Nation have a disability. The majority of people have a loved one with a disability as well and we are the only Minority Group that anyone can join at any time due to accident , illness or aging. Respectability is very proud to be a member of the ccd, a group of more than 110 National Disability organizations that want a Better Future for people with disabilities. As we have seen recently, overall the Disability Community is quite good at protecting key lifesaving benefits and advancing civil rights. With so many great organizations already out there and so many fantastic leaders already in the Disability Movement, why was there need for yet another disability organization, and what specifically is respectability trying to achieve respectability fundamentally, is about the opportunity agenda. We know what people with disabilities and the people who love them want opportunities for education, skills, jobs, independence and a Better Future just like anyone else. We want Bipartisan Solutions for people with disabilities and their loved ones, employers and taxpayers alike. Respectability would say nothing about us without our organization. We serve people with every kind of disability. I am dyslexic and i know what it means to raise a talented and wonderful child with multiple disabilities. Members of our team have a wide variety of disabilities and or disability experience. Respectability has High Expectations and knows that every person, whether its physical, developmental, social centrally sensory, all have something great inside they can contribute to this world. People with disabilities come from race, space , religion, region of the country and more. Were all better off when we work to reach our shared goals and dreams of a more welcoming, respectful and inclusive world. Key policies have changed it to cut Educational Opportunity, however Employment Opportunities for people with disabilities also known as pw d may not significantly improve in decades and the negative attitudes that people with disabilities remain. We stand and sometimes role at an important moment in history. Only one in four working age people with a disability has a job. Indeed, in the cases there may be a parttime job and moreover, in some states it is still legal to pay people with disabilities sub minimum wage. The good news is, however, and other states the outcome is twice as good showing that when there are High Expectations and best practices used, wow. Success is possible. Studies show most working age people with disabilities want jobs. In order for this to happen we need to close the skills gap, fight stigmas and help employers understand the business case, not the charity case for inclusion. Today, only 65 of students with disabilities graduate high school. Only 7 of students were born with disabilities graduate college. Schools need to do a lot better by children with disabilities. A lot is also up to families in the natural support for children this can mean faithbased organizations such as churches and synagogues and mosques, it can be nonprofits, mentors and more. To me there is no greater joy than being a parent. Lets face it, being a parent of a typically developing child is already challenging. Doing the right thing for a child with disabilities, which in my case is the greatest pleasure in the world can also be challenging as well. This is especially true for single parents, new immigrants, and people who are otherwise marginalized. We know children with disabilities are at risk for the school to prison pipeline when educational opportunities, early intervention, mentors, and High Expectations are not in place. Indeed, more than 750,000 people with disabilities are behind bars in our nation today and half of all women who were incarcerated today in america have disabilities. This has a tremendous human and financial cost to our nation. We need to prepare young people with disabilities to excel in science, technology, engineering , mathematics and other careers as well as in starting their own company. Today we will get to hear from several amazing people who are twice exceptional. Remember that word. They have a disability and they have exceptional talents. Each of them make me think about Malcolm Gladwells book david and goliath, which extols the strengths of people with disability. The traditional ways of doing things dont always work for people with disability. Gladwell demonstrates people with Diverse Talent can find incredible ways to innovate and succeed. Some of the greatest companies on earth were started and led by people with disabilities. Innovators and leaders are dyslexic. Ernst and long young was paralyzed. Michigan Supreme Court justice, the congressman jim, claudia gordon, senators Tammy Duckworth , judy human, john mccain and 88 champion bob dole and tommy the one armed golfer who you will meet shortly all have physical disabilities and exceptional abilities. Additionally, some of the most creative people including whoopi goldberg, michael j fox, mark summers who you also meet today and others have disabilities. Still, starting your own company in hollywood arent for everyone we need a wide range of choices. People with disabilities bring unique characteristics to the workplace that benefits employers and organizations. Amazon, att, bank of america, starbucks, pepsi, walgreens and others have all shown that employees with disabilities are loyal and help them make more money. For students with Developmental Disabilities who are not degree bound, who can legally stay in school until their 21 years old, we should enable them to have freedom of choice and to let them choose whether they want to spend the last year of school in the classroom or in a realworld apprenticeship in programs such as project search. Project search is already serving close to 3000 young