Transcript for Welcome - Day 3
(Alycia Anderson - MC) Good morning, everyone. How are you? We are on day three of one of the most amazing conferences I've ever attended. I don't know about you... But welcome to our third and final (boo) day of AccessibilityPlus 2021, the global conference: how businesses empower accessibility and why they should.
Yesterday was amazing for me. Content, conversation, engagement, entertainment, the list go on and on. Super informative. I hope it was for everyone else. If you missed any part of yesterday's presentations, know they are all uploaded and available on demand so you can log in and review them at your leisure.
I'm Alycia Anderson. If you're new and on day three, I am the emcee for the event. The lucky one. I have blond hair, green eyes, tan skin, a smile on my face for the third day because I'm excited to be here again.
I'm wearing a white shirt with an Accessibility.com logo and my disability is called sacral genesis and I live my life from a wheelchair. Why did they choose me to come and emcee this event? Well, I definitely work in the space.
I'm a motivational speaker diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility corporate consultant. I'm a disability advocate. I'm a founder of the Alycia Anderson Company.
My platform is called heart of inclusion and through the work that I do when I speak to companies and organizations, I speak to companies about the importance of the human to human element of inclusion in the workplace. That we need to lead our efforts with our hearts first and foremost, even in a work environment. And that there's an immense importance to start stripping away biases, stripping away stigmas that are driving our decisions as to whether we're going to include someone or not at work and start shifting what to what we think is completely impossible today for someone.
Because the reality is we don't know what is possible for someone else until we start engaging with them and how extremely important it is to open up conversations, be open to adaptability and always have that default setting on to believe in possible first and foremost for every single person that comes across your path.
I was born an identical twin to an able bodied sister, so I've literally been chasing after the able bodied half of me most of my life. But the interesting part of that story is, she's been chasing after the disabled part of her half as well, and we've been on this journey of inclusion together since day one. And because we love each other deeply, because there's a human to human element, because we care about one another. There is never been an option to leave somebody behind. We always find a way to include the other. If she jump ropes, I find a way to jump a rope. If I go to wheelchair tennis camp, she would come to wheelchair tennis camp. So getting to the heart of inclusion is where we start. It has to be at the forefront of our efforts to make that connection, to be willing to put in the hard, uncomfortable, collective, ongoing work that it's going to require all of us to figure out this process together.
And what I have found all along my journey is that communication is key. It's number one in our efforts and it's like a dance. It takes two or more. It takes vulnerability, it takes practice. It takes hard work.
It takes. Taking time and practicing somebody else, but as we practice things in life, we at some point start to execute them naturally and beautifully. And this is the process of of including somebody else and for me, inclusion and getting to the heart of it, it's based on love, it's based on respect, it's based on care, and it's based on finding a path forward together, putting in the hard work to enable pathways for somebody else.
And the hardest part is finding that pathway together, working on it together and recognizing that we that, you know, we can celebrate our differences as gifts, and it allows us to adapt to an ever changing world and to experience and accept something new.
And when I was a little girl, I was reflecting last night about this week, and when I was a little girl, I would get pulled out of school one week out of every single year, and I would look forward to it beyond anything else all year long. And I'd be pulled out of school to attend wheelchair sports camp. And this was one week out of every year. All the coaches had disabilities, every camper had some type of disability, and then anyone else that was there believed in the movement that they were trying to create back then.
And... to have this environment where I could enter and blend into a crowd and not have any doubts placed on me about my ability and for all of my peers to see possible, it was liberating.
It was it was a break from life and sitting on the couch last night, I'm reflecting like, I'm having this feeling this week of being at camp so many years ago where, you know, I'm surrounded with light, surrounded with like minded people who are creating tools, ideas, resources and are excited about the advancement of this conversation to bring it to a larger scale in our world and hope to be around people who care and believe.
And this inevitably will. Over time it is. It's leveling the playing field, and I'm so grateful personally to be here this week and have these feelings within myself again, like, it's amazing. And for me, this week has been all about equity. Taking the time to get to know one another, figuring out what each person needs from a resource standpoint to enable them all of us to reach the finish line together. And so just a personal thank you to everybody who has been involved in the last three days for giving me this beautiful feeling of inclusion in a real way through and through.
It's it's it's it's brought me back to my childhood. Honestly, it's been absolutely amazing. So thank you. OK, enough about me. What are we doing today, day three of the conference, we are going to explore effectively managing accessibility.
But before we kick that off, we do have a little bit of housekeeping as normal. Number one, if you've got any questions related to the presentations, please type them in the box to the right of video screen. If you can submit the questions during the presentations, Kevin would greatly appreciate that, so he's not scrambling to try to filter through all of them. So as questions come up, please throw them in as soon as you possibly can.
If there's any technical issues, use our support button as a resource to grab assistance. On the navigation of the next to the video you will see tools for agenda where you can access speaker information. Read about their bios. All of them. Sorry. Real life. All of the amazing work that they're doing. Check out the exhibitor hall, all of the products that the sponsors are offering.
These are tools. Sorry. Sorry. These are tools that can help your businesses. There's a discussion button that you can also click on to chat with the attendees, talk about the presentations and then our community link gives you the opportunity to network with other attendees, so please make sure to use all of the tools and network I know on breaks. I am going to be focused on that. I want to connect with as many as you as I possibly can, so you will be receiving, I'm sure, messages from me all day as well. If you're sharing on social, please do use our hashtag #AccessibilityPlus2021.
And if you get lost on the site, click on the AccessibilityPlus logo. It'll take you back to the homepage. And just remember we have a gamification going on where you can win prizes. Please go into the exhibit hall, engage with our amazing sponsors who have made this event possible.
And that's how you will climb the leaderboard. So definitely go in there and learn about all of their amazing resources. A huge thank you to the Bureau of Internet Accessibility for providing all of the prizes that you are eligible to win.
Also, thank you to our closed captioning sponsored 3Play Media for providing closed captions throughout the conference. Also, a big thank you to our American Sign Language sponsor World In Sign, who is also offering ASL within every presentation session as well.
So I'm really excited to jump into content. We're ready to kick this off. We're inviting back Sheri Byrne-Haber. She's going to talk about building an in-house accessibility team and the importance of it, and we're looking forward to learn from her again today.
So enjoy the conference and Sheri, take it away.
