Introduction to Disability Access and Inclusion 101 – Equity and Inclusion Speaker Series

[Sharon Youmans]

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to today's session of the equity and inclusion Speaker Series. My name is Sharon Youmans and I serve as executive vice dean for the School of Pharmacy. Before we begin today, we would like to formally introduce Ryan Hernandez and Stephanie Hsia, the School's recently appointed co vice deans of diversity, equity and inclusion. Dr. Hernandez is faculty member in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences. And Dr. Hsia is a faculty member in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy. Both have made great strides in building opportunities for students in their fields, at the School of Pharmacy, and we are excited for them to develop and implement new DEI initiatives in the School of Pharmacy. At this time, I'll turn it over to Stephanie, and then to Ryan to say a few words.

[Stephanie Hsia]
Thank you, Sharon, for that introduction. So hello, everyone. I'm very excited to be taking on this leadership role with regards to DEI and very excited to work with Ryan, my co Vice Dean, and help to bridge some of those connections between our PharmD and our PhD programs and students and to just create an overall, you know, plan and process for DEI related things in our school. You know, I think the creation of these positions by Dean Giacomini really shows how important this work is and how much we want to highlight it and really put it as a focus in our next coming five years. So I'm very excited to hear from all of you and to work with all of you in promoting and improving DEI and health equity in our school.

[Ryan Hernandez]
Wonderful, I'm super excited to be here. Thank you for the introduction, super excited to work with Stephanie. And I'm really happy to be in a position where we can help push forward lots of new ideas. And that's where the big work will, will lie. And so while Stephanie and I have been sort of nominally named co vice Dean's of DEI. This is really a community effort. And so we are looking forward to hearing from you and to working with you to learn where the pressure points might be. What's been done so far, what's been effective, what hasn't been effective. And what should our next steps be? You know, I think diversity, equity and inclusion are central to making UCSF and continue at UCSF continuing to be a leader in both medicine, pharmacy as well as research and accessibility and is certainly going to be one essential component of that. While it's not officially named, I think this is important that we are introduced in this equity and inclusion series. And starting off in our roles as vice deans with an accessibility focused session, because I think that is a really important part that isn't talked about as much, but certainly needs to be an important component. So by all means, please do feel free to reach out to me or Stephanie, with ideas and any plans or hopes that you'd like to see come to reality, and we'd be happy to work on them.

[Sharon Youmans]
Okay, thank you, both Stephanie and Ryan, for your words of encouragement. And we're excited to see the great work that you're going to be doing as we move forward and we are glad to have you on the leadership team as stewards of DEI for the school. Now, I would like to introduce today's program. The equity inclusion Speaker Series is an ongoing series that aims to explore issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the school and for us to be able to brainstorm ways to address these issues. Today's discussion will be on a training session, and that's entitled disability access and inclusion 101. And I am thrilled to introduce our guest speakers, Wendy Tobias and Cecile Puretz, both from UCSF Office of Diversity and outreach. So Wendy serves as chief accessibility and inclusion officer an inaugural role for both UCSF and the entire UC system. She also serves as the ADA coordinator. And as a member of the Office of Diversity and outreach. She focuses on ensuring that UCSF, UCSF is an inclusive place for people with disabilities, it's a big job. to further support and advance this work an additional role was created in the Office of Diversity and outreach. And we're pleased to welcome Cecile Puretz, who is the Assistant Director of disability access and inclusion, Cecile provides consultation around accessibility events, serves as a liaison to students with disabilities, and produces disability cultural events. Today's training serves as an important starting point for us to learn about disability access inclusion, and to continue to make strides to be more inclusive, equitable, and just in our School of Pharmacy. Before we begin the session, if you have any questions, please drop them in the Q&A window, the chat box will be disabled, and this session will be recorded. And there's closed captioning available for those who need it. And if you have any questions at the end, we will entertain them at the conclusion of the presentations. So people can either put their questions in the chat if they're more comfortable or in the Q&A, I'm sorry. And then you can also unmute and ask your question as well. So now I'm going to turn it over to Wendy and Cecile. And thank you both for being here.

