Houghton, Lapaglia-Successes/Advantages of iDisability™

Welcome to Disability Matters with your host Joyce Bender. All comments, views, and opinions expressed on the show are solely those of the host, guest, and callers. Now the host of Disability Matters, here's Joyce Bender.

Hi everyone in the United States and around the world. I cannot believe how many great countries are listening to the show. We have tremendous listeners in China, all the way to Finland, to Saudi Arabia. And you know, some countries, there's only one listener, one. I know what I say, that one person, you can make a difference just telling other people about this show, spreading the news. And it's very important. I want you to know You can change a life because other people, when they hear this show, they have an outlet. They can get information and they can realize that when you have a disability, it does not define you. It is part of who you are and part of who you should not be ashamed that you are. So thank you once again. And then, of course, I have to thank my friends from the State Department: Richard Roberts, Gangyang Cho, Cheryl Smith, Vinya Meen. All of you are helping me spread the news. You are really great civil rights leaders as far as I'm concerned, because without you, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing around the world. So, special shout out to you and to Yoshiko Dart. Yoshiko, it has been years now that I have not missed a show with a shout-out to you. You know I love you, and we're going to keep that spirit of Justin Dart Jr. alive. Yoshiko was his wife, and she is today still a great leader. Thank you to my sponsor, Highmark. Oh my God, they've been the lead sponsor for the past like 6 years. They are just a great, great company, always behind me, always behind hiring people with disabilities. And if you subscribe to my show, it's Spotify, or if you go to voiceamerica.com, you can hear all the old shows and you will hear several shows with the CEO of Highmark, David Holmberg, or the president, Deb Reich Johnson, or the CEO of Allegheny Health Network, Cindy Hundorfean, Larry Kleinman, Chief Human Capital Officer. You can hear them all. Thank you again. Well, I am so excited about this show today. Day, and you will know why in a few minutes, but I have two of my favorite people on. Andy Houghton, who is the founder and CEO of Disability Inclusion Solutions and my partner in iDisability that we'll be talking about, and Sherri Lapaglia, director and project manager for iDisability And she is the director at our company. And how long have you worked for me, Sherry?

I will have started with you guys out of college for my first internship in December of this year, 20 years ago.

And your title now is?

I am the Director of Talent Programming and product innovation.

And so, you know, I've known her since she was, yes, a youngster, and now here she is today, and she is the director at Bender Consulting Services. Uh, and I just love her, love her whole family, but Sherry is part of our success. At Bender Consulting Services. But Andy, I'm going to start with you. And as you can see, we have, uh, listeners all around the world— Australia, uh, Italy, so many countries with listeners. So I thought we would start by you telling our listeners around the world and of course in the United States your story so they know a little bit about you before we get started. Like, where did you grow up and when did you join the disability community? And feel free to talk for a few minutes because I want everyone to know you. So, Andy, welcome to the show.

