Respectability

As an education and advocacy nonprofit, we seek to identify best practices that can and should be replicated so people with disabilities can be fully included in all aspects of community. We also work to build agency, reshape attitudes and change behavior so people with disabilities can thrive. Our intermediary goals are to convene and educate stakeholders, build alliances, collect and share compelling data, and disseminate best employment practices. Our long-term goal is to dismantle ableism and fuel systemic change to increase the number of people with disabilities working in the open job market at minimum wage and above. Rather than simply advocate for more benefits for people with disabilities, RespectAbility shows policy makers that most people with disabilities want to work and can be the best talent for many jobs: a win-win-win for people with disabilities, employers and taxpayers alike.

Since our founding, in 2013, RespectAbility’s advocacy work has included training for employers and nonprofit leaders, and nonpartisan outreach to campaigns on behalf of individuals with disabilities. For example, our nonpartisan election-year advocacy ensures that issues relevant to people with disabilities are part of the campaign conversation, and that we are all afforded equal opportunity to participate fully in the political process. We interview candidates and produce voting guides through www.VoteAbility.com. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we hosted webinars that have already attracted thousands. Our efforts have brought the needs of individuals with disabilities to the public via media on ABC, CNN, NBC, NPR and in TIME and Forbes.

RespectAbility annually trains and mentors adults ages 20 to 45 with disabilities for leadership track careers. The National Leadership & Apprenticeship Program is a Fellowship that annually trains and mentors young adults with disabilities for their first real careers in the competitive, integrated job market to create a talent pipeline of authentic and diverse self-advocates who have agency, impact and power. RespectAbility recruits, trains and empowers young leaders with disabilities and their allies from across the nation. Our Fellows not only go on to great careers but learn how to ensure accommodations for people with a variety of disabilities. Our leadership pipeline work stream also includes a program to train women with disabilities to be self-advocates and speakers in New York City.

In stigma reduction, RespectAbility has been working with Hollywood studios and networks since 2016 as consultants on scripts and disability inclusion and accessibility. In 2019, we began to address this issue in a new way, through a Lab training program similar to our National Leadership Program, to increase the number of people with disabilities hired behind the camera. An increase in people with disabilities behind-the-scenes will ensure characters with disabilities are written into scripts, actors with disabilities are hired, and authentic stories are told.

In advancing opportunities, RespectAbility has been tireless in advancing the opportunity agenda for people with disabilities by working in a nonpartisan manner at the federal, state and local level as well as working directly with leading private sector employers. We work with leaders at federal agencies to develop policies informed by best practices that will create more avenues for people with disabilities to enter the workforce.

We work in a nonpartisan way with candidates for public office and others to educate them on the importance of voters with disabilities and how to make their campaigns accessible to everyone. At the state level, we coordinate with fellow advocates to encourage states to learn from one-another and implement cost-effective programs.

Led by diverse people with disabilities, RespectAbility envisions a time when opportunities for individuals with disabilities are not constrained by the limitations of poverty, implicit bias and discrimination. RespectAbility works toward this future by inspiring change in our leaders, challenging assumptions through positive representations, and nourishing the seeds of systems change in minds of individuals with disabilities and ourselves. One practice to make this happen is that our entire staff and young leadership Fellows meet together every day, since mid-March of 2020, via Zoom. We are a very “flat” organization in that everyone is encouraged to bring forward their ideas, leadership and passion.

During the coronavirus crisis, through actively listening and organizing with people with disabilities, including through online town hall meetings, large-scale national polling and almost daily video conference sessions with groups ranging from one to three dozen individuals with disabilities, we benefit from diverse experiences and ideas so we can amplify many voices on the local, state and national stage. For example, as part of our coronavirus response, we have been using these approaches to learn how COVID-19 is affecting the lives of people with disabilities. It was through these town-hall meetings that we learned that millions of individuals with disabilities across the country were struggling with food insecurity in the face of the pandemic but could not use SNAP online. Today, thanks to collaboration between RespectAbility and our partner groups of advocates, 90 percent of SNAP recipients no longer must choose between catching a deadly virus or going hungry with the option of home food delivery. This helped 9.9 million people with disabilities have safe access to food.

Moving into the second phase of this crisis, RespectAbility will utilize our time-tested strategies to continue to fight for people with disabilities on the following fronts:
• Include people with disabilities in the new normal: As state and local governments grapple with the need to balance budgets, we must activate our networks to prevent individuals with disabilities and the programs they need from being forgotten in the economic recovery. We are beginning to leverage the credibility that we have built up with governors, legislators and countless officials at all levels to ensure that people with disabilities have a place at the decision-making table. We will be educating them on these important issues and enlisting them in the fight for our community.

• Prevent the 7 million students (the majority of whom are also people of color and/or immigrants) with individualized education plans and other disability-related learning needs from being lost in the shuffle: As some school districts around the country contemplate reopening, we do not know if or when it will be safe to return for students whose disabilities make them particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. Meanwhile, much of distance learning is inaccessible to students who are blind or Hard of Hearing. Distance learning also opens wide the digital divide for many students in diverse communities. Graduation rates for students with disabilities already were low before COVID-19. We will advocate with state and local jurisdictions, as well as private organizations, to protect these children and young adults from being left without high quality distance learning options.