[Wendy Tobias]
thank you so much for that kind introduction. And we are so happy to be here. Thank you all of the attendees for being here this afternoon. I know, it's like it's like the nap or snack time. So if you need to grab a snack, get one. But don't take a nap. All right. So still is kind of setting up our slides here. So I'll just wait till she's able to get that up. Perfect. Thank you, Cecile. So we can move to the next slide. So we went over a couple of these Getting Started items. But I will go over the items that we haven't yet gone over before we begin and then I'll introduce our group here. So just again, if you would like to have the subtitles or captions on, you can go to where the little three dots are on the bottom right hand corner and click that either it'll say there's a closed caption or subtitles, and you can click that and it'll show up for you and you can move it around anywhere you want. And, you know, just a note, as we talk through everything today, that access, it's a process just like really any DEI conversation. And it's not a checklist. We never are sort of complete or done but we're always working to do better. And in the context of this webinar, you know, this is a brave space, where we hope that as we go through some of the items today, you'll jot down some questions in the Q&A that you have. And it is very true. We've seen it over and over that, you know, please ask the question, because someone sitting virtually next to you probably is wondering the same thing. And that's very true in the realm of disability access, as well. So please, please do ask your questions. And of course, we aim to create a space of mutual respect, of course, just a brief content warning, though, we are not going to go deep into anything that I think will be particularly startling to anyone, we are talking about disability and some of the injustices that have happened to folks with disabilities historically. So if you do need to step away, or turn down your volume for a few seconds, please feel free to do that. And finally, using the space to question what, you know, Cecile, and I, though we are in these particular roles, which have been explained to you, we also are not experts at everything related to disability that one could ever know. Each of us brings a particular perspective, and insight. And so I, you know, in that context, question what each of us knows, and then think about what we each individually might bring to each other in these conversations as we move forward. All right. So let's get started. Just a couple other quick things about myself that you should know, I happen to have low vision. So I often get a little too close to the zoom to my monitor to read my own PowerPoint. So I'm sorry in advance. Please feel free to turn off my face if you need to. I'm legally blind. I happen to have a background as a counselor or a psychotherapist. And we already talked about my role. And now I'd like to introduce Cecile Puretz to say a few words about herself.

[Cecile Puretz]
Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you again for welcoming us today. My name is Cecile Puretz, and I use she her pronouns. And I joined UCSF, just about a year ago. And as mentioned, I serve as the assistant director of disability access and inclusion. A little bit about my background, I've worked in the disability advocacy field for most of my career, particularly in arts and cultural organizations, but also in city agencies. So I'm so thrilled to be joining UCSF in this important program to really improve the climate for people with disabilities at UCSF. And thank you, Dr. Youmans for sharing a little bit about my role. One thing that I did want to add is that I also work on site two days a week, we just launched a Disability Resource Center at the Millberry Union Parnassus Center. So I invite you to join us, if you ever would like to come and visit. I'll pass it back to you, Wendy. Thanks.

Unknown Speaker
Okay, so just a very quick one slide overview about our office, office of disability access and inclusion. We, of course, promote disability, pride, culture and hope to eliminate barriers to access here at UCSF for all our constituencies. So that also means, you know, what are our constituencies right? Our learners, our patients, our employees, our faculty, and staff and our guests. We provide as we are today, education and training, also individualized consultation around disability access and inclusion. So please reach out to us if you have any particular questions, and we would love to speak with you. We also over the course of the year and are continuing to develop sort of Disability Cultural related programming, where we can explore disability identity and pride and so forth, as well as sort of what is access but who are we as people with disabilities and who is the disability community? Um, and then the last item I just want to let you know about is my particular role as ADA coordinator. Well, what the heck does that mean, you may wonder, and in part, what that means is in relation to consultations, I can work with parties informally, in many instances if there is a complaint or concern around an accommodation request, and it could be from that the complainant themselves, or it could be one of you, a staff member who are working with someone and you're realizing there's something that's kind of gritty and you're not really sure what to do about it. I will give the caveat that there are certain instances where working through Student Disability Services or disability management services first is always good, but my door is an open door and if we need to get you through another door, first, I will make sure that happens. So just some notes on that. All right. So let's get into the meat of it and to do so we're gonna have Cecile start us out.

[Cecile Puretz]
All right, so let's get started. So this slide is including D disability in diversity so I really wanted to start off and frame our conversation around the idea that disability is a natural part of human diversity. And historically, disability has really been overlooked as a real dimension of disability of disability, and is often a forgotten minority, which in fact, is actually the largest intersectional minority in the world that crosses that intersects across race, gender, economic status, LGBTQ identity, age and so much more. It's really important to also know that in across our sort of lifespan, we will all at some point experience some change in disability status at some point, whether that's temporary or permanent. So one of the things that's really exciting about the position of our office is that it's actually under the Office of Diversity and outreach. And so we are working in collaboration with our other cultural and identity resource centers to really elevate and uplift diversity as a really central and core and especially valued part of diversity. So another key idea that I wanted to use our to frame our conversation is that disability has often so long that's associated with fear, stigma, and even depression, oppression and discrimination. And Disability Pride is not something that traditionally society would equate with disability. But in fact, there are many very rich and vibrant disability communities that really identify with disability pride as a way to authentically Express and identify themselves. And so I wanted to share this quote from disabled world. It reads disabled pride has been decided defined as accepting and honoring each person's uniqueness and seeing it as a natural and beautiful part of human diversity. So now, I wanted to pass it on to Wendy to share a little bit more about how are we defining disability?

