App. Host my name is haben girma disability rights advocate, lawyer, speaker and author. My book is called haben the deafblind woman who conquered harvard law. I am deafblind. Ive limited vision and hearing and i grew up in in a cited in hearing world. I was born and raised in california, and i am still living in california. I dont actually work here. I work at my desk and thats what i i sat down to wri my book. My deafblindss is not it was ablsm that made life difficult. Navalism is the belief tha disabled people are inferior compared to nondisabled people. Its not true. We are not inferior, but evil keeps moving throughout our society and sang disabled people dont matter, therefore, dont make the service is accessible, dont provide medical care, and all kindsf unfair biases. En i was younger i wasnt sure what to do. Do i just accept inferior service . But overime i learn to advocate. I started to demand come at a learned about the americans with disabilities act which celebrated its 30th anniversary this yea the ada prohibits discoloration against people with disabilities. I learned about when i was in college, and my book shares this process why discover advocacy, turned into a career and learned to advocate for people with disabilities. If you could take away one message from the book, its the concept of ableism. Navalism is the belief that disabled people are inferior to nondisabled people. My book teaches people to identify ableism, and join us in working to fight navalism. I am an advocate, so i looked back into my life and asked myself what are the lessons from my life that could help people advance opportunities for disabled people around the United States and around the world . I picked stories for my life that teach people about navalism. Navalism intersects with sexism, racism. It pops up in small conversation in the kitchen when youre making pb j. Some wanted to show people all the different ways ableism hurts us come so people can learn to identify it and work to remove it from our society. My parents are from eritrea ethiopia. In parts of this country people believe that disability is a curse on the family. It was really, really difficult to do with that kind of oppression within ones culture. My parents had to learn to resist that idea. They had to learn to define disability for ourselves. Disability is not a burden on the family. Disability is an opportunity for innovation. So we had to come up with our own definition of what disability means. When i was growing up i would try to tell my parents i cant cook, i cant do chores. You cant ask a blanket to do chores or cook. They were not buying it. They still insisted that i cook and do chores. On the one hand, as a kid i was frustrated. But on the other as an adult i am grateful to getting those life skills. There are lots of parents of disabled kids who tell the kids, dont do chores. Dont cook. Its dangerous point those kids grow into adults who never develop important independence and life skills. Thats frustrating. Parents need to help the kids explore their environment and develop important life skills like has to take care of ones home. Society is built for nondisabled people, and that forces disabled people to come up with solutions, everything from cooking in the kitchen to solving challenges. One of the things i had to learn to solve is how do you communicate when most people rely on vision and hearing to communicate . I tapped into my strengths. One of my strengths is my sense of touch. I use it more than most people. Tapping into intelligence is something ive cultivated for a long time. It helps me partner dancing. It helps me rockclimbing, and all kinds of situations. When i am rocking im feeling the different textures to my feet walking from pavement to carpet to hardwood floors. So its something ive developed. When looking at ways to communicate with people, i immediately tapped into it. So i was looking at technologie technologies, touchbased solutions. In 2010 a new piece of technology came out that supported bluetooth and braille. I will hold it up. Im holding up a little device with braille on the bottom, and i run my fingers over the dots to fuel the letters. When i connect this to an external keyboard, people can type on the keyboard and i can read in braille. Most people dont know braille, dont know sign language. But most people can type, especially millennials. So i found that communication became much, much easier when i tapped into one of my strengths, my sensef touch. My theory is terrible. My vision is terrible. My sense of touch is excellent so i tap into tt and way more opportunities came up for me. Disabled people do this all the time. When we increase disability after school, more innovations come in, more solutions to problems. So it benefits all of us. It benefits all of us to increase hiring and diversity in our team. Traditional philosophy texts exclude a lot of thinkers and knowledge that exists in the world. There is a bias towards white male philosophers. Excluding about develop my black, people of color, women, and disabled people who exist across this different minority group. So we need to rebuild our libraries to include more diverse thinkers and philosophers. Because the traditional text that has been throughout western history exclude a lot of critical voices. Why am i passionate about social justice . Because i want to stay alive. I want answers and opportunities that are available to nondisabled people. Disabled, black and brown people are at greater risk of police violence. About a third to half are killed a police are disabled people. A lot of individuals in power, police officers, tsa agents walk into situations feeling here, move in certain ways, and that is terrifying and leads to many deaths. Knowing all these injustices exist moved me to advocate for change, to be a social justice advocate. In my book i talk about the situation in college where all i wanted was to eat. I wanted access to food, and the food information is only available in a digital format. As a blind student i couldnt read the menu, and asked the cafeteria, please provide the menu in braille or posted online or email it to me. I have technology that allows me to access websites and email. The cafeteria manager told me, we are very busy. With over 1000 students. We dont have time to do special things for students with special needs. Just to be clear, Everyone Needs to eat. Theres this myth that are two kinds of people, dependent and independent. Everyone is interdependent. Many of you like drinking coffee. Very few grow your own coffee beans. You depend on other people to grow your beans, your food, build your computers. Thats okay as long as we are honest about the fact that we all interdependent. The cafeteria manager didnt understand this, so for