people with disabilities each year end they are getting close to a 70 job success rate and competitive integrated employment for youth whose disabilities are significant. Project searches for driving under republican Governor Scott walker and john kasich and democratic governor. This is a bipartisan issue. These apprenticeships enable Young Workers to have the dignity and income of a job while they are doing a great deal for the bottom line of Customer Service driven employers and hospitals, hotels and an elder care. Again, people with disabilities want to be independent. Still, at the same time, some still need to have support. You need to have a system that enables there to be vital support such as medicaid and personal care assistants, even for individuals who have jobs. Do not need any government stipend to live independently. They should be able to live independently and work in American Public policy should recognize that in our healthcare and support system that the dignity and the income in the job is so important. All too often, schools and employers deny young people with disabilities the opportunities they want because they cant imagine that they can be successful. They cant even imagine that people with disabilities can be successful. Why is that . Because there is a fundamental link between fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities. Indeed, i just did a lot of name dropping of successful people and companies with disabilities because Research Shows that people cant imagine people with disabilities can be successful unless they see it with their own i. We dont want people to think that my speech is fake news. Feel free to google all the names and the companies and organizations that i mentioned. Its the real deal. Its time for people with disabilities to be seen on the small and large screen and in Society Overall for what they can do and not for what they cannot. As actress gina davis says, if we see a you can be a. In the past, the betrayal of people with disabilities used the plea principal. It started with the framing of the jerry lewis telethon, five decades of the hand up, excuse me the handout instead of the hand up. Additionally, a big part of the challenge today as we will learn more about later today is that we rarely see characters, let alone positive or diverse characters with actual disabilities on either the small or large screen. Just this weekend i locked watched beauty and the beast with our fabulous children. It has hundreds of characters on screen. There was almost every kind of diversity in this new beauty and the beast except disability. Sadly, this is typical. According to glad, only 2 of scripted characters are people with disability even though ten times as many people exist with disabilities in our country. Moreover, when there are characters with disabilities, all too often they are portrayed by actors without disabilities who are devoid of authenticity or honest representation of the character they are playing. What are the results of continuing pity images, the results are negative attitudes, stereotypes and stigmas that especially impact millions of children with disabilities and the approximately 300,000 young people with disabilities who age into what should be the workforce each year. Let me just remind you, in our nation today, only one out of every three working age people with a disability has a job. Only one out of three. People with disabilities are the poorest of the poor in america despite the fact that we have talents and energy to bring to the strength of this nation. In order for more people to be in the workforce, we need more talented people with disabilities working in front of and behind the camera. We need to change the narrative of how people see people with disabilities to employers so everyone else can see the ability that people have and how it makes for a better bottom line. Its amazing that such a small change can have such a big impact. We have seen this in the popular reaction to the emmywinning any tv show, born this way. Never before has the Reality Program genuinely shown the lives and love of talented, diverse and passionate young people with Developmental Disabilities like this. It is fantastic and we are so proud this emmywinning show was created by our board member, jonathan murray. Its starting to change the direction in hollywood. We are so thrilled with the success which stars micah fowler and has a disability and accurate portrayal of what it takes to raise a child with disabilities. We also look forward to several new shows in starting this fall. We want to see stories in hollywood about what people with disabilities can do. Think about it. Beautiful music from a deaf man. It happens. Beethoven, freedom from somebody with a seizure disorder disorder , it happens. Harriet tubman. Music and civilrights leadership from someone with learning disabilities, its happening. Recognizing the disability, imagine the possibility, respect the ability. Respectability is currently celebrating our fourth birthday. We just expanded our board, elected great new leaders and want people like you, whether youre here in person or youre watching on cspan, to join our effort. I invite you to check us out online at respectability. Org and join us on facebook and twitter. We are currently looking for more Young Leaders to join our National Leadership program for talented and diverse leaders who want to fight stigmas and advance opportunities for people with disabilities. There are so many ways you can get involved in our work. In fact, along with local leaders they are creating a demonstration project in long beach california. I will be out there very soon along with much of our team the week of august 14. We need your support, involvement in your voice. We also want to thank the office of congressman