[Wendy Tobias]
Thanks, Cecile. Alright, so there's many ways to define disability, as you probably know, or can guess, but I would like to give you a couple of the legal definitions to start out. So firstly, physical or mental impairment that limits a major life activity or substantially limits a major activity life activity. So if we're thinking of employment, just to let you know, in California, we have a law called the Fair Employment and Housing Act. And disability is defined as a physical ailment or mental impairment that limits a major life activity versus substantially limits, which is the definition under the ADA. So California, leaves the door a little bit more open for what is a disability than some other states do. So that's just something to know in relation to employment law in particular. So of course, at UCSF, we abide by the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, a whole slew of UC policies and UCSF policies and so forth, that rely on access in health care and via an environment, the Affordable Care Act and so forth, as well applies okay. So here's another definition. The World Health Organization, and this one kind of broadens the scope of the definition of disability a little bit more and it reads, disability results from the interaction between individuals with a health condition such as cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome and depression as well as personal and environmental factors, including negative attitude, inaccessible transportation and public buildings and limited social support. So here, we start to talk about the environment of disability. So it's not just the person what are they? What is their disability, but what how is the environment interacting with the person with a disability to actually create the disability? Okay. And here we have an even broader definition of disability. So, from Sins Invalid, and that definition is this. We define disability broadly to include people with physical impairments, people who belong to a sensory minority, people with emotional disabilities, people with cognitive challenges, and those with chronic or severe illness. We understand the experience of disability to occur within any and all walks of life, with deeply felt connections to all communities impacted by the medicalization of their bodies, including trans gender variant and intersex people and others whose bodies do not conform to our cultures nor notions of normal or functional. All right. So I'm going to toss it now to sale to talk a little bit about what different of different disabilities might look like. Yeah,

[Cecile Puretz]
thank you, Wendy. So really, when we're thinking about building an inclusive environment, whether that's a learning environment, or a work environment, it's really important to understand the range of people who make up the disability community. I think one of the biggest myths that I've encountered in my work about disability is that disability, people with disabilities are a monolithic community, right, which is, which is really incorrect. Because there's incredible diversity and how people identify in their conditions and their disabilities. It's also important to know that a disabled person may have more than one current co occurring disability. And then lastly, this idea that not all disabilities are visible. So disabilities can be physical, as we saw in the definition, they can be sensory, mental, or psychological, cognitive disabilities can also include chronic health or medical conditions. And then we also just talked about CO occurring disabilities, where people can either have or acquire multiple disabilities throughout their life, which may be permanent, or, or not, or non permanent. So really, all of these disabilities fall within the umbrella. And like I mentioned, they can be permanent, it could be a spinal cord injury, we could they can be temporary. So so maybe somebody has a fall or a car accident and breaks a leg. And they can also be visible, or non visible as many are, which may include a chronic chronic health condition, chronic pain, depression, or other types of non visible disabilities. So as part of our presentation, we also wanted to provide a couple of fast facts so that we're really introducing you to the larger landscape of disability in research, but not only at UCSF, but also nationally. So to give you a sense, one in four people, according to the CDC, have adults with disabilities. So that's about 26% of our adult population in the US, which is quite significant number. And then when we zoom in and look at students in post secondary education, we find that 19% of students have reported or unreported disabilities. And one of the reasons why we listed unreported is that we anticipate that this number, this percentage is actually likely a lot higher. But due to sort of this persistent stigma and fear of disclosure around disability status, particularly within medical education, or STEM fields, there is a sort of a persistent undercurrent of under reporting. And then what we know from UCSF we know that 11% of faculty 20% of learners and 18% of staff report disabilities. And again, we anticipate this number to be larger due to the stigma of disclosing disability. And then when we look in 2020 17.9% of people with disabilities were employed, versus close to 62% of non disabled workers. So this represents a very significant 44% difference. And we'll talk a little bit when we will talk a little bit later, because this does to stick is particularly relevant to some initiatives that we have go underway to expand expand employment opportunities for people with disabilities at UCSF. Okay,