Well, thanks so much, Joyce Bender. It's really great to be here. My partner, my longtime friend, collaborator, and advisor And it's great to be on with Sherri. Obviously, having had the opportunity to work with Sherri over the years, her caliber of professionalism and expertise certainly meets the standards of your company and far exceeds that of people I normally work with. So it's great to be with you both. So my, my life started out in Southern California. I was— I grew up out there and actually as I was about to turn 20, I ran into a palm tree as a result of drinking and driving on my motorcycle, which left me paraplegic. You know, I had always grown up very active, surfing, all kinds of sports. Joyce Bender. Had a great childhood growing up until the point of when I was 9 years old and my parents had somewhat of a rough divorce, which really changed the trajectory of my life in ways that really I just didn't understand until recently, how that helped really shape my behaviors and ultimately impacted My, you know, me when I did get in that accident certainly changed trajectory of my life as well. Following my accident back in 1986, about 35 years ago, you know, it was pre-Americans with Disabilities Act. I didn't want to be seen around anybody with a disability. I didn't have any kind of equipment that was really conducive to an active lifestyle. It wasn't until several years later when I was introduced to snow skiing in Southern California that I realized the amazing opportunities that were available for people like myself. I wound up being one of their best friends and actually later in life wound up hiring the organization to put on a sports camp that I started in Southern California. About 20 years ago. So through sports and recreation, I started to regain my self-esteem, understanding about disability, and I became an active member of the disability community in primarily the sports and recreation area. I also had great opportunities through the years. I know there's a global audience, to work in post-conflict regions developing programs in partnership with the UN and other NGOs in regions like Bosnia, Kosovo, and also Vietnam. And so I really understand the challenges that are— that individuals with disabilities face in various environments. Bringing more recently, I've had the opportunity also to serve in both gubernatorial and presidential appointments. In one instance, under President George Bush, I was the first person with a disability and the first private citizen to become the chairman of the AbilityOne Commission that oversees a program, a federal procurement program that employs 50,000 people with disabilities and $3 billion in sales to the government. Following that service, I founded Disability Inclusion Solution about 12 years ago and started out as a media production company based on my experience in that area with an emphasis on disability. And then it was really our innovations that started growing and expanding our business. In 2015, I started exploring the possibility of how do we train business, how do we change culture in business, and I got tired of looking at these 1-hour, 2-hour training modules. So I had researched for about a year and a half what it would take to prepare a short burst of training that later became iDisAbility that we'll talk about later.. And I was really backed up against a wall. I couldn't figure out how to make them accessible and really market them appropriately. So I went to my old friend Joyce Bender, and we were sitting at a coffee table. We talked about it. We shook hands and agreed to be partners, and that's how iDisability came to life. And most recently, my focus is on— in 2017, we identified a need for creating accessibility in the built environment beyond the Americans with Disabilities Act. In doing so, we created a proprietary tool that helps companies re-envision their workplace so it's inclusive not only to people with disabilities, inclusive to as many people as possible. And since then, we've worked on over 250 projects in over 20 countries. Thank you, Joyce Bender.

That's amazing, Andy. Sorry, choking there. Wow. Well, I remember when you came to me and talked about this. And, you know, one thing I was thinking about the other day, what first gave you that idea about how this was needed?

Well, you know, I was hired to do a lot of trainings. I would go to a business, spend an hour, you know, going over a PowerPoint, hearing feedback. And you get about 20 people, 30 people in employees in the room. And, you know, I felt like the impact was not as broad as it should be. Those individuals who attended would hopefully have a takeaway and they would start to think differently about their practices related to the recruitment, hiring, and employment of individuals with disabilities. But I just didn't think it was enough knowing that there's such great information out there that, you know, and the individuals were, spending much less time these days on things such as training, and the attention span's much shorter. So we need to come up with a series that are 15 minutes, no longer than 15 minutes in length, that are packed full of information that can change an entire workforce within a company. So it was really at that point, but the biggest challenge we faced was how to make them fully accessible in, in terms of people with certain disabilities being able to access the modules through a learning management system at the equal level as individuals without disabilities.

Yeah, and if you just joined the show, Andy Houghton Andy and I are part owners of iDisability. And iDisability is a learning project, learning product that companies use to learn how to communicate and work with people with disabilities. And what Andy said is so true. It's that no one wants to take a long time to take any training. So, you know, having those 42 modules, 15 minutes, max in length. It just is so right on target. And Andy, I liked what you told me a long time ago when you said, you know, you can have your smartphone and take a training session at a ballgame.

Right. That's absolutely right. These modules are certainly available on any device. And makes it very user-friendly. Like I said, 15 minutes at most, and you're going through the training, and it's really intuitive. It's always on voice. I know Sherri's going to talk a little bit about some of this, but you can literally sit there and engage, you know, briefly and really retain some great information on a whole array of topics related to disability.

Yeah, well, Sherri, you are the director and project manager for iDisability, and let's talk about that. Why do you think— first of all, here's my first question— why do you think it's so important that our product iDisability was designed by people with disabilities?

