Transcriber: Mai Ngân Nguyễn Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
I love meeting new people.
Getting coffee, talking about new ideas, connecting on LinkedIn.
it’s my favorite part of the day.
Whenever someone asks me what my go to hobby is, I say networking.
These past four years as a business major at the University of Maryland,
I got the chance to go on these really cool networking trips
to companies in New York.
During my senior year,
one company we were visiting gave us visitors passes
and all we had to do was simply get our photos taken to be put on our name badges.
Our tour ended up being delayed by 10 minutes
because it wasn’t that simple of a process for me.
The cameras were positioned at a particular height
and were unable to be adjusted to aim lower.
And there were no stepladders provided for me
to be able to get my face in the camera frame.
So given this, some of the employees have to find another camera,
take my photo with that, upload that to the database
and print it out.
Before coming to my university and becoming a business major,
I was apprehensive, to say the least.
Not only because the transition from high school to college is nerve-racking,
but because I knew that the business world
was not known for being the most diverse.
I have a condition called Achondroplasia,
which is the most common form of dwarfism.
Dwarfism occurs in around 1 in every 10 000 births,
meaning if there are 330 million people in the United States,
only 33 000 of us have dwarfism.
You could almost fit us all into the Capital One arena
at the Verizon Center in D.C
That’s a small population.
And thus, there was a good chance
that I was the only little person or person with dwarfism
that these working professionals had been acquainted with.
The fact that this New York company didn’t have
a quick solution to taking my photo was a big indicator of this.
And when we’re introduced to something
that’s so different from our version of the norm,
we don’t know how to address it or how to create space for it.
But the important thing here, though, is to be open
to learning about how we can do so.
There is an accessibility inequity
between members of the disability community
and people who do find themselves represented in society.
It doesn't matter where we are in our career journeys,
we have the ability to do our parts to close this gap,
both as members of this underrepresented population and allies.
We need to be aware of the people around us who don't have a voice
and bring them into the conversation to feel hurt.
Now, disability is such a broad term and encompasses so many different types.
And my talk today, I’m specifically going to be talking about my physical disability
and physical disabilities generally.
But I'm hoping that all of you will take the time to educate yourselves about
the different disabilities out there and how we can accommodate
each and every one of them.
Now, it’s not enough to just have one person talk about
the importance of disability representation.
If we don't see it in the world around us,
we're not going to understand how to accommodate for it or how to be inclusive.
There's a concept known as a schema, which is essentially a stereotype,
and it's formed based off of what we see in the media
and our own personal experiences.
For instance, if we repeatedly see members of
a demographic group with which we’re not familiar
portrayed in a certain way in films and advertisements,
we’re going to subconsciously make a connection
from what we see on screen to what we see in real life.
Similarly, our own personal experiences of interacting with something beforehand
inform how we interact with things similar to it in the future.
People with disabilities don't typically have a voice in the media,
so one in five people have a disability, physical, neurological or cognitive,
and yet we don't see this representation in the media we consume,
which inevitably leads to a lack of accurate education about this demographic.
When we do see disability representation, it tends to be derogatory or comedic,
even with Disney having a repeated history of negative portrayals.
Some examples I’ve noted include the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz,
the Seven Dwarfs in Snow White and the Oompa Loompas in Willy Wonka.
These characters are often whimsical and dumb and often labeled as weird.
And sometimes these characters are fictitious,
possibly to not directly use people with disabilities as the butt of the joke.
But when the physicalities align with people who have physical disabilities
or the behavior aligns with those who have neurological
or cognitive disabilities,
it’s not difficult to draw the connection
from what we see on screen to what we see in real life.
I remember in high school being asked if I was going to dress as a leprechaun
for St. Patrick’s Day
or dressed as an elf for the Christmas holidays.
When young people are exposed to these media depictions,
there’s a greater chance that these examples will be used to inform
their schema of what people with disabilities are capable of.
Especially if this is the only exposure to this demographic that they have.
And so begins a chain reaction where these kids
and these students grow up to become leaders in the workplace
and they get to make decisions about hiring and who they want in their teams.
And who do you think they’re more likely to pick?
Someone who resembles the able-bodied Prince or someone who resembles
Goofy the dwarf?
The problem here is that the people working behind the scenes,
these organizations, both in the media and otherwise,
aren't always representative of the populations they serve or depict.
That's because, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
only 18 percent of the disability population
was employed in the US workforce in 2020.
So it makes sense that their perspective
isn’t usually taken into account when it comes to representation.
The fact is, people with disabilities go to school, go to work, work hard,
get married, do numerous activities. They live as normally as the next guy.
But what we see on screen doesn’t showcase this normalization.
That's why it's so important to take what you see on screen with a grain of salt,
because chances are it’s not an accurate portrayal.
But how do we break this constant cycle of inaccuracies?
We can start by getting the right people in the room,
in the organizations we interact with every day
to make these decisions on representation.