[Wendy Tobias]
and I also wanted to show you a couple slides from the climate survey, you may have seen these before in a town hall or something like that. But there's only I think, two of them that we're going to show you today. So the most recent climate survey, this states that those with a disability experienced exclusionary behavior at higher rates than those without so within the past year, have you been shunned, ignored intimidating, offensive behavior, hostile, bullied harassing behavior? Have you experienced any of these so those with a disability 38% said they have experienced exclusionary behavior versus 22%, but those without so that's just something to consider. And then the next slide is with relation to discrimination. And what I want you to know first about this slide is that this says 15% of respondents with a disability say they have been discriminated against based on their disability But you should know that this is 15% out of a grand total of 3% of people who have reported feeling discriminated against from the entire population. So it's not 15% of people, but it's 15% of the 3%. However, you know, noting that it is still a larger population of people who, who felt discriminated against for people with disabilities. Okay. So I'd like to kind of move on to some conceptual items that you may or may not have heard of before and talk through them a little bit with you, you can pretend we're having a conversation with some coffee or whatever beverage, and I'm gonna tell you a little bit about models of disability. And, first of all, I'd like to start out with the charitable model. So this is kind of a tour through history a little bit. So for those of us who are at least as old as me, if not older, we might remodel we might remember the Jerry Lewis telethons or other telethons related to disability, raising money for those quote, unquote, poor hopeless souls that could not do for themselves. Only people without disabilities could raise the funds and so forth. That's the kind of epitome of the charitable model of disability, and how disabilities sort of really started to be seen in many ways in society. And then, I would say that not completely next in chronology, but also at sort of the same time is what we call the medical model of disability. And the medical model of disability basically states that, hey, I, as an individual with a disability, I have the issue, I must be fit, someone must fix my low vision, someone else actually who's an expert, beyond myself must fix my low vision. And then I can participate in society. And what I would like to say about the medical model is, I always like to call attention to the fact that the UCSF system is a health care medical system. We know we are here in many ways to help people live their healthiest and best lives. And the medical model does not say that we shouldn't do that, you know, disability, no models of disability say we shouldn't help people live their best lives. But if we only say that other people are the only experts about people with disabilities, rather than the person with a disability themselves, then there's some thinking that we need to do around that. And we'll talk about that a little bit in just a moment. But if you think medical model, it's someone else is the expert, and the person with a disability basically needs to be fixed or accommodated so that they can participate in society. And then we move on to a little bit more recent, in chronology here, which we call the social or environmental model of disability, there's a couple different types of names people call it, but in essence, these models say, Hey, okay, actually, it's how the individual or individuals with disabilities interact with their environment, whether that environment is the physical or built environment, like steps or roads, ramps, and things like that, or digital accessibility, for instance, or the attitudinal environment. So that could mean a hiring committee and admissions committee, researchers and so on and health care providers. So and how does that? How does that interaction with the environment actually create the disability? So, for instance, you know, I'll just give you an example of attitudinal environment. Say we have a hiring committee. And let's say there's a candidate who is hard of hearing, and we're doing zoom interviews, and the candidate has let us know they're hard at hearing, but they don't want to create too many waves. But maybe, you know, one member of the hiring committee says, Hey, let's put all the interview questions in the chat and zoom so the person can read the questions as they go through the interview. And let's say some, maybe one or two people in the interview committee go, now, we're not going to do that. That's unfair to the other people, right. So, you know, does that person with the hearing disability now maybe have a particular disadvantage? Because maybe they're not picking up all the intricacies of the interview question or the social cues in that interview? So going back to that social model, you know, how does the individual with disability interact with the environment and does that environment itself actually create the disability or alleviate the disability in some way? And then moving on I would say probably the newest, if you will, but not entirely new, conceptually model is sort of the disability identity and pride and culture movement, disability identity, for instance, that's something I've been researching in my own doctoral studies. But it is not completely new, though. It is suddenly the COVID I think has really helped this movement move forward very quickly. And this basically says, Hey, wait a minute, you know, there are other identity development models, many of us are familiar with Erickson's just general identity development model. But then there are you know, racial identity development, LGBTQ etc. Identity Development, but often we tend to we don't think about disability identity development, what does that mean to us? So, and also that discipline, folks with disabilities are, as Cecile mentioned, the largest minoritized group in the world, because anyone can join it. So how, you know, how do we celebrate ourselves and our strengths and what we bring to society. So that's your two to five minute history lesson on the models of disabilities, but it helps contextualize, really everything that we're going to talk about today. Okay. And I believe I'm still on with language, correct? Cecile? That's correct. Okay, I'll keep going. So we get a lot of questions about language. And firstly, we're going to give you sort of the sort of best practices version of language here, it is not the absolute end all be all, you may do something slightly different. And that's okay. But this is sort of the general best practices. So in general, the if you don't know how a person with a disability would like to refer to themselves, then we advise person first language, so person with a disability, or person who has autism or fill in the blank.