Joyce Bender, I think that, you know, it's really important for people to understand disability first as a culture. You know, when you're looking at creating learning or programming around disability inclusion and disability equity, it's critical to really understand the conversations that are taking place within that community. You know, too often people gather around and they talk about what's right for the disability community without including us in the conversation and without understanding that we as a community have our own voice. For example, if you just take the word disability, right? So many people want to exchange that word for somebody else. And for the disability community, this is a source of our culture. This is our social identity. We feel pride in being a part of this community. So, you know, when people decide to replace this word because they find it offensive, what they're really doing is buying into the stigma of disability and what we're fighting against when we fight against ableism. And having a product that people within the disability community are putting together, you know, really helps you to understand the voice of that community and understand the importance of things like this. Because if you're looking at replacing disability with euphemisms, then you're teaching young kids with disabilities to think of that word not as something to be proud of, but as something to feel a sense of internal shame about or to know is whispered about or that you try to hide. What we're teaching our children is to not feel that pride and not understand the rich heritage and achievements of this community. Another reason that it's really critical to have people with disabilities involved is we need to remember that people with disabilities are everywhere. They're our managers. They're our supervisors. They're in our human resources department. They're in our billing department. So when we create a technology solution, it needs to be a technology solution that's not just for people without disabilities to understand disability, but it's something that people with disabilities can access and take part in and learn in so that, you know, if I'm a manager with a mental health disability or I'm somebody who's deaf or blind and I have somebody joining my team that has a neurodiverse disability, I might need to access this training as well to learn about the materials that are in there. So, you know, it really needs to be something that all users of technology can engage with.

Oh, I agree so much. You know, Andy and I are both people with disabilities. As my listeners know, I live with epilepsy and I'm hard of hearing on my right ear. And we are— so that means we are disability-owned business enterprises. We are DOBEs, certified by Disability IN And I, you know, when Sherri was talking about, you know, nothing about us without us, yeah, we designed this product. Why wouldn't we? Who would know more about what is right and wrong when it comes to verbiage or accommodations for people with disabilities than people with disabilities? I thought when she was talking about the word disability, like, and don't say differently abled, handy, capable, all these words, take the dis out of disability. Why would you do that? That means there's something wrong with that word because it's bad, meaning it's bad. That makes people with disabilities think there's something wrong with them. Disability is now our culture. Disability rights is civil rights. It's not medical. It's a culture of people. That's who we are. It's funny, the people that want to change the name are always not people with disabilities, but people at companies that think that's what we want. But, you know, we don't, so don't do that. And when you said that, Sherri, I couldn't help it. It made me think, you know what, the thing I would have to say over all my years being involved with disability and that used to be called the USBLN, What I am the proudest of, other than being one of the first Dobies, is that they changed the name. What they changed the name to, I told that to Jill Houghton. Oh, notice that Houghton, Andy Houghton. You are wondering if there is a connection. Yes, Jill Houghton is his wife. Sort of like being married to a rock star. And she is the CEO of Disability:IN. She was on the show, and I told her, do you know what? When that board of directors voted to change the name to Disability:IN, ah, that made me so happy. I'm not kidding you. I was so thrilled. And I like that it had "in" right after that. Disability:IN, like disability is in. I think that is so great that they did that. So, Sherri, I am with you 100%. And before I move back to Andy, I wanted to ask you one other question. What about accessibility standards? What did we do there?

So all of our iDisability modules are compliant with WCAG 2.1, which are the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Which basically means that these modules are compliant with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and can be accessed and utilized by all users of technology. So, you know, we're looking at, you know, not just screen readers, but, you know, people who are deaf, people who may have to use their keyboards to navigate the computer. You know, these modules were built and designed to make them easy to use for everybody.

And Andy, that isn't the case with all training, is it? The accessibility part.

I can assure you, Joyce Bender, that it isn't. In fact, the majority of training, as many of you probably know, most companies have what's called an internal learning management system. And in that system, modules and SCORM files such as iDisability are uploaded into that system. Therefore, the employees either have required training or they have access to different training on demand. The majority of trainings that exist today within, you know, global corporations are not accessible, not nearly as accessible as iDisability. And frankly, the majority of them just are not accessible. Available to people with certain disabilities. So it's a very painstaking process, as Sherry knows, to make these products accessible. And frankly, the software authoring tools that exist to develop these e-learning modules are not very functional when it comes to— the tools that allow them to be made accessible. So it's very limited software, very limited capabilities within the existing software, and yet Sherry and her team eked out as much as they could to make these WCAG 2.1 compliant.