brad sherman and him personally for making this event possible and lauren and the full team here at respectability for putting this Great Program together. I especially want to thank mark summers, meg oconnell, Tommy Morrissey along with our board member who traveled from out of time to join us today. We cant wait to hear from you and everyone else. Before we kick off with our first vip teacher, speaker, i invite our Board Members and our staff and our fellows to please rise if you can or raise your hand if you cant rise so that people can see who you are. Donna and ronald and vivian from our board of directors and other leaders from our team and our fellows, i hope the people here will meet members of our team and our board. I really say thank you for your service and thank you for what youre doing and especially to these amazing Board Members who give so much of their heart and their time. This is a team thing. Respectability is a movement and we are new and we want people to join us. Those of you who are watching on cspan, before i introduce our first speaker, i want to leave us with two words. That is, lead on. Thank you. Now i want to invite mr. Cantos to come to the front. I will start introducing him as he comes up. He is a superstar. He is a personal friend and mentor to me. Hes been blind since birth and active on civil rights issues for more than 27 years. He presently serves as special assistant to the acting secretary for civil rights at the u. S. Department of education former positions include staff attorney and director of outreach and education at the Disability Rights Legal Center in los angeles. His special assistant and leader special counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the u. S. Department of justice, vice chairman of the president s committee for people with intellectual disabilities, and associate director for domestic policy under president george w. Bush. I will also say, in addition to his phenomenal professional competent accomplishment that make want make half of our leaders want to be like him, he is also an adoptive dad 23, successful lined triplet boys, each of whom just graduated high school and each of whom was just elevated this past week to the rank of eagle scout, the highest level of achievement within the boy scout of america. We are delighted to have you here today. [applause] a morning everyone. I am so pleased to be with all of you here today. Considering this is the first time for me to address you from a podium setting, in a number of years, i have to say, i have really missed you. It is really good to be back and it is a privilege to be here before you today. My personal thanks to jennifer for her leadership and her ongoing vision and building respectability as a cuttingedge organization that is dedicated to promoting equality of opportunity for persons with all types of disabilities. I stand before you today as special assistant to the acting assistant attorney general, actor acting secretary of civil rights at the u. S. Department of education. Over the past several years, over the past 27 years of work in serving the Disability Community, i cannot help but think back about all the many ways that life has improved for us since the signing of the landmark americans with disabilities act 27 years ago. When we think back at our lives than, as members of the Disability Community, we remember when things were different. In looking at all of that has taken place since, we also see, in many ways, how far we have come. There are more Employment Opportunities for persons with disabilities today, state and local Government Programs and Service Programs are more assessable, places of public accommodation are more available and assessable to us, and transportation and telecommunications have been areas that have also witnessed significant improvements. And yet, here we are looking at the number of barriers that still remain to our full participation as persons with disabilities. There still remains prevailing myths and misconceptions about persons with physical, psychiatric, intellectual and learning disabilities. For all of us who have disabilities, we work each day to eliminate stigmas that still prevail. There are individuals who wonder about the extent to which we may be successful in the classroom, in the workplace as Business Owners, et cetera. There are those who wonder, even to this day about the extent to which we can be involved in our schools, places of worship, and community in general. But why . The big question that we must all ask ourselves is why. Why after all these years do barriers still remain as they do the answer is, because, as much as we each would want, change to calm immediately, as much as we see change in our daily lives, and through our actions, as much as we strive hard to transform attitudes about us, there are still other forces in the community that still have yet to learn about what we are truly capable of accomplishing. You and i know he will. The potential me we may reach when we infuse our community with expanded mentorship opportunities in every setting, including within an educational setting as well as with internships and Employment Opportunities and service in the Nonprofit Sector and serving in a leadership capacity within a private sector and working out every job, ranging from cleaning the office to running it, there in lies our goal. And, when we look at this we think also within an educational context, we think about how, to this day there are still students in communities of every size who are crying out for help there are parents who wonder about the supports available for them and how the discrimination may be addressed. There are families who are hurting, not because of the disability itself is the issue but because of what people think about members of the