California.  Las estadísticas son decepcionantes ya que la tasa de desempleo de California en diciembre fue de 4.3%, la más baja vista en la historia desde 1976.

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Rockville, Maryland, Feb. 27 – This week, RespectAbility invited Elaine Katz to come to speak to the National Leadership Fellows. Katz talked about how she got to her current position and what makes a good grant application; the most important piece of information she shared was about transparency in philanthropy. More and more foundations are going in the “dark” about their process and who they are giving their money to. As we approach a “dark” era of philanthropy, understanding the benefits of transparency and best practices becomes more important than ever. Most importantly, Katz exhibited personal transparency about her career trajectory and explained the Kessler Foundation’s view of transparency in the relationship between the grant maker and grant seeker. [continue reading…]

Muhammad Ali was known to many as a champion boxer and a man who fought for racial and social justice his entire life. He acquired Parkinson’s at age 42 and became a role model for people with physical disabilities. What many may not know, however, is that Ali also had dyslexia.

“As a high school student, many of my teachers labeled me dumb…I knew who the real dummies were. I barely graduated…There was no way I was going to college—I never even thought about it. I could barely read my textbooks,” Ali has told others.

When Ali was growing up, teachers and researchers did not know much about dyslexia or how to help children who struggle with the disability. Ali was not aware of the fact that he had dyslexia, either, which led to a lack of confidence in his ability as a student.

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