 The Seattle Skyline, the University of Washington campus. Words appear. Pursuit of a more equitable world, college and careers. A student uses a power chair. More students, some also in chairs. Students sign. Students in a large lecture hall. A seated man with two prosthetic hooks greets and hugs a student. An excerpt from John Kemp's keynote address at the University of Washington. Thanks to all of you for coming. Good afternoon. I'm Cheryl Burgstahler, the founder and director of the Duet Center, where a duet stands for Disabilities, Opportunities, Internet Working and Technology. In Duet, we work to increase the academic and career success of individuals with disabilities and make physical spaces, student services, teaching and learning activities and technology more welcoming and accessible to people with disabilities. I have the pleasure of introducing our keynote speaker, and his name is John Kemp. I met him around the time when I founded the Duet Center, which is like more than 25 years ago, and we've sort of been traveling in similar circles, so it's really especially nice for me to have you here, John. So I've always been impressed with his personal insights about the history of disability rights, parallels between this movement and others that improve our world by more fully engaging people from all different groups benefiting from their diverse talents and perspectives. He's been an ally of Duet and other organizations that serve to create a more inclusive world, and he's even mentored a few of the Duet scholars. He is a renowned disability rights leader who co-founded the Americans Association of People with Disabilities and is now the president and chief executive of a network of nonprofit organizations that provide services that educate, employ and empower children and adults with disabilities. His talk today is titled, Then and Now, People with Disabilities and our Pursuit of a More Equitable World. So will you please join me in welcoming John Kemp to the podium? The speaker's remarks are captioned on a large screen. A sign interpreter stands to the left of the podium. John walks haltingly to Cheryl. They shake hands. All right. Good afternoon. All good? John Kemp, Viscardi Center. I have been a huge fan of Duet and talk about Duet in various speeches around the country and certainly talked about it at the Council of Graduate Schools in Arizona in December and really got to meet some people from the University of Washington and we sort of reconnected again. But I must say this is one of the classiest, smartest, most forward-looking programs in the United States. So whether you are thinking you're all out here on an island and you're not connected and you're this and that, you're far from it. You are totally in front of the crowd of young students, high school students and college students who are looking to prepare themselves for real, competitive, integrated, inclusive employment and that you are getting the access to the technologies that will enable you to be able to do that. Some of it you are probably creating yourself. And it's certainly an era of personalization and customization in technology. What I so admire about Duet is that you don't accept anything less than the encouragement to thrive in your academic careers and in your employment careers. It's this idea that we're in this transition age of 20 to 30 years where people with disabilities may or may not get the kinds of services they properly need. That's not good enough for me. It's not good enough for our students. We want to be able to thrive just like everybody else, right? This is what we want very, very much. Today we have the largest number of college graduates with disabilities who are unemployed ever in the history of the United States. We've done a better and better and better job of getting students with disabilities through high school, through college, and they can't get a job. And that is a disgrace for our country. We're better than that. And we haven't quite figured out the underlying issue when we compare ourselves to other minority groups and other protected class groups. Why is it that we lag so significantly far behind in our employment rate? There's something deeply embedded in our society that does not allow an employer or people just generally. Employers are people too, right? But why do employers not perceive us as having capabilities? Why? So much of it is really based on all of the glitter and glam that our chairs and our scooters and our canes and our prosthetics and everything else that we present causes them to think that we can't do a job that they have predetermined how it should be done. Hopefully we're in an era now where it's not so much how you do a job. It is you tell me what the outcomes you want and the quality expectations that you have and the quantity and all the other characteristics that you want to measure. And we get to do it, whether we do it at two o'clock in the morning or it takes us two or three extra hours to do it, the outcome measurements can be adjusted. But for some reason because people who are in power positions perceive people with disabilities as unable to be able to perform the jobs that are there in a way in which they think they should be performed. It's the bosses who have these ideas, the supervisors who have these preconceived ideas. And this revolution that's going on in human resources and the like is really about trying to tear down these kinds of false requirements and really find out what is a job supposed to mean? What are you trying to produce and create? And hopefully that will help us a great deal. The Department of Labor estimates that by the time a person leaves school, college, you will have between 10 and 14 jobs by the time you're 38 years of age. If my dad heard that, he'd be horrified. My God, he used to say, please stick with the job. Stick with it for more than two or three years. Don't be a job hopper. He was always really worried that I was jumping around too much. I was like, hey, but there's a great opportunity over here and I want to do this and excites me. This is who our young people are today. Young adults have a focus. They accomplish something. They move on. We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist, expecting them to use technologies that have not yet even been invented in order to solve problems we don't even know our problems yet. How would you like to be teaching in that environment, right? It's pretty tough. So what are we teaching? We're teaching people how to learn and how to continue to adapt throughout our lives. For the Duet Scholars, you know how often we talk about, we're helping you become successful in college and careers, but we're not satisfied if you're just successful in your own right. We're hoping that you will change the world. So I think we should pass this baton over to these younger people. Don't you think, John? Please. Take it. We can add it to you. Take us higher. Described by Audiolize. Words appear. For more information about Duet, consult washington.edu. This video presentation was created with funding from the Duet Scholars Program hosted by Accessible Technology Services at the University of Washington. Copyright 2019, University of Washington. Permission is granted to copy these materials for educational non-commercial purposes provided the source is acknowledged.