May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again...
May the warm rays of sun fall upon your home,
And may the land of a friend always be near.
May green be the grass you walk on,
May blue be the skies above you,
May pure be the joys that surround you,
May true be the hearts that love you.
--
It has been a pleasure to work to start what I hope will remain and grow, a disability representation group that should grow into an affinity group.
I made three people admins of this group so that in my absence it's not left untouchable.
I didn't ask, I chose three responsible humans.
Ya'll can sort who would like to moderate etc.
--
The July "listening session" didn't make - now it is listed as an invitation only program at Annual. I still see no digital invitation for anyone here in this group. You'll have to find a way in if you want to participate.
From the agenda for annual:
Monday August 12:
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Disability Inclusion Listening Session (By Invitation)
No room or location
No indication of a way to participate remotely
https://annual.asaecenter.org/schedule.cfm
After three years of asking for usable captions at Annual (screens presented alongside the session content) - no matter what the quality of the captions, and having that reasonable request denied, our organization is done with our organizational membership. What would have been a "checkbook" auto-renew is over. Because providing a standard usable accommodation has been refused when our staff requires usable captions due to disabilities.
If you want to read the email communications with ASAE for several months trying to "get" and trying to "request" reasonable accommodations, I'll be happy to share that with you. You can contact me by email or LinkedIn.
I have no idea how the Deaf attendees from RID find the handheld device, no speaker names, no grammar, no punctuation "captioning" acceptable. But that's for them to address.
So, here's my challenge to ya'll going to Annual.
- Scan the QR code that Wordly will present on a poster outside the session rooms.
- Download the app and/or go to the URL they present where they will stream the spoken words.
- Look at your device to take in the information, see who said what, and use that as your only means of "engaging" in the content.
- I call this "The Bobblehead Effect" because you have to move your head up and down if you want to see the slides, see who is speaking, and back down at your device in your hand if you want to read what was said.
Offer feedback to ASAE.
Someone other than me has to be a voice for what is or is not equitable when they know what is best practice.
Be good to one another.
Ya'll take care, I'll see you on the flip side!
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Samantha Evans, CAE, ICE-CCP, MBA (she/her)
The Accessible CAE
sam.evans@accessibilityassociation.org
Certification Director
Intl. Assoc. of Accessibility Professionals, a division of G3ict
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