Well, and you know, to all my listeners, 70% of people with disabilities are still not counted in the workforce, and we're going to the 32nd anniversary of the ADA. Honestly, I never would have believed this 30 years ago, never, that this is all the further we would be with double the unemployment rate. Now, disability in people like Ted Kennedy and AAPD and Tony Coelho and Senator Harkin, many people have done a lot where you're starting to see that ship move, you know, toward employment. But folks, there's thousands of corporations, thousands and thousands in this company, and mid-sized ones that are not hiring anyone. So, I was so fired up about this when Andy talked to me because my thinking was, okay, education, training, that could be something that would break down the barriers so people would hire people. Because right now, they don't know what they don't know, and they still don't know a lot. When it, when it comes to working with people with disabilities. And sometimes people in HR or diversity inclusion will say, "Well, we know this." They do. They aren't the problem. The problem is out of the 90,000 employees, that big group of hiring managers, that's where the problem is. So if you're listening right now, I want you to go to your company., and I want you to ask them, hey, do you have eye disability? Do you have eye disability? Joyce Bender, Andy Houghton, they own that product. Do you have eye disability? Because that's going to help get people hired. You ask. You find out. And by the way, if you ever want to know how many people are being hired, look at your parking lot. Go see how much accessible parking actually has cars of people with disabilities versus people that just want that space. Do you know what I mean there, Andy Houghton?

Unfortunately, Joyce, I do know exactly what you mean. As the guy who usually, you know, I live in South Florida, so finding an accessible parking spot is often a challenge. But, you know, iDisability is a very simple yet sophisticated tool that changes the perception of people about the capabilities of individuals with disabilities. If you're a hiring manager and you're going to a job fair and You— it's a disability-specific job fair. You could access a couple of these modules on recruitment and retention of people who are blind, people who are deaf, different disabilities, and just a few minutes you could get some pointers and better understand how to approach individuals in this environment, understand the accommodations. So it's, you know, it's no secret why we have such a high retention rate of our existing customers. I think we're around 98 or 99% retention rate of the customers who license our product year after year. It's because it's working, it's effective, and it's changing the culture within the workspace.

Just in time for our news break. Couldn't be a better time. We have our news break every show on the half hour with our own Perry Jude Radesik. Perry, welcome to the show.

Joyce, uh, thanks for having me. And, uh, today we want to continue our conversation about transportation equity. A couple of weeks ago on Advocacy Matters, on Disability Matters with Joyce Bender, we spoke about the invitation from the U.S. Department of Transportation to serve as a member of the Advisory Committee on Transportation Equity. So, that was an important update. This week, we want to let you know about an opportunity to provide actual public comment to the National Aging and Disability Transportation Center on the important issue of transportation equity. The National Aging and Disability Transportation Center was established in 2015, and it promotes the availability and accessibility of transportation options that meet the needs of people with disabilities, older adults, and our caregivers. So, the agency provides technical assistance, information and referral, grant programs, training, resources to professionals in the area of disability and human services. So, this is an agency— is a federal agency, and it's in the Federal Transportation Administration. And they actually receive their funding through a variety of sources, including the U.S. Department of Transportation, Easterseals, and the Area Agencies on Aging. So, what's happening this week? The agency is convening two virtual transportation equity stakeholder meetings. One is today, and the other one is Thursday, June 23rd. The June 21st meeting today is targeted to urban and suburban areas, and the meeting on June 23rd targets rural, tribal, and frontier areas. Now, these stakeholder meetings are open forums. Anyone who wants to provide important information about transportation, uses transportation, or cares about transportation for people with disabilities should sign up and provide some public feedback to this important agency. So advocacy matters. If you are interested in participating and submitting comments, during the open forums on transportation equity. Most important thing you can do is go visit disabilityrightsPA.org. That's disabilityrightsPA.org for more information and a link to register for these forums. Again, it's important that we provide public feedback on the issues of transportation equity, so you can sign up today for these forums that are happening this week.