[Wendy Tobias]
There are however, some disability groups that tend, and besides the word tend to want to use identity first language. So, so people might say a disabled person, like for instance, I'm okay. If you say, yeah, when he's disabled, you know, and I won't be offended. But sometimes the Autistic community or the deaf community does prefer, you know, to say, yes, he's autistic, or she's deaf, something like that. But best practice just like personal program pronouns, excuse me, like she her, he has cetera. You can ask a person if you're not sure, how would they would like to be referred to if it's in context to your conversation. More importantly, though, I think that avoiding jargon and other stigmatizing language is very useful. There are some euphemistic phrases out there differently abled, special needs. That's one of my least favorite ones. And society too, special needs. A lot of parents will say, wait a minute, Wendy, though. What about special education in K through 12? And I know, isn't it terrible? No one has a special need. We all have needs period. And some of us have one need or the other. But no other need is that more special or less special than the other. However, if you're going to just choose one to exit from your vocabulary today, it would probably be the H word handicapped. Often that word is seen as offensive, derogatory, and so forth. So and even the DMV, because some people have said, “But Wendy, it's used in handicap parking.” Actually, no, it's not anymore. DMV has changed their language to I believe accessible parking placard for instance. Another thing to think about is when we're referring to people with disabilities, maybe either in our conversations or in our writing, to avoid the, you know, other negative language such as she suffers from is a victim of or confined to a wheelchair. Oftentimes, people who use wheelchairs actually without that wheelchair, they would not feel very liberated, it's generally a very freeing thing for people with disabilities at some point in their development around their disability identity. And another one tends to be to use hard of hearing rather than hearing impaired with the word impaired being the sort of the word that people find a little bit more hard to take. Okay. So now I'm going to toss it to seal. This is a couple minute video, and I'll let her set it up for you. All right,

[Cecile Puretz]
so we're gonna watch a short disability sensitivity training video that highlights some of the themes that we just talked around about, specifically referring to language, sort of etiquette, but also sort of The role that sort of attitudinal barriers and sort of perceptions and bias play in our interactions with people with disabilities

[Video begins]
Good morning Rob. Morning there, man. Morning Alice.

There's no need to be awkward. poor Bob, like so many of us, he just doesn't know how to interact with people with disabilities.

It's pretty easy, really. People with disabilities are people first. We need the same things that every person needs like respect. Good morning, everyone. Attention.

Okay, maybe we need to be more specific.

The easiest way to show respect is to focus on the person, not the disability. It's Okay, you'll get the hang of it.

One easy way to focus on the person is to watch the person signing. And not their interpreter or their companion.

It's really cool that you'd like to help. But do us both a favor and please ask me first. What you think might be helping - I got you. Oh, no. might actually not. If you'd like to offer me help. Let me hold on to your elbow. Don't take mine. Hey, would you like to take my arm? Sure.

Assistive devices help us to live our lives. They're really important and really personal.

grabbing them, always it makes it weird for everyone.

But please only touch our devices and service animals if we've given you permission. And don't take it personally, if I ask you not to. remember that my service animal helps me all the time. Neither of us would like it if we were separated.

Remember, we make our own decisions. We send documents, vote, volunteer, work and pay taxes.

We get married. So don't underestimate me just because I have a great smile. Just because I'm blind does not mean I'm deaf.

Just because I'm deaf doesn't mean I'm blind.

And just because I use a wheelchair doesn't mean that I can't sweep you off your feet.

So take a deep breath. Relax. We don't bite.

Unless we're really hungry.

Your lady how are you? And if you're not sure what to do, just ask. Hi, would you like to see a menu? I know. Thanks. But can you please read it to me? Sure. Definitely.

Just treat us the way you would want to be treated. And we'll all be okay

morning. Good. Morning, Alice. Awkward, no more

[Video ends]