several months i just tolerated the lack of access to food. I was a vegetarian back then. How do you know which station is serving vegetarian food when you cant read the menu . It was frustrating. As a deafblind student i would go to a station at random, get food, find a table, try the food, and discover an unpleasant surprise. What was i to do . Maybe disabled student should just accept inferior service. Maybe that was just going to be my life due to inferior services for ever and ever. I talked to friends, advocates, and they reminded me my choice. Its our choice to accept unfairness or advocate for justice. I went back to the manager and explained, the americans with disability act for discrimination against disability. If you dont provide access to the menus, im going to take legal action. I have no idea how to do that. I was 19. I couldnt afford a lawyer. Now i know there are nonprofit Legal Centers that help students with disabilities, but back then i didnt know that. All i knew is had to try, i had to do something. The next day the manager apologized and promised to make the menus accessible. He actually did. He started emailing me the menus. Life became delicious. The next year a new blind student came to the college, and yet immediate access to the menus. That taught me when i advocate it helps everyone who comes after me. That experience in college inspired me to go to law school. I went to harvard law. Harvard said they never had a deafblind student before. I told them i had never been to Harvard Law School before. We didnt know what all the solutions would be, but we had an interactive process to find the solutions and make it work. Now i i work as an advocate for disabled people. I know theres injustice, and i know theres a weight of injustice. All of us have a choice to accept unfairness, to tolerate it, or advocate for justice. My book, haben the deafblind woman who conquered harvard law helps people identify all the injustices against disabled people. Maybe not all of them but a lot of them. And encourages people to join us in fighting to end injustice against disabled people. A lot of people dont know about access for the disabled. There are tools like the web content accessibility guideline guidelines. Some people say they dont know about them. They give them the opportunity to learn about them. If they have education and still refuse to make their services accessible, then theres the ada. Then there are consequences. People have had 30 years to learn this. There are no more euses. Strong advocates, research what theyre talking about. Books help you gain a deeper understanding of the topic. When youre facing a difficult situation, thats exactly when you need to be an advocate for justice. It you have the energy, yes, advocate for change. I joined sometimes those of us advocate all the time experience advocacy fatigue, and we need to take a break, recharge. At that point it really helps when you have a community. Help continue the advocacy, they will cheer for you and empathize and hel you rechae. Community is a really big part of advocacy. So two things. One, there is a lot of it injustice against disabled people. If you can turn that off and pretend it doesnt exist and stop thinking about it, thats a privilege. Its a privilege to not think about disability issues. Libraries around the country have the opportunity to increase access for disabled patrons. Tax, books are critical to knowledge texts and expanding opportunity. Make sure digital services, library websites, digital books are accessible and readers with print readi disability like dyslexia and learning disabilities. Increase access to braille text as well. The National Library service for the blind has been auge part of my life. Going up i would get so many books from nls, harry potter books. I got this from the library of congress. The library of congress braille and talking book program is one of the few programs in the country where blind people can get physical hardcover braille books. Books i could actually hold and feel. This is precious and rare, but it is really, really hard for blind people to get our hands on braille books. So for most of my life when i got a physical braille book, it was through the library of congress. We also have computer braille, refreshable braille such as on devices like this. And when a digital bk is compatible with screen reader, blind people can read it on their braille computer. We also can access braille books digitally. We do nee to increase access to Braille Computers. They are expensive. There are some programs, Government Programs and nonprofits that provide Braille Computers to blind individuals. But its really difficult to get access to them. Weeknights this week we feature booktv programs as a preview of what is available every weekend on cspan2. Tonight we focus on science, political scientist deborah stone argues numbers arent objective planes numerous ways impact our daily lives. Neuroscientist and author David Eagleman explores the evolution of the brain and look to the future of Artificial Intelligence in his book live wired the inside story of the everchanging brain. The female brain is more susceptible to dementia and alzheimers disease than the male brain. And that starts tuesday at 8 00 pm, enjoy booktv,. Booktv on cspan2 has taught nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Saturday at 9 00 pm eastern former president barack obama reflects on his life and political career on his newly released memoir a promised land. Sunday at 9 00 pm eastern on after words, open markets Institute DirectorSally Hubbard and 7 ways big corporations ruiyour life and how to take back control. She is interviewed by david mc laughl. Former appellate judge and University Law professor Douglas Ginsburg and his book voices of our republic. Examines the constitution through the eyes of judges, legal scholars and historians. Watch booktv on cspan2 this weekend and watch in depth live sunday december 6th at noon eastern with our guest, author and chair of africanamerican studies at princeton university. You are watching booktv on cspan2, every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2 created by americas Cable Television company as a Public Service and brought to you by your television provider. The Nevada Supreme Court needs to certify the state election results. Watch at noon eastern on cspan, listen live on the free cspan radio apps. Today, president elect joe biden and Vice President elect Kamala Harris will name key Foreign Policy and National Security personnel including tony lincoln a secretary of state, Jake Sullivan is National Security adviser and april haynes as director of national intelligence. Watch live at 1 00 pm on cspan, cspan. Org or listen on the free cspan radio apps. Welcome to scottsdale,