Perry, thank you so much. And I just want to say something about Perry Jude Radesik. She is the CEO of Disability Rights PA. I'm so honored to be a trustee for them, and, uh, this woman is brilliant. She is a disability rights leader, advocate, and we're just so lucky to have her for the past 4 years for our news break. But I want you to know that she puts a lot of time into making sure she brings us the most relevant, up-to-date news. And guess what? There's no other place you can go to anywhere where there's a news medium where you can hear every week what's happening. So, Perry, thank you so much for everything you do for us. And tell us again where to go.

Yes, Joyce. It's disabilityrightspa.org for more information on how to register and learn more about these equity stakeholder meetings.

Thank you. Thanks, Perry.

Hey, thanks. We'll talk to you next week.

All right, Perry. Uh, hey, all my listeners, don't panic. I had a little technical snafu. That's why there was that break in sound there, but I'm back, I'm fine, everything's okay. And don't you think that's amazing, Andy, how we have that news break every show?

Yeah, it's really informative and hopefully engages your listeners to participate because open forums, public comment are an extremely important factor in developing policies that ultimately benefit folks like you and me.

Yes, that is for sure. Sherry, how about you? Don't you think that's great to have news?

Absolutely. It's sometimes hard to find out information about what's happening in the disability community. You don't always find that in mainstream news broadcasts, so it's terrific to have a place that you can go and reliably get information every week.

And I have to tell you, the person that came up with that idea was Mary Brooker. So I followed her advice, and I'm so glad I did because I'm proud, uh, and I, I'm doing that, but I'm also proud to have Perry as the person that does that for the past 4 years, every show. Uh, so yeah, I, I really, I'm happy to do it. I'm proud to have Perry Jude involved. So, Sherri, we were talking before, and we're talking, everyone, today about Eye Disability, uh, the software product that my partner Andy Houghton, who's our guest today and is also the founder and CEO of Disability Inclusion Solutions— Andy and I are partners and owners of Eye Disability, a software product eLearning that teaches companies and employees how to work with and communicate to people with disabilities. And we could have made it much longer, but we didn't. Sherry, the reason it's 15 minutes, and also, what's your opinion? You know, when I was talking before about I hope this impacts employment, let's hear what you think about that.

Yes, so starting out with just, you know, why we made it, you know, 15 minutes. You know, Andy spoke about this a little bit earlier in the show. You know, everybody's busy now. There's so much that, you know, people just have their schedule jam-packed full of meetings. You know, you always need information immediately. There's no time to wait for a lecture and then even sit in a lecture. And you need something quick. You need something that is short and to the point and is, you know, filled with information. So, you know, we really focused in on honing topics down to being bite-sized pieces of information that allow a busy professional to engage with this in a way that's dynamic and, you know, able to meet their needs as they come up because, you know, disability is multifaceted. There's many types of disabilities and many things to learn and consider. And, you know, as you're going along, you know, throughout the course of managing people, interviewing people, screening people, you know, making sure that, you know, people are productive in the workplace, you never know what question, you know, might come up. And having something that you can go into that index of modules, search for that particular topic, and then just pull up information and have it right there and available for you to review is just essential to, you know, making this work. Because if it's too hard to get information, people, you know, disengage in participating in these programs because they're afraid they'll make a mistake, right? So, you know, that's really important to make it easy for people to learn and engage. In programs that are hiring people with disabilities. And, you know, just, you know, in terms of how training impacts, you know, the employment of people with disabilities and, you know, why that's so critical, you know, for businesses to engage in this, you know, it's all about creating a culture. And, you know, you want to have a space where people can get the information they need to be successful. And it makes it so that engaging in those programs and participating in those programs is something that they're excited to do, that they understand the reasoning why they're doing it, and they have the tools available to be able to do it the right way. And when you work at a company and they're talking about disability inclusion and they're talking about training and they're making it something to be excited about, You know, that also creates an environment where people with disabilities want to be there. And not only that, but, you know, Joyce Bender, you say all the time, you've hired people with disabilities, you just don't know it because their disabilities aren't apparent to you. So for those people who are already in the workforce who have, you know, some type of disability that's non-apparent, it becomes easier and something that you want to engage with. Whether it's getting involved with your company's BRG or disclosing that you have a disability, until you see that that culture is accepting of people with disabilities, you won't necessarily want to, you know, be the one to take that step forward and open up about your experiences.

