 here to text you, but then to my heart as well, we're trying to make technology box accessible for everybody. So this specific fireside chat is called making technology accessible for your employees and the community that you serve. So a few housekeeping items before we start. Just a reminder, this event is being recorded and we're gonna send the record in an email. You're gonna get probably in about one or three business days, you're gonna get that email with the record in. You can use a touch function to type in your comments. You can also use the Q&A function to ask the questions that you might have along the event and let's get started. So I wanted to jump in and then talk a little bit about Quad. So Quad is a brand new community that takes the aspect together for all the organizations that we have and not only with this community you're gonna have a peer-to-peer experience, you're gonna have exclusive events, you're gonna have expert technical support coming from my team. You're also gonna have no nonprofits in your area and also get additional discounts in the products that you usually get every year in TechSafe as well as some courses and more stuff. You can get also 10 members inside of your organization that can have the Quad membership. Also probably one of the things that you're probably gonna ask is like, how can I know more information about Quad? Well, you can join Quad with the link that I'm gonna send you all in the chat. And if you have any questions or you wanna just chat a little bit more you can go ahead and then email us at customersuccess at techsafe.org and we can just schedule a call with you and then learn more about Quad. And then who's making this possible? So the customer success is the one that is make this events every month possible. Here's probably a little bit of everybody you're probably already talked to a few of these folks. So we have Gerard, Kevin, Tamira, Tony, Ashley, Jonathan, my person and Vanessa, nice meeting you all. If we haven't seen you but I do see some familiar faces. So welcome again. I'm excited to have you all back and then to the ones that I don't know. Well, thank you so much for joining and hope that you can come along every single month we do this events. And then now let's talk enough about me and enough about TechSoup and then let's meet our speakers today. So with me, I have Peter Johnson from InspireTech. He's the chief technical officer and a little bit about Peter. He has 30 years tenure at InspireTech. His transition from supporting nonprofits to training for individuals with disabilities to hold in the position of chiefs technical officer over the last 15 years. His responsibilities included designing network infrastructure and phone systems to ensure accessibility for disabled employees included as substantial number of disabled veterans. Also along with Peter, we have Celia Moritan. She is a development director of Life Services Alternatives. For 27 years, Celia has been fundraising for nonprofits, including large and small in her experience with nonprofits on both of the East and West codes has led to success in all aspects of fundraising from a special events to grant writing and much more. She has been working for Life Services Alternatives for six years and she loves working with intellectually and developmentally disabled population. Alongside with Celia, we have Brian. Brian Hines is the human resources director at Disability Right Texas. Brian has been with the Disability Right Texas organization since January 2019. So he brings over 29 years of experience overseeing legal services and lending a long-term support of care program in Galveston for individuals with traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries, as well as his dedication extend to over six years to the HR Southwest Conference Board showcasing a step-by-step commitment to supporting organizations and initiatives for individuals with disabilities. And I am gonna just take it away with my speakers to see if they wanna speak a little bit more about themselves so we can get started with a fireside chat. Okay, I'll explain a little bit about the organization I work for. In Spirit Tech, started out doing training for people with disabilities and a lot of the training, the disability group that we were aiming for was people who were blind because we started at the time when JAWS came out. And the director of the organization, the president, saw JAWS as an opportunity to allow the emerging technology at that time, which was a PC with one, if not two floppy drives to actually learn programming skills that were sort of emergent at that time at the PC level. And a lot of the work was actually linking up to mainframe systems to do the COBOL programming and all that. But JAWS allowed that and he saw real possibilities for that and started the organization with that goal in mind. And he developed the organization so that we had a real structure that was built around providing support for our trainees and that meant support for their transportation, support with housing at times, support with getting doctor's appointments and making flexible schedules for them. And what he found was that he could train somebody up to make a really good programmer. But very often what happened was when they got out into the real job market or they could get decent jobs and they were capable of doing them but they didn't have the support that we had provided. And so very often their failure to hold the job had nothing to do with their capabilities. It had to do with the lack of support to ensure that they could do that. So he transitioned us from an organization that provided that training to one that provided jobs. And so we now do call center work. It's largely in the public sector. We have a fairly large contract with the veteran, the VA to provide support for their benefits office. And we also work with this in the state of