The Latest: We are the Champions 🌟

👋 Welcome to the March 2023 issue of The Latest, which thinks “March Madness” describes much more than basketball right now. 🥴

This month’s newsletter is 742 words — about a 4-minute read. 

👉 The Main Takeaway: Champion a Meeting Mindset Shift

I recently had the opportunity to co-present at the Columbia University DEIJ Symposium, where it was great to see DEI spaces include disability. 

• My main takeaway from the experience was their eagerness to do meetings and events better — and how that must begin as a mindset shift. 

When planning a meeting, the default RSVP often says, “Let us know what your disability-related needs are.” That’s a lot of burden on the disabled person to make access happen.

Remember: Most people do not disclose their disability. Try this instead: 

• This event is… Describe the time, format, and resources. 

• We will have… List the accessibility options you will make standard.

• Then ask… What would help you participate fully?

This is welcoming and proactive, focused on equal participation, not on the disability category. 

Make accessibility transparent and intentional if it is a priority to you and your organization. Here are five more ways to do that with your events, conferences, and meetings: 

1. Focusing on diversity? Include disability. 

2. Showing a video? Include edited captions. 

3. Providing presentation guidelines? Include accessibility details and FAQs.

4. Forming a planning team? Include accessibility and disabled expertise. 

5. Inviting a keynote speaker? Include disabled and intersectional perspectives. 

Access for all!

📚 The Urgent Life 

I highly recommend a new addition to my bookshelf: The Urgent Life: My Story of Love, Loss, and Survival by Bozoma Saint John.

• It’s a deep dive into the complexity of relationships and how we are who we are.

🧐 What Is Your Relationship to Disability?  

That’s the question I asked in a recent poll of my LinkedIn followers as I seek to learn more about general perspectives on disability for the book I am writing. 

We each come to disability with a different lens. This poll was a reminder of how that contributes to our experience.

• A whopping 72% of the 85 respondents said that disability was part of their personal experience — a reflection of its overwhelming impact on our daily lives. 

“Part of my job” and “part of my family” were tied with 11% of the votes, and 7% selected “other” — with the unanimous comment that it was because “all of the above” was not an option! 

🌀 The Wrap-Up

🙏 Accessibility Champion: I am so honored to receive this recognition from UT Austin — especially because it came from a student nomination.

💡 The Data Mine: I’m also thrilled to be doing the evaluation and advising an innovative data analytics project at Purdue University that will include deaf students in their large-scale data learning community. The evaluation will be similar in many ways to our Collaborative for Access & Equity, with surveys, focus groups, and a report to show evidence, feature team spotlights, and tell the story of them and their grant. 

▶️ Press Play: I just posted a few short videos on my YouTube channel — Disability Tax and Grow Together — that are overviews of some popular concepts I’ve recently shared on LinkedIn. They are presented in ASL with voiceover and English captions. Check them out!

☕️ And Finally…

I was having a conversation with a wise woman. We were talking about time scarcity.

• It feels like there’s never enough time. 

We Americans are especially starved for quality time that is nourishing and restorative. Here’s what she shared: 

• Find the time between the time. 

Yes, we can block off those big chunks of dedicated time. If you’re like me, an hour once a week isn’t sustainable. Nor is it a week twice a year. I also need the little moments that make a day whole and not just exhausting. 

• How I found the time? A quick text to a friend after responding to an urgent email. An extra break outside to breathe deeply before doing laundry. A glass of water before diving into the next thing on the to-do list. 

Short rests make the hamster wheel seem less daunting.