[Cecile Puretz]
All right. So we're going to transition to our next slide

[Wendy Tobias]
Okay, okay. So thanks for watching that little video with us. It's a little ridiculous we know but it's also gets the point across in somewhat of a comedic fashion which is hopefully how you take the video so now we're going to take a kind of a hard right turn in our discussion here and talk a little bit more about what I like to call the myth of the ADA and people have actually said Hey, Wendy, we have the ADA. So hasn't that kind of, you know, taken away all the barriers that people with disabilities have we have a law we have laws and people can be accommodated. Unfortunately, that is not true. So and in fact, having a law speak that is still clearly in very much need of being enforced time and time again, by the you know the judiciary speaks to the need to continue this work around access and inclusion. So one of the words I want to make sure everyone here knows about, many of you probably have heard this word before. But just in case there is someone who hasn't. The word is ableism. And that's the reason why we still need things like the ADA. And even things like these trainings. And that's, you know, just a learning that we all are going to be a part of. So ableism is the discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities, based on the belief that typical abilities are superior at its heart. Ableism is rooted in the assumption that disabled people require fixing and defines people by their disability. So, and ableism suggests that the social or physical environment, as I talked about before in those models, is what, in many cases, disables people. So what I want to outline here is that because of ableism, we are all called to focus on making our environments accessible and ensure disability is part of the conversation about diversity. So I'm going to move to the next slide here. And a definition by TL Lewis, and TL's definition reads ableism is a system that places value on people's bodies and minds, based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, intelligence, excellence and productivity. These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in anti blackness, eugenics, colonialism and capitalism. And she goes on to say more, but this is the most important piece of it. And, you know, it's really important to also note here that things like racism, and ableism, they are stuck together like super glue, they cannot be taken apart and dealt with separately, which is why we need to work on them both at the same time. And we'll get into some examples in just a moment. Here they are. So think about as I go through some of these, that some where racism and ableism could kind of work together to the detriment of society. So here are some examples of ableism. The lack of compliance with disability rights laws like the ADA, segregating adults and children with disabilities in institutions, failing to incorporate accessibility into building design plans, building inaccessible websites, using disability as a punch line or mocking people with disabilities. Often that might happen in the media, or even in a workplace or school environment, refusing to provide reasonable accommodations, the eugenics movement of the early 1900s That included things like lobotomies forced sterilization, and more and some of these things around forced sterilization are not so far back in our history, not inviting people with disabilities to the table to things like recruitment, admissions, that your search committees and admission committees policy development, and so forth. So those are just some examples of what ableism might look like. Okay, now, we're going to have another video that Cecile will set up for us.

[Cecile Puretz]
Great, thank you, Wendy. So in this next section, we're going to be focusing on the theme of disability intersectionality. So as we learned a little bit about sort of a person's experience of disability also is impacted by other areas or other aspects of their identity. And when we look at research, we know that multiply marginalized people with disabilities experience increased discrimination, perhaps even also poor employment outcomes and health disparities. So it's really important that when we're developing, whether it's disability cultural programs, or diversity and inclusion initiatives that we're also taking into account the way that disability identity also intersects with other aspects of people's identity. So it's important to consider the impact of sexism, of trans or homophobia, and other forms of oppression. So I'm going to play a short video by Carrie Gray, who shares a little bit more about how she defines disability intersectionality.

[Video speakers]
My name is Carrie gray. Carrie Gray is a black disabled woman. And there's power behind that. In the United States, one in four in the black community have some type of disability, whether that's visible or invisible. Historically speaking, organizations and institutions have shown us that They want to identify with one thing and build power around that build influence and access. And I get it right. So this idea that you have disability rights, you have women's rights, you have LGBTQ rights. And those kinds of different pockets are really building a strong narrative. But the thing that I find to be harmful is when we're not building in coalition, because the reality is, is that you have people like myself, who are black, disabled, and women, and so many other things. And when you live at the intersections of all three of those, then you can't split your political and social dynamics between these different groups that doesn't produce real results or freedom, and it doesn't produce real results have access to employment, and other opportunities that you're looking for. I'll give one example on this. So the Black Lives Matter movement, when it was created, it was created in conjunction mostly with a lot of young folks, what was unique about this particular movement was the intersectional philosophy that was built upon the folks getting up and saying, We are not just fighting for one narrative. But we are specifically fighting for folks who are on the margins, we are fighting from black folks who are also LGBTQ, who are women who are femme, who are trans, who are disabled, they named it, they saw like their people across the country and said, I fighting for all of you, not just some of you, not just the ones that have traditionally gained power and access. And that gives me a lot of hope. Because no one wants to be left behind.

[Cecile Puretz]
Thank you all for watching that video, I did want to sort of share one idea is that one of the core sort of principles of disability justice is cross movement, solidarity. So it's exciting that our office of disability access and inclusion is also working in close partnership with our multicultural Resource Center, our LGBT Resource Center, as well as other identity and culturally specific groups on campus.

[Cecile Puretz]
Just one moment as I advance our slides, and I'll toss this out to you, Wendy.