Pennsylvania, state of New Jersey to provide support for a couple of government agencies. And it's all inbound support. And we still have people who are blind, who are doing work. It is much more limited to what they can do because all of the systems that are used now are web-based and unfortunately web developers, the last thing they think about is accessibility. And we have worked at times with, so we have a phone system and we've been through a number of different phone systems and each time we get a new phone system, the first thing we do is we test it for accessibility, the client for accessibility. And we have actually gone to the phone system provider and said, you can't actually contract with government agencies with this phone system legally because you don't meet the requirements for accessibility. And so we've had them reprogrammed and they've been very responsive to us. And I think there are a lot of people that we've found that wanna support our mission. And so given that we are an organization that employs people to answer the phone, there are categories of people with disabilities that are never gonna be qualified. And you can think right off the bat of somebody with extreme hearing loss, just can't answer a phone. And we've thought about different ways of making that possible but it slows down the conversation enough that it's no longer just a language line call, it's a call that three or four people involved to get the translation done. But it was an interesting transition to go from that model of providing the training to actually employing the people and providing them with the support that they needed. And so as an organization, we really don't have an HR department as much as what we call a case management department. And our case managers are responsible not only for the hiring and determining what the disabilities are, but for making sure that on the technical side, we can provide those support needs. And sometimes it doesn't work. I mean, we just had somebody who needed to use a certain kind of tablet, which was not going to be compliant with any system that we put together. So we are limited in what we can do and some of that has to do with the projects that we run. But that's sort of where we are as an organization and I think there are a couple of other organizations like us out there who are non-profits who are actually providing employment and hiring people with disabilities. That's awesome. Peter, I wanted to also to kind of like change a little bit of the format of how we usually do our monthly events. We usually, you come in, you expect to like learn something and we usually go very technical. So I wanted to change a little bit today and do like a fireside chat. And I created a few questions that our panelists are going to kind of like answer with their experiences that they come in as well as what they're doing and with their organization that they're with. The first question is going to be making type inclusive practices inside of organizations. So the first question is, how can non-profits implement inclusive employment practices for individuals with disabilities? So Cecilia or Brian, if you wanted to, it's been a little bit more about that. That will be awesome. Brian, do you want to go ahead? Sure, I'll be happy to, I'm sorry. So I'm with an organization called Disability Rights, Texas. And we are a protection and advocacy agency for persons with disabilities who live in the state of Texas. We're essentially a public interest or social justice law firm, much like a legal aid. And we specialize in legal services for people who have disabilities who feel that they've been discriminated against for on a variety of reasons based on their disability, whether it be transportation related, housing related, employment related, a lot of different issue teams that we have that focus on providing that service. And obviously, since we are an organization that someone could come to for legal help and advice or representation because they feel like they weren't treated well in their employment arrangement with their employer, we want to lead by example. And so one of the things that we do is we're very deliberate and intentional on the types of web applications, content, anything that we provide to our staff, we feel that it has to be compliant before we'll roll it out, before we'll make it available. And so we've done through a lot of, we've spent a lot of time training our staff on how to make documents accessible, how to make sure that communications that we have are accessible, not only in different languages, but that someone who is meeting assistive software to access a site or to read a page that they have that it is accessible. I'll be honest with you before I came to work for BRTX, I never thought about that as an HR professional. And it does cause a little bit more extra work and more time to make sure that that on the front end is an accessible document before sharing something with all the staff. But we have staff who have a site impairment who have a need for some accommodation to assist them with their job. And so we want them to have the same experience as someone who may not have that need. And so we try from an HR perspective to ensure that everything from websites that an employee may have to access to communications that we send out about one purpose, that all of that is accessible on the front end before we even do that. And so I think that has been, we feel like it's been helpful for us to kind of lead by example, if we will, so that our staff have, regardless of their situation, they have the same access and the same ease of being able to do their job. Okay, well, Life Services Alternatives provides housing and programs to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And we have currently 15 homes throughout our county that serve about 80 individuals. And in addition to our housing, we have a program called