Welcome - Day 1

Transcript for Welcome - Day 1

Hi, everybody. Welcome to access plus 2021. The Global Conference. On how businesses empower accessibility and why they should. We're so excited to have you be a part of our conference, so thank you so much for joining. first and foremost.

My name's Alyciaa Anderson. I have blond hair, green eyes, tanned skin, and a huge smile on my face because I'm so excited to have been invited to be a part of this event today. I'm wearing a white blouse with the accessibility icon logo on the left side.

And I am proud to say that my disability is called sacral genesis. This is a disability that has led me to live my life from a wheelchair a little bit about me. Before we kick-off. I was born with my disability.

Back in the mid-seventies, which definitely dates me a little bit, but it's an important note for many reasons. This was on the cusp of the exchange of segregation of people with disabilities to inclusion a time when discrimination was finally illegal, forcing societal change by the way of law.

And my dad would remind me often as a little girl, Alycia, you have no idea how lucky you are to literally have been born exactly where and when you were powerful, tiny to be born in the right place and the right time.

Beautiful, powerful timing. And this statement, my dad would remind me, often almost to the point where I would get sick of it. And it's taken me most of my life to really understand the many layers that are tied to it.

This was a time. When advocates like Judith Human hear today. Who we will meet. I'm so excited that our paths are crossing on the same stage. I can't even tell you, but this is when advocates were tirelessly paving the way for opportunity for all of us through their advocacy and through this advocacy.

Over so many years, we have been I have been allotted so many opportunities. And back in the seventies, when I was born, inclusion of people with disabilities. It was not a thing that we were aiming for in our society like we are today in the here and now moments.

We've come so far, it's amazing. So from day one, for me, I have been on a lifelong journey to perfect inclusion in every single, solitary aspect of my own personal life. As a child growing up as a young woman in school, as a college level student and as a woman entering the workforce, which is what we're going

to be talking a lot about over the next few days. And I have been somewhat of a participant in an experiment on inclusion for my entire life. I was the first generation of children with disabilities to face the raw elements of inclusion and integration.

As my heroes, people like Judy Human paved the way of opportunities through legislation and advocacy. So there was a lot of uphill battles and I know a lot of us here today have felt those. And over time, I've overcome personally and professionally and found a path forward in my own life.

To have advocacy as part of my life as well and. Understand that over time. This is collective, hard, uncomfortable, ongoing, unique work that we have to do together to find that path forward, that these amazing advocates like again, Judy Huemann has paved a path forward for us.

And in that through my childhood, there was a lot of no's instead of yeses, let's find a way to adapt and give her at least a chance to try. So in this from a very young age, my parents instilled in me, Alicia, you can.

Alycia, you should and Alycia, you will in this life at every stage of this life, if you are willing to try and advocate and to use your voice. So. I have always worked a lesson from my parents, instilled in me the value of hard work and especially important thing for somebody facing a lifetime of adversity and exclusion

and discrimination and marginalization. And so I jumped into work literally from the moment I was leaving high school. I was the first waitress in a wheelchair ever. If you can believe that I could carry 15 margaritas on my lap and really worked out room.

And through my career, as I made my way through college, I made it all the way to the heights in Corporate America, vice president of sales at a software company to now being a proud business owner. And what I have found is to reach success in this venture to really understand it.

We have to realize again that this is collective, ongoing, uncomfortable work that we explore together. So that's what we're here to do today. We're together. We're exploring, exploring accessibility at work. We are paving a path forward and widening the doors of opportunity for those that will follow us.

Today, I'm a motivational speaker, I'm a diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility corporate consultant, and I have dedicated my life's work to advocating for the advancement of inclusion and employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Any type of disabilities. In this life.