[Wendy Tobias]
All right. So thanks for watching that video. And I'm all about taking the hard right turns today. So we're gonna take another right turn and talk a little bit about accommodations. Some of you have made have some questions about that. So I just wanted to kind of let you know as a UCSF, UCSF employee what your role is. And this may or may not be specifically your role, depending upon if you are a supervisor or manager or if you work with students, but you'll you'll know, or you can talk to your supervisor if you have questions about your particular role. So of course, we want to ensure constituents with disabilities have equal access to UCSF programs and services. And I mentioned to you before, there's a whole bunch of laws and policies that we should strive to abide by. Okay, next slide. So, first of all, we need to understand what an accommodation is in order to provide accommodations when necessary. So reasonable accommodations, or modifications, or adjustments to the tasks, environment, or the way things are usually done, that enables people with disabilities to have an equal opportunity to participate in an academic program, or a job. And I would also say, or healthcare, or etc. This is just one definition that I thought was good. So accommodations are determined on an individual case by case basis by the appropriate department. And we'll talk about that in a minute. They may be supported by appropriate medical documentation or direct observation of the disability. The accommodation doesn't compromise academic standards or fundamentally alter a program or service. And it does not cause what we call undue hardship. And what I want to say about undue hardship, legally, this usually is when someone says, but my department doesn't have enough money to accommodate XYZ. Here's the thing. Before you make that argument that you do not have enough money in your department to provide a reasonable I emphasize the word reasonable accommodation that really shouldn't be applied, provided. You should know the following legally, it is not our department. It is not our school, like School of Pharmacy, for example. It is not our cabinet area, like academic affairs or even you know, EVCP it is not even necessarily always UCSF but the entire UC system wide budget that may be called into question, if we are going to make that we don't have enough money argument. So what I encourage folks to do is if you Do you ever come up against that problem of money is to go up the chain of command to get that money if there is an actual reasonable accommodation, and there are other avenues for money around the university if we need it, but I just like to share with that with people because it's a myth out there that, that argument can be used. And in fact, it cannot. All right. Next slide. So I told you, I was going to emphasize a couple of different offices that provide accommodations around campus. So for sort of what I call day to day accommodations for students or learners disability, Student Disability Services provides those Clint, Tim and clay who you may know. And then for employees, which includes faculty and staff, and residents, and fellows and postdocs, disability management services, it's a whole team of folks that can provide reasonable accommodations for the constituent group. And so these are accommodations that have been sort of verified through what we call an interactive process, which means a conversation with either the student or employee, their supervisor, or faculty member and DMS or SDS. So accommodations could be there could be many, many things. But couple of quick examples are assistive technology, like assistive listening devices to hear in a meeting, or screen reading devices. Like for instance, I use a device that magnifies my screen well, to work, modified work schedules, maybe people need to go to a therapy, counseling or a physical therapy appointment even to be well in their work, or for students, exam accommodations, like extended time or low distraction environment. So those are not the entire list by any means. But those are just some examples. If you get a request for reasonable accommodations, you should absolutely contact SDS or DMS. And make sure that you know that they are provided being provided consistently throughout the university. All right, sorry. So we'll go on the next slide. So if you feel you can't provide an accommodation for any reason, like it's affecting your operations or fundamental alteration in the work or the school program, please contact SDS or DMS, prior to denying that accommodation to our constituent so that, you know, we can be creative around that and make sure that there isn't any other avenue before the denial is made. Please keep the identity of course and accommodations confidential. For the learner or the employee, it's a need to know basis. And of course, keeping personal health information limits in mind. Certainly UCSF is responsible for providing accommodations at clinical sites or volunteer experiences, and the like. So just know that if the funding comes if the person is participating, because they're in one of our programs, ultimately, we're responsible for providing the accommodation at one of those sites, you should know that students and employees still though, must abide by any UCSF codes of conduct or policies just like any other person. And just to let you know, for managers and supervisors, there is a UCLC reasonable accommodations in the interactive process training available that you can take, you can also contact DMS, and they can provide a live training. And finally, we encourage if you do refer somebody to DMS or SDS, that you provide them the link to the contact information via email so that you have that paper trail just in case you need it. Okay. So this is a little bit another hard turn, we're going to make circles or squares. And so we'll talk about upcoming programs and resources.