Community Integration Training Program. And it's really a win-win out in the community and it's open to everyone regardless whether you're a resident in one of our homes or not. We work with other nonprofits such as the library or senior citizen centers or food banks or that kind of thing and are the participants in the program go there and learn how to do various things at each one of those nonprofits. So whether they're increasing social skills by serving senior citizens and getting along and talking and having conversations or whether they're actually learning at the library, they clean books and they learn to categorize and things such as that. And it's a win-win because those nonprofits need help and volunteers and we're providing volunteers who are learning also a skill that can translate to some kind of a job. It's not real technical at this point, but we do provide information and life skills for them to go on and use this in another position. Thank you so much for that. And then if you are, you're here of listening to the conversation, if you have answers for the same question, please feel free to chime in your answers in the chat. We will love to know what you guys are doing as well. So we can all learn from this event and implement a few things in our organizations as well. I think like the other question that I have is what strategies can nonprofits employ to overcome accessibility challenges in technology, ensuring that individuals with disabilities have equitable access to digital platforms and innovations? Well, I can tell you what we did. During the pandemic, especially when everybody was shut in, just like everybody else in the world, our residents were going a little stir crazy and wanted to participate in following their interests and having access to all the technical resources and all the things that most everybody else has. So we did some grant writing and several organizations gave us money to supply iPads to everyone that wanted one and could use them. And then they brought in some people to train, which was really good on how to use the iPad. We have our 15 homes range from people who are very high functioning, all the way to people that are completely bedridden that maybe have treks and different things that... So there's a wide range. So a good part of our homes are filled with people that are kind of just like we are. They wanna be accepted, they wanna be... They want to learn new things, they wanna be able to find out about all these different things in the world. And one of the ways they could do it is doing it on an iPad. But we wrote grants and it worked. For us, we tried to provide multiple methods or some of them could access information. And then getting outside help to help us with making sure that any public facing app or any content that we put out there is compliant and accessible. That's awesome. Peter, do you wanna jump in? We've always found that it's... We really deal with a higher functioning population that I think they're talking about because you have to be able to have some manual dexterity to do data entry. But that manual dexterity ranges, people's manual dexterity is a vast range. And so we've always tried to accommodate people and it becomes very difficult at times and especially during the pandemic when you couldn't meet with them directly. We were interviewing remotely, hiring remotely, sending equipment out and trying in the IT, in my department, we rarely know anything about the individual other than they have needs. And their needs are related to something. And but half the problem we have is trying to figure it out without getting the direct information because we shouldn't be, nobody should be sharing that information. You know, we're not privy to it. And so it's really, for us, it's a question of listening and I think the hardest things are actually to hear somebody and the anxiety that they're feeling about the technology and the jobs and the prospect of not being able to continue working and recognizing that the problem is not really their abilities as much as they're the anxiety that they have approaching their work. And we've gotten much better at doing that especially remotely because when you're not sitting in front of somebody and able to look at their eyes and how they divert them and it's really very difficult. So Nessa, I saw a question pop up to me and if you don't mind, I'll answer that. So DRTX is part of a larger network of all of the P&As from every state. So there's a P&A for every state and then there's also a P&A designated for Native Americans that's based in the Southwest part of the country. But and I've put a link to, or I think I did in the chat to both our organization's website and the National Disability Rights Network which is the group that all of the P&As across the country are part of. So we utilize that connection with other P&As to not have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. So we reach out and our NDRN keeps track of organizations or agencies that have products and services that we know are focused on accessibility and compliance from that perspective. And so we utilize kind of the internal knowledge that we have as well as both myself and our IT manager were both very active in our industries and professional associations that support those. And so we become aware of vendors and other products and services that we know are accessible or striving to be accessible. And so we kind of utilize a lot of different ways. Who have you heard that provides a service in this space that we're comfortable with. And because of the fact that we do a lot of litigation, we probably are aware of organizations that aren't defining a bill. We don't have that as one of their tenants. And so it may be a little easier for us to maybe avoid those folks who will be sued mainly if they want to avoid. But it's a little bit of this, a little bit of that, so to speak. I hope