Meeting Date
- Opening quotation
- April is Autism Awareness Month! Let’s celebrate the infinite diversity of neurodivergent individuals and honor their unique strengths.
- Tweet: https://twitter.com/Progressive_MD/status/1643010659913695234
- Invited Guests: ECRT Team
- Introductions
- Allison Kushner - Director of Disability Equity and ADA Coordinator
- Megan Marshall - Deputy ADA coordinator
- Phil Deaton - Digital Information Accessibility Coordinator
- Sarah Caruso - Admin Specialist in ECRT
- Stephanie Beatty - ASL Interpreter
- Contact the ADA Team through their website or email them at [email protected]
- Discussion
- What is the scope of work for the ASL interpreters, what events will they be supporting?
- Stephanie is new (welcome!), still learning
- In the future, doing interpretation for events, faculty and staff
- Providing “teachable moments”
- About deaf culture
- How to work with interpreters
- Priority is to help with interpreting needs for faculty and staff, specifically for identified users who need the service
- After that, large scale events
- MI Medicine still has separate interpreter services
- Growth of the office
- Onboarding a second ASL interpreter later this summer, so will have more capacity then
- Two Accessibility Specialist jobs available as well
- Hope that these people can support people at the front end of the interactive accommodations process, so Megan and Allison can move to more oversight and secondary review
- Is Cindy still going to be involved? Many people still have relationships with Cindy
- Cindy is still a partner and still gets referrals from ECRT
- What about CART providers?
- ECRT has a fund for CART, but no plans to hire an internal CART provider in the current strategic plan
- If someone comes to us with a question, where should we start? What’s the pathway?
- If it’s for a student, SSD and Allen Sheffield
- If it’s for a faculty/staff member, email [email protected]
- These teams all work closely together so whoever you send it to can push it in the right direction
- ECRT covers a ton of services, so if you’re unsure of where to start, their office is always a good choice
- Is there anything in particular that your office does that you wish people on campus utilized more?
- Would love for more employees to approach to work through accommodations needs directly
- Working through the central office can provide additional layers of support and service from other campus partners
- A lot of people didn’t know about the office for a long time, so as more people have learned about it, things have gotten better
- Would love for more employees to approach to work through accommodations needs directly
- For people with undisclosed, and invisible, disabilities, there can be hesitancy to talk to the office.
- Is there any move to work towards more universal design/universal accommodations?
- Ex. trauma informed work spaces
- ECRT wants to move beyond compliance, working to train and improve things around events and procurement to reduce the needs for accommodations overall
- There will always be a need for accommodations because of unique individuals and needs, but we can continue to reduce barriers upfront
- What is the scope of work for the ASL interpreters, what events will they be supporting?
- Introductions
- Announcements
- Center for Disability Health and Wellness received a grant last fall to do research about disability and equity in healthcare systems, and the project now has a name!
- Advancing Health Equity for Adults with Disabilities from Marginalized Communities Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (AHEAD-MC RRTC)
- Could be confusing with national AHEAD group, this was the only option we had that the community supported and made sense with the goals of the research
- Confusion with conflation with the national organization will be mitigated with logos, branding, and with always attaching the -MC RRTC at the end
- Intentional focus on centering stakeholder communities
- Hannah’s last meeting (or maybe second to last, exact dates TBD), if you know anyone looking to do administrative work for CfDC, please email [email protected]
- Stephanie Rosen has a new job in the ITS unit, Assistant Director for Digital Accessibility
- If you contact the ITS team through their form, Stephanie is on the team that receives that information
- Enjoy the spring weather!
- Center for Disability Health and Wellness received a grant last fall to do research about disability and equity in healthcare systems, and the project now has a name!