In recent years, companies, nonprofits,
colleges and universities themselves have generally been working
to emphasize more diversity and inclusion in their environments
by bringing in people from
different backgrounds to apply and attend their institutions.
Now, equity is a term that's similar to diversity and inclusion.
But I don’t I don’t think it’s spoken about enough.
Equity is essentially about giving everyone the same opportunities
and accommodating their abilities to take advantage of said opportunities.
In this image, you have three people trying to watch a baseball game.
Now, they clearly don’t have tickets to the game
because they have to watch over a fence.
But that’s a different topic.
And what we see here is the difference between equality and equity.
In the image on the left, each person is given one box
to stand on to help them see the game.
However, this doesn't actually solve the problem for the small person.
They're still unable to see.
Some people need more accommodations than others
in order to get the same things done.
And that’s where this concept of equity comes into play
as depicted in the image on the right,
where each person is now able to see over the fence and watch
the game with accommodations distributed,
depending on who needs what the most.
In college, with the companies I interacted with,
I noticed that many of them preached diversity and inclusion,
but very few actually walked the talk.
And I didn’t really see that equity aspect.
There was a disconnect between what the companies were saying
and what they were actually doing.
So I rarely saw someone with my physical disability
or with a physical disability generally behind the scenes.
In order to solve this problem,
what companies can do is work to recruit more people with disabilities to apply
by hiring these capable individuals.
Companies would then be able to get that representation behind the scenes.
Now, hiring more people with disabilities
and getting the behind the scenes
that checks out the requirement for diversity.
But then these companies would need to foster
an environment where these people would be able to be respected
and listened to and heard.
That tracks off the requirement for inclusion.
But what about equity?
So with the company I visited in New York,
where I needed to get my photo taken,
that equity seemed to be missing
since those accommodations were not readily available.
By hiring these capable individuals with disabilities
and allowing them the space to decide where accommodations may be needed,
these companies would be able to grow their understanding
and awareness of how people with disabilities can function
in the workplace and in society.
Now, I don't think I can directly tell this New York company what to do
and tell them to make their services more accessible.
What I can do, even as a student,
is effect small changes here and there
in my immediate community to get that equitable ball rolling.
And that's what I've been doing.
And some of the restrooms at the university’s business school,
the soap dispensers are placed along the far wall
on the other side of the counter,
unable to be reached by people with physical disabilities
that affect their height.
I made it a goal to promote accessibility
in the form of additional reachable soap dispensers.
It took me a good three years to summon the courage and
the credibility in order to bring up this design flaw
with the building services team.
Primarily because I was seemingly
the only person actually affected by this issue.
And so throughout college,
what I did was take a leadership positions and grow
and expand my network in order to build up that reputation and that credibility.
And what I realized was that every interaction that
I had with my fellow students, and my faculty members,
could be used to inform and alter their schema about what little people
and hopefully, by extension, people with disabilities are capable of.
And so I gained allies to help me advocate
I’m part of this restroom accessibility initiative.
And I was grateful for that.
But that experience isn’t universal.
And even though new soap dispensers were installed, the job still isn’t done.
So what we need to do now is focus on what else is missing,
whose needs are not being served and why.
In order for an organization to best serve those populations that
benefit from war will benefit from their services,
they need representation from said populations and allies
to help speak on behalf of them
to be part of the decision making processes.
And even though I was really the only person affected
by the soap dispensers at the time,
my addressing this accessibility issue clears a path to provide the service
for other students with these physical disabilities
who will attend a school in the future.
Accessibility isn’t just being able to reach a soap dispenser,
take a photo from a highly placed camera.
It's the need to access all places where decisions are being made,
decisions that affect us and others to come.
Right now, it kind of seems like a Catch-22.
So in order to change representation,
we need more people with disabilities to be behind the scenes.
But a reason that people with disabilities aren’t behind the scenes as much
is because of current representation.
Can this issue be solved overnight?
No, but I’m hoping that all of you will take these next three steps with you
to start changing your perceptions yourselves.
First, and this is so much easier said than done.
But keep an open mind about what you see on screen.
So this is typically the only representation
that people with disabilities, but it’s not accurate.
So try not to let it affect your perceptions about
this underrepresented demographic.
Second, take a look at the public areas around you.
What are some of the activities you do every day?
Go to a coffee shop, get on a bus, walk on a curb.
A professor of mine recently had knee surgery
and was talking about how difficult it was to navigate these everyday activities
while on crutches.
Some people with certain physical disabilities
face this difficulty every day of their lives.
Next time you're out and about in public,
take note of these public spaces to grow your awareness
of these accessibility issues.
Finally, if you were someone who sees themselves represented,
if your voice is typically heard,
you can be the ally to help clear room of the table
for people whose voices normally go unheard.
Pay attention to the people around you,
listen to them and bring them into the conversation.
You may be able to learn about something you've never even considered before.
I'm hoping that this talk helps begin bridging that disability education gap
and that each and every one of you takes what you heard here today
to help us get to a more accessible and inclusive society.
Thank you.