that answered the question. If not, Ari, you can just jump in again and then we can ask Brian to expand a little bit more. Just for the people that are maybe on mobile listening to the webinar and not being able to see the chat, the question the Ari asked was, how do you go about getting outside help to check for that kind of accessibility compliance? So that's what Brian was referring to. I think that we heard the challenges of listening to the community as well as taking action to those demands. And I think one of the things that I wanted to ask is how can nonprofits empower their employees with disabilities creating a work environment that accommodates diverse needs and leverages technology to enhance productivity and inclusion? I'll speak from an HR perspective. We have a DRT experience, pretty robust, I don't know, reasonable accommodation process. So we make it, it was interesting. We started really getting down into the nuts and bolts of accessibility. We realized that the form that we had people complete requesting a reasonable accommodation wasn't accessible. And so first and foremost, we set out an accommodation request that was accessible that anyone could be able to access and complete. And then we do have that interactive process with the employee who requests the accommodation. And we talk through, how can we do this? And we'll bring in, if it's a piece of equipment or if it's a program of some sort that they need to utilize, obviously we got IT right there at the table with us to help us navigate that process. And in general, we have an unwritten rule that it would have to be a fairly large expenditure for us to not be able to justify this as being reasonable. And so we've done everything from providing particular equipment, specialized equipment or access to certain websites and things like that, to things like we had an employee who had an issue with bright lights and whatnot. And so we bought some new bulbs to put in the fluorescent bulbs, things in the ceiling so that it provided an atmosphere where she could do her work and not have to leave the office periodically because it was causing her severe issues with vision. So, we welcome that conversation. In a lot of organizations, when someone mentions the need for an accommodation that's kind of like, they look at it as a red flag and we look at it as an opportunity, like I think this is great. We're gonna do this process, we're gonna learn something we didn't know before that might help one of our clients. So we try to take that approach and instill that in our culture. I was kind of laughing at the fluorescent bulbs because we've got a similar situation here and the solution we have is that there's a sun visor over that user's station and the kind you get for a car and it's like she's in her own little tent and she doesn't get the bright light from the fluorescence and it's just a real cheap accommodation and then when it works out like that you can have a sun visor in your office area. That's an amazing idea, I love that. It was not my idea, I wish I were that clever. There's a resource, you may already be aware of it but it's called Job Accommodation Network, JAN. And they have a database of all sorts of accommodations based upon a situation so you can go in and search for those types of things. So if you have no idea if you're kind of stumped on what can we do and if the employee may not be aware of what they need you can together sit down and look through and see some best practices and it really helps, you know, not having to start from square one, so to speak. I wasn't able to put the link on the chat so thank you so much Brian for that but I just put the link for the Job Accommodation Network so you can learn more information on the website as well. Celia, do you wanna jump in on the question as well? Well, in all actuality, we don't have a lot of employees with disabilities because of what we do. We hire RNs and CNAs and direct support people but what we do with our clients and their disabilities to get them to be able to do what they would like to do because everybody has their own plan and every person is allowed to follow their interests and further their goals. We do whatever it takes to be able for them to do that whether it means getting new technology or working with somebody or having somebody come in that will help them and it's anything from music therapy to just recreational therapy to learning how to do something and it might be because a lot of our clients have issues with their body so it's learning how to use a computer when you can't use your hands very well or that kind of thing so that's what we do. That's awesome, thank you so much for where you all do. One of my last questions and then we are gonna do a Q&A so everybody can just ask us some other questions but my last question for today that I prepared is gonna be how can we collaborate? I'm sorry, I'm like, I don't know how to speak today. How can we collaborate as a community to provide more awareness to the challenges in the disability space? Well, I think not, I guess for us we really try to make a point to think about that first and not last, if that makes sense, like let's don't forget about that and might it just be something that we stumble upon. Oh yeah, we've got to make this accessible. That needs to be one of the first things out of our mouth is okay, this does this, is it accessible? Is this, you know, is this means the needs of our staff? Does this reflect the type of organization that we say that we are? You know, and I'm not close to explaining things but we try to incorporate that in a stronger way when we find in. Well, we do a lot of marketing and communications and going out and getting involved in things that are in the community having a booth at a fair or whatever. We also have a couple of events during the year that people can participate in whether they have someone in their family with