Yeah, and that is so true. And I, I want to tell you that you We all know that right now it's candidate-driven, the marketplace. So many companies can't find people in healthcare, as you well know. Oh my goodness, even pilots, how about that? Whenever they didn't have enough pilots and had to delay and cancel all these flights a few months ago. But it seems like it's that across the board. You have people with disabilities that want to work. You have an untapped labor pull. So would you want your manager to interview someone and that person not want to shake their hand or look the other direction, you know, or, or back up when you go toward them and say, "Ah, that guy's weird, we don't want them, forget it, he's out," and there you lost a brilliant person that happened to live with autism? Do you want to do that? That's what'll happen. And, you know, or they won't know how to— well, Sherry knows. We even had a company not understand why they needed an interpreter for someone who is deaf. So, I mean, there's so much that you don't know, that your managers don't know. You really need to take this more seriously. IDisability. Andy, what do you think about that?

Well, you know, to even take it a step further, Joyce, you know, we talk a lot about the modules or the specific subject matters of our 15-minute modules. What's also unique about iDisability is that there are specific learning paths that we have developed for consideration. There are specific job positions that have a targeted learning path specific to their responsibilities, their roles and responsibilities. So it's not, the modules are 15 minutes each, but they're also, they can also be, reviewed in a contiguous way where, um, one feeds off the next. In addition to the modules, iDisability also includes, uh, takeaway documents that summarize, uh, the key points within a module, also provides with resources to access more information about a particular subject matter. And really gives a great deal of more information should an employee choose to learn more or wants to learn something more specific related to their particular situation. So it's really a, a well-thought-out software solution that is designed to meet the needs from frontline employees to C-suite executives.

Yeah, and when you were talking about this, Andy, I was also thinking about your point. There's so much more with this product. Sherri, what else do you get when you purchase iDisability?

So when you purchase the iDisability package, you receive the full suite of modules, the takeaway documents, as Andy referenced. You also receive a scenario-based video library, which includes scenarios related to different learning and learning topics. Maybe it's accommodating a veteran after making a change to the environment at work, or it's accommodating a person who has a mental health disability. So there's many different videos that you can go in and watch a scenario and how actors might play that scenario out when having discussions around disability. We also have available a number of continued learning resources from sample blog templates to email templates that can be used to help engage readers, as well as a group of questions that can be used in conjunction with some of the modules to spark a discussion afterwards. If you wanted to have a lunch and learn or a roundtable, you could select one of the modules and watch that module and then use those thought starters to lead a discussion with the folks who are participating in that particular learning avenue.

So much to offer you. You know, Andy, I was thinking about Jenny Lay-Flurry, who, if you don't know, she's the Chief Accessibility Officer at Microsoft, but also was the former chair of the board of Disability:IN. I'll never forget, I heard her saying this, it struck a chord with me, and every so often I put this out on my social media. She said, "If you're talking to a company about accessibility and you ask them if they're accessible and they say, 'I think we are,' then you know they aren't." Well, if you talk to someone about understanding accommodations and how to talk to people with disabilities, and they say, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure we know," then you know they don't know. So, I'm telling you, there's so much that you don't know you don't know. But then, there's stuff you know that you don't know, but you're not doing anything about it. And I can't begin to tell you how important I think it is that you purchase Eye Disability. Andy Houghton, Joyce Bender, owners of the product Andobees. And Andy, that's what I wanted to talk about, being Adobe, a disability-owned business enterprise. And let's not forget, I'm the master mentor while we're talking about that. But Andy, I wanted you to share with our audience, why do you think that's important? Like, what does it mean to you to be Adobe?