[Cecile Puretz]
Sure, thanks, Wendy. So actually, as we mentioned earlier, sort of a core sort of pillar of our program and the office of disability access and inclusion is to also advance different initiatives and programs to improve the climate for people with disabilities at UCSF. So Wendy as part of With support from the chancellor, as well as HR, and the Office of Diversity and outreach, Wendy has been working on a Chancellor's value improvement project to improve our diversity hiring Toolkit, which will be available in the coming months. And this is a particularly important tool pick toolkit because it provides hiring managers and supervisors with specific resources around how to make job descriptions, how to review the language and job descriptions to make sure that it's not intentionally or unintentionally excluding folks with disabilities from applying another real focus If this toolkit is to improve our talent, pipelines, our marketing and our outreach to really make sure that we're we're thinking broadly and inclusively about our recruitment strategies. As well as providing information about disability management services, Wendy had just mentioned, resources for accessibility and reasonable accommodations for onboarding staff with or faculty with disabilities. So we look forward to sharing you that with you all soon. Another toolkit that I'm currently working on in collaboration with our committee on disability inclusion is a planning is an accessible event toolkit. So the real purpose of this toolkit is to empower staff, faculty learners, really anyone at UCSF with best practices on how to plan, but also to facilitate accessible virtual events, hybrid events, but also in person events. And we receive a lot of questions. I think, during the pandemic, we really, this transition to remote virtual engagement has become so critical. And so I think it's also important to really remember that people do still experience a lot of real barriers to engaging in our digitally connected campus in society. So I'm also available for consultation. So if ever you have an event, and you're wondering, Hey, how do I schedule an ASL interpreter? Or how do I turn on those captions when I'm leading a zoom? Or even how do I make sure that my physical event space is welcoming to people who are accompanied by their service animals, so all of these questions, I am here to field them and to guide you to appropriate resources at UCSF. And then another program, which I'm excited to share is actually happening tomorrow, we have a quarterly series of what we're calling access lunch and learns. And these are sort of informal, intimate gatherings on Zoom, four times a year where we focus on different topics of digital accessibility. So the one coming up, actually, tomorrow from 12 to one, we'll be focusing on how to create accessible PowerPoint presentations. We all use PowerPoints, but oftentimes, there's a lot of built in tools in these products that we're not even aware of. So I'm here to share some of those resources, but also to point you to other folks in our UCSF community, such as Jill Wolters, in web, web services, who can help you evaluate your website to make sure that it's accessible. And then finally, in April, we'll have another workshop that's focused on how do you market your event to the disability community, either within UCSF, but also to be aware of community organizations in our, in our broader Bay Area? And then Wendy, did you want to talk briefly about our service animal webinar?

[Wendy Tobias]
Yes, just to let you know, if you have any connection with our health side, then there is a service animal training that I did specific to the health side of things. Because it's based on the health-side policy in our medical centers, however, anyone can watch it. It's on UCLC. And you're welcome to take a few if you can stand more video of watching me talk at you. And then it's an interesting webinar and gives you some basics around service animals, whether or not you can tell when I'm speaking about something specific, very specific to the health side, or not there.

[Cecile Puretz]
And just a quick note, to add that we will be happy to share all of these links to register for programs or to the UCLC course following the presentation.

[Wendy Tobias]
Did you want me to talk about this one. So just a concept quickly, and many of you have probably heard this word universal design. And there's also a phrase called universal design for learning in our classrooms spaces. And so just very briefly, you know, it is the design of products and services to be accessible to people to the greatest extent possible without the use of necessarily having to request reasonable reasonable accommodations individually. So that could be like curb cuts or ramps, as you see here. They're useful to just about every everybody with or without a disability. So with that concept in mind, in the library, there have been some great trainings One of which we were able to participate in a webinar called accessible learning environments. And you'll have these slides afterwards so that you can also see the link. And if you'd like to watch the video in case you are involved in classroom activities. And then the next slide, this very, very final, we're just getting close to the very end here of our presentation. And so this is the part where you start to determine between yourself individually in your department or pod, whatever you may call it, what you can do to change the system to affect UCSF in a way that it provides more access and inclusion, Wendy and Cecile cannot do it alone. We need you we need everyone at UCSF to participate. And that's the only way we're going to collectively be seen as a very accessible, accessible and inclusive environment for all people. So think about how you can take actions, or influence a team or group at UCSF to uplift the disability community. And it could be something small, medium or large, you know, there's it doesn't have to, you know, bring down mountains or anything it could let me know if you do. I would love to hear about it, in fact, but here are some sentence stems you can think about in my department, our recruitment process can change by next doing what? When I speak with my supervisor I can discuss, what can you discuss that's related to your area of work? When I speak to students or peers, I will now do what, you know, what are some things that come up? Or what can you do to influence some change. And I bet you could think of some additional concepts that you might use. And I want to as we go to the next slide, shout out to School of Pharmacy's, OSACA team. And they said that I could share this with you, I don't know if any are here today. They've seen this presentation already. So if they're not, I wouldn't blame them. But they actually took this training. And then we did a second training where we worked in breakout rooms with what they call them their pods of smaller groups of people, to see what they could actually do to make behavioral change within their area of work around accessibility and inclusion. So not just ticking the box of I attended this informational training. But what are we going to do as an institution to make this change? So here's what they did. This is the Admissions and Outreach pod, familiarizing themselves with accessible routes and pathways and directions so that they could tell staff and students were these words that questions came up, provided multiple options for joining meetings. The Student Affairs pod offers live streaming for events to ensure greater access and focus groups for physical accessibility on the ninth floor. And the advising pod includes accommodation statements on events and meetings. Yes, and includes information on Disability Resources and accommodations during orientation. And I know there are continuing to work on things every day. So if you're like, hey, who's got a model of how to kind of work on these things, check out the OSACA team, I bet they'd be happy to talk with you.