disabilities or not. And just getting people involved, hearing about the crisis with housing for us that there are for people with disabilities, learning just more about what's happening. We do have in San Jose here, there's wonderful places, there's Recovery Cafe where they work with people with disabilities and there's Ada's Cafe, which all their staff, a woman whose son participates in that started this program and they produce wonderful food and it's like a luncheonette, you can go have lunch. And just keep everybody aware of what's offered and encourage them to get involved. Because a lot of people just don't know about the problems that having disabilities creates. I think that my organization's director went to get the government contracts, the VA department contracts primarily because he really wanted to hire or be in a position to hire disabled vets. And I think he wanted to do it for two reasons. One is that it is something we all care about, but they get so much more visibility than the rest of the disabled population who is disabled for no more intentional reason than the vets were. But I think he wanted that exposure and I think it's gotten him exposure and it's gotten us recognition by a number of fairly large organizations. We're coming at it from a very different perspective by providing the employment, but I'm not the one that reaches out though. Thank you so much again for being here. So one of the things that I wanted to do is that I'm gonna go ahead and then let our audience ask the questions that they will like to know a little bit more or if you're interested in any of the answers from our panelists, but you want them to expand a little bit more, please. Feel free to do so. I'm gonna start with one of the questions that it was posted from Roger a little while ago and is do you have any recommendations for places to learn digital accessibility for working towards IAAP certifications? I'm not certain. I do not. It's okay. I have to get back to you. Yeah. So what I'm gonna do is that I'm gonna go ahead and then we're gonna research a little bit. We're gonna get back to you to get email. So Roger, if you wanna jump in with your email address, you can just go ahead and then instead of two to everyone you can select host and panelists and I can just grab your email right there and then we're gonna get back to you on that question a little bit more and see what other resources we can provide you. But that is a really good question. So thank you so much for that. If you have any other questions, please feel free to put them on the chat or you can use the Q and A function. Okay, there you go. Thank you, Roger. We just got your email right here. If you can do the Q and A section, that's fine as well. Or if you can just put it on the chat, that's good as well. So you can get to your questions here. I think like I wanted to, for you guys to expand a little bit more. Oh, there you go. We have a question. So then nevermind. So I see Rebecca as you're saying it sounds like CELIS organization is closer to what we do. When providing technology with adults with IDD, what is your advice on defining the line between accessibility and reasonable security? I'm sorry, could you repeat the last part of that question? Yeah, so they're asking what is your advice on defining the line between accessibility and reasonable security? Well, again, I don't know if it's just here in California, but everything is kind of individually based. And so when a plan is made and goals are set for someone that's in one of our homes, we do everything possible to provide the technology they need it, they need it, instruction or any of that kind of thing. And if it's something that we've never worked with before or can't, we try to find an answer an expert or someone that can help to be able to, enable the resident to do what they are hoping to do or to reach a new goal. It's being a nonprofit, some things have to do with cost. So you cannot always just purchase new equipment or do what it is you have to find a way to pay for it. So we use a lot of different ways. You make connections out in the community with people that can provide things like TechSoup for a reasonable price. And we do that. I mean, there might be a little bit of time to wait, but we do as much as we can. Thank you so much for that, Celia. Breva Gay, if you need anything, anything to expand a little bit more and let us know. We have a question from Sophia saying the deaf and hard of hearing community has their own culture where some identified as having a disability and some do not. How can someone obtain new hearing aids for work if they do not have the funds for it? But we can explain a little bit more about how we can toggle that. I am sure there's some available resources. I don't know where this person is that is asking the question, but I would start maybe with some kind of organization for the hearing impaired and go from there. There are a lot of funds that go to various things like that that people don't know about and are not always used. But I think that's what I would do. There has to be an organization in the area that has something to do with deafness or hearing impaired and they would be a good starting point to ask those questions too. No, go ahead, Ryan. No, I was just gonna say that that's our approach as well and through our community partners, other advocacy organizations or disability organizations, our attorneys and advocates or they're aware because most of our staff, particularly our advocates come out of industry, they either worked in the education field or they've worked for a state organization or they've worked federal level and they're not happy with maybe how things were going and they wanna make that difference and when impacts systemic change. So they have contacts in the community and they have contacts with other organizations. So we just utilize that network because you're