Well, thanks, Joyce Bender. Yeah, and we are both certified disability and certified disability-owned business enterprises, and I too was an early DOBE in the process back when there were just a few of us registered, and what's really unique about it is Most of us are familiar with, you know, the typical minority-related businesses such as, you know, SBA, women-owned, amongst the many others. But there was never a category for at least 51% owned by an individual with— by an individual with a disability. A Caucasian male in his 50s that has a spinal cord injury. Certainly there are service-disabled veteran-owned and veteran-owned, which are extremely valuable, and there's a lot of great businesses out there in that category. But so many of us were kind of left out in the cold when it came to having some sort of recognition or priority for businesses seeking to do business in not only the disability arena— certified DOBIs cross the gamut of products and services that are purchased on a daily basis by the global corporations that are associated with Adobe certification. But for me, I know that the companies I do business with, they specifically seek out certified disability-owned business enterprises. And when we go in and register on the portal, there's a box, certified disability-owned business. Yes, submit your certification. I would encourage any business who is 51% owned by an individual with disability to reach out to disabilityin.org and seek out the Certified Disability-Owned Business page and learn more about it because companies are buying from us. We're a target, and I'm just happy to be in industries where we're making a difference in the workplace through Eye Disability, through Universal Design in the built environment. We're changing not only the way people think about disability, but we're changing the way people with disabilities and those without disabilities are functioning in the workplace, and that's a pretty huge task and accomplishment because when we're, when we're talking about iDisability, it's global throughout the company. When a company licenses iDisability, every one of their employees, whether it's 5,000 or 50,000, have access to those training modules. If we're working with universal design, we're not working with one facility. We're working with 1,200 of their facilities who are going to eventually change the workplace. So it's really an honor to be a certified disability-owned business, and I'm happy to be a part of the Disability and Family.

And that conference is coming up— when is that? The Disability in Conference.

July— it will be in Dallas, Texas, July 18th through the 21st.

And we'll be there, Andy and I. iDisability will be there. We'll be at that exhibit booth, so don't you forget to come and see us because right now we have so many users on our platform. Sherry, isn't it 4 million? Business users on our platform. 4 million business users. Companies like Accenture, Bristol-Myers, Highmark, Bank of America, Northrop Grumman, Dow. I could go on and on, but really great companies are on this platform and Esquire Bank. Oh my goodness, I don't have the list in front of me, but trust me when I say that we are proud to be partnered with every one of those companies. I know that we are coming close to the end of the show. This is how fast this show goes, always so fast. Andy, do you have a last message for our listeners?

Joyce, I just want to say again, I'm so glad that we're partners and we're friends and you're a mentor and advisor. And I'm, I'm grateful that we were able to team up on the iDisability eLearning software solution. And it's so great to be a part of your family. And thank you for having me.

Andy, I'm proud to have you as part of my family. And so you all know, we've been friends and family for a long time, uh, and I'm proud to say Andy Houghton's my partner, uh, and we are gonna rock it at that conference. You better come and find us. Uh, Sherri, how about you? Do you have a message for our listeners?

I just want to, you know, thank you, Joyce, as well, for having me and Andy on the show. It's been a pleasure to join you today, and, you know, really being a part of the iDisability product is a very exciting thing. You know, there's just so much opportunity to impact our customers' inclusion goals and help them to reach them, and being able to take the feedback they give us to create, you know, new modules such as bringing out mental health modules during the COVID pandemic and even this year looking at bringing modules out related to complicated grief and accommodating people with migraines. There's just so much opportunity to really be collaborative and excited about this product.

Well, thank you both for being with me, and we end every show with a quote. I love this quote: I not only have the right to stand up for myself, but I have the responsibility. I can't ask somebody else to stand up for myself. And once you stand up for yourself, you'd be surprised that people come to you and say, "Can I be of help?" said Maya Angelou. This is Joyce Bender, America's Voice, where disability matters at Voice America www.joybender.com. See you next week, and remember, in the words of Mary Brooker, choose joy.

Voice America would like to thank you for tuning in. Please join us next Tuesday at 11 AM Pacific time and 2 PM Eastern time for another installment of Disability Matters, right here on the Voice America Variety Channel. We are the leader in live Internet Talk Radio.

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