And so. For many of us here who you will meet, we're all doing this work and we have the great opportunity today. And over the next few days to collaborate and really learn from each other. And I'm so excited to be among my peers, like-minded people, people that are interested and wanting to have these conversations to expand

knowledge where we can lead the way, pave the way, widen the doors for those that will follow and do our advocacy work just like Judy and all of the people in our histories past, so we can move forward into a more inclusive tomorrow for everyone.

So enough about me. What's happening today, day one, we are going to focus on unlocking the potential, seeing the true potential of assisted technology together from a basic to futuristic. And how will these technologies drive our business's success?

So many insightful speeches and presentations by thought leaders and experts in our space, I'm so excited to learn from each and every one of them. But before we get there, let's cover a little bit of housekeeping so everybody understands how to navigate the conference, how to use some of the technology tools to make sure that you just

know how to use the tools. So number one, if you have any questions related to the presentation, please type them in the box at the right of the video screen. Hopefully, everyone can see that or navigate to it too.

If you have any technical issues, please feel free to click the support button for assistance. And we've got that ability to you to kind of help out if there's any tech issues. We are virtual, so things might pop up.

And then above the video window, there is a. Encourage you to go and explore and find a world of possibility. And also, we want you to navigate, navigate. Sorry, I'm having an unstable connection. Navigate through to the pardon me, I'm sorry, my internet.

We're live and I'm having a quick and stable internet. Hopefully I can still hear me. OK. Check out the community link, make connections there with other attendees, the network opportunities are endless there. If you click the accessibility plus logo in the upper right hand corner, it will take you back to the home screen.

There you will find additional links on the left side of the screen for fun things like gamification, where you can see prizes that are being offered, where you can check out leaderboards on specific prize and and the the wall for the gamification and by interacting with our sponsors, our amazing sponsors, the sponsors that make this event possible.

You will have the opportunity to win one of three prizes. So make sure you're checking out the leaderboard and going back and forth throughout the conference and really utilizing these tools that are built within the platform again have as much networking and exposure on accessibility tools, companies, resources and people to engage with, and a huge thank you

to the Bureau of Internet Accessibility. You have a chance to win these three prizes, so we've got a 200 dollar Amazon gift card. That's the first place. second place is 100 dollar gift card from Amazon, and then third place is a 50 dollar gift part.

Again, check out instructions they're listed on the leader board. A couple big, huge, massive shout outs. And thank you to our closed caption sponsor three play for their work with us. We will have closed captions available throughout the entire conference.

Another huge shout out to our American Sign Language sponsor as well. World in sign. ASL will also be available in every session. If you're a business here today and you realize. That one in four Americans will have some type of disability, which equates to 16 million Americans.

You will also realize that 15% of the world population will experience some sort of disability in their lifetime. And if you're here today, you are willing to join the advocacy and the and the inclusion of people with disabilities in the workplace.

You also realize due to the sheer numbers of these statistics, that your businesses need to be accessible to remain competitive in the marketplace. Your websites need to be accessible. Your tech needs to be accessible, your infrastructure needs to be accessible.

Your tools, your resources all need to be accessible. But most of all, the most important thing. In my opinion, your mindset needs to be accessible where we can shift society's outlook a disability, how it's sometimes looked at as a limitation and ablest way of thinking.

And we start to shift that and realize that our differences need to be celebrated and discovered so we can find the hidden talents and potential of everyone and these potentials we bring into organizations and it shifts that perceived limitation and it turns our differences into valuable assets that can be leveraged in so many ways in life.

But today we're talking about work can be leveraged in a workplace and then widens the door and opens our minds to a different way of thinking. And that's when we start to put in the collective work and the efforts for inclusion and accessibility.

So welcome to access plus a global conference on how businesses empower accessibility to kick this event off. I'm so excited that I get to make this announcement for our first panel. I'm beyond excited to introduce Judith Huemann and Caroline Casey onto our discussion, and they are going to bring an amazing panel discussion to all of everyone.

Thank you so much for attending and enjoy this powerhouse panel that we're providing our keynote speakers.