exactly right, Cynthia. There's a whole lot of services out there that people are aware of. I mean, they're not aware of who we are. So that we know they don't know other organizations as well. So it's just, who do you know that does this? I see messages come across our teams all the time, to staff saying, hey, I've got a client that they presented me as either of hearing devices that didn't happen, they don't have the funds, they don't have the capability to buy them, how do they get it? And nine times out of 10, there's someone that has a connection that says, okay, this group is doing that, there's something going on right now that they can think advantage of. So that's how we do it. Also, here in California, if you have a developmental disability or an intellectual disability, you go through one of our regional centers. Regional centers cover certain, each one covers certain counties. And I would contact your regional center and your caseworker and ask. That is a really, that is a really good answer. And I wanted to also talk a little bit more about that, right? Like how can we ask, you know, well, you guys as a specialist in the field, how we can combat that, right? Like when somebody, what's, if I was saying, when somebody identifies themselves as having a disability and some do not, how we can bring a awareness to the entire community to know that. I think like that's also something that we're battling also as an organization with some, you know, some employees that may have disabilities, but they do not want to disclose it and how we can make sure that we're providing what they need as well. Well, I would think it's up, that makes it kind of up to the person that they don't want to expose it to everyone to go to their manager or supervisor, whoever, and say, I'm having problems with this and it's because of this, but and hopefully you'll be able to provide what they need to be able to do their job. But it's, I think in that case, it's really dependent on how much the person is willing to say, I have this issue and I need help. I have a question here saying, when providing devices and should live in a facility with access to the internet, that they're communal or accessible, how will you use your judgment to protect them from potentially harmful content but also allow them to use the devices how they would like to? So I think it's more about like how we can set up boundaries with the devices that we're providing as well as letting them have, you know, the autonomy to kind of search for what they want. Well, all our residents are adults. So we don't have the problem that you might have with teenagers or younger children. And I'm sure in the homes, there are maybe some restrictions or maybe parameters. I'm not sure what they are, but everybody in our home is over 21. That makes it a little bit easier, huh? Well, in prior to coming to VRTX, you mentioned, I ran an assisted living facility in Galveston that catered to what should have a traumatic brain injury or a fire brain injury. And all of our residents were adults. And, you know, unfortunately, we didn't have shared access to the internet. They had their own personal internet access and this was their home. They had privacy to do what they wanted to do. I mean, just like they would if they lived somewhere else. So we, and we trained our staff to be aware of that and not to be, not to feel like they need to impose their opinions or their perspectives, their background, their beliefs on this person. You're working in their home and you may see something that you see all the time. But this is their home. Right. And, you know, we did have, we had a resident that was a part of the project qualified for our program because of his injury. And, you know, there were times when we would build his room to search the internet and we, you know, that was his private space and he had the ability to do that. And that was just something that we even made our staff aware of that, you know, during certain times, not before you go in. This is his own one. So, I like that, Dr. I think that you bring a really good point, right? And then it's also the awareness part that we were talking about, right? How we can make it just a seamless process for everybody involved. And that's perfectly it. You know, the example that you put in, right? And is making sure that people feel that they wanna do what they feel like they wanna do, right? Without any restrictions. And I think like that, that brings our community, the community point back about like, how, what we can do to facilitate the programs and the software and everything, but like letting people actually take dad and then do whatever they feel like to. So, I think like that's a really excellent point that you brought up too. I think we are almost on time. So, I just wanted to say again, thank you so much to everybody that joined us today. It has been a pleasure to have you here. It has been a pleasure to see some familiar faces as well as some brand new ones. It has been a pleasure to be here with my amazing panelists today. Celia, thank you so much, Peter. Thank you so much. And Brian, thank you so much. It has been a pleasure to talk with you guys and to the audience, if you wanna join this monthly events, please feel free to do so by the link that I posted on the chat. You're gonna get notified via email whenever that we post another of this monthly events. We do a lot of trainings, we do a lot of conversations like what we did today and we're trying to make sure that whatever that you get from TechSafe, you use it because there's nothing that I dislike the most that people get in something that they don't need or that they don't use. So for me, my personal mission is making sure that you use whatever that you get from us. So thank you again and we'll see each other on March. See you soon, thank you so much. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Bye bye.