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Narrator: Pursuit of a More Equitable World College
and Careers.
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An excerpt from John Kemp's keynote
address at the University of Washington.
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Sheryl Burgstahler: Thanks to all of you for coming.
Good afternoon.
I'm Sheryl Burgstahler, the founder
and director of the DO-IT Center,
where do it stands for disabilities, opportunities,
internet working, and technology.
In DO-IT, we work to increase the academic and career success
of individuals with disabilities and make physical spaces,
student services teaching and learning activities,
and technology more welcoming and accessible to people
with disabilities.
I have the pleasure of introducing
our keynote speaker, and his name is John Kemp.
I met him around the time when I founded the DO-IT Center, which
is like more than 25 years ago.
And we've sort of been traveling in similar circles, so it's
really, especially nice for me to have you here, John.
So I've always been impressed with his personal insights
about the history of disability rights,
parallels between this movement and others
that improve our world by more fully engaging people
from all different groups, benefiting
from their diverse talents and perspectives.
He's been an ally of DO-IT and other organizations
that serve to create a more inclusive world,
and he's even mentored a few of the DO-IT scholars.
He is a renowned disability rights leader
who co-founded the Americans Association of People
with Disabilities and is now the president and chief executive
of a network of nonprofit organizations
that provide services that educate, employ,
and empower children and adults with disabilities.
His talk today is titled "Then and Now--
People with Disabilities and Our Pursuit
of a More Equitable World."
So will you please join me in welcoming
John Kemp to the podium?
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John Kemp: All right, good afternoon.
All good?
Sheryl Burgstahler: All good.
John Kemp: I have been a huge fan of DO-IT
and talk about DO-IT in various speeches around the country
and certainly talked about it at the Council of Graduate Schools
in Arizona in December and really got
to meet some people from the University of Washington,
and we sort of reconnected again.
But I must say, this is one of the classiest, smartest,
most forward looking programs in the United States.
So whether you're thinking you're
all out here on an island and you're not connected,
and you're this and that, you're far from it.
You are totally in front of the crowd of young students,
high school students and college students
who are looking to prepare themselves
for real, competitive, integrated, inclusive
employment, and that you are getting the access
to the technologies that will enable
you to be able to do that.
Some of it you are probably creating yourself,
and it's certainly an era of personalization
and customization in technology.
What I so admire about DO-IT is that you don't accept anything
less than the encouragement to thrive in your academic careers
and in your employment careers.
It's this idea that we're in this transition
age of 20 to 30 years, where people with disabilities
may or may not get the kinds of services they properly need.
That's not good enough for me.
It's not good enough for our students.
We want to be able to thrive just like everybody else,
right?
This is what we want very, very much.
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Today, we have the largest number of college graduates
with disabilities who are unemployed ever
in the history of the United States.
We've done a better and better and better
job of getting students with disabilities
through high school, through college,
and they can't get a job.
And that is a disgrace for our country.
We're better than that.
And we haven't quite figured out the underlying issue
when we compare ourselves to other minority groups
and other protected class groups,
why is it that we lag so significantly far
behind in our employment rate?
There's something deeply embedded in our society
that does not allow an employer or people, just generally.
Employers are people, too, right?
But why do employers not perceive us
as having capabilities?
Why?
So much of it is really based on all
of the glitter and glam that our chairs
and our scooters and our canes and our prosthetics
and everything else that we present
causes them to think that we can't
do a job that they have predetermined
how it should be done.
Hopefully, we're in an era now where
it's not so much how you do a job.
It is you tell me what the outcomes you want
and the quality expectations that you have
and the quantity and all the other characteristics
that you want to measure, and we get
to do it whether we do it at 2 o'clock in the morning,
or it takes us two or three extra hours to do it,
the outcome measurements can be adjusted.
But for some reason, because people
who are in power positions perceive people
with disabilities as unable to be
able to perform the jobs that are there
in a way in which they think they should be performed.
It's the bosses who have these ideas, the supervisors who
have these preconceived ideas, and this revolution
that's going on in human resources and the like
is really about trying to tear down
these kinds of false requirements
and really find out what is a job supposed to mean.
What are you trying to produce and create?
And hopefully, that will help us a great deal.
The Department of Labor estimates that by the time
a person leaves school, college, you
will have between 10 and 14 jobs by the time
you're 38 years of age.
If my dad heard that, he'd be horrified.
My god, he used to say, please, stick with the job.
Stick with it for more than two or three years.
Don't be a job hopper.
He was always really worried that I was jumping around
too much.
I was like, hey, but there's a great opportunity over here,
and I want to do this, and it excites me.
This is who are young people are today.
Young adults have a focus, they accomplish something,
they move on.
We are currently preparing students
for jobs that don't yet exist, expecting
them to use technologies that have not yet even been invented
in order to solve problems we don't even know
are problems yet.
How would you like to be teaching in that environment,
right?
Pretty tough.
So what are we teaching?
We're teaching people how to learn
and how to continue to adapt throughout our lives.
Sheryl Burgstahler: For the DO-IT scholars,
you know how often we talk about where we're helping you become
successful in college and careers,
but we're not satisfied if you're just
successful in your own right.
We're hoping that you will change the world.
So I think we should pass this baton
of the over to these younger people, don't you think, John?
John Kemp: Please.
Sheryl Burgstahler: To do all the stuff
that you just brought up.
John Kemp: Take it, take it.
Sheryl Burgstahler: We can add to it.
John Kemp: Take us higher.
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Narrator: For more information about DO-IT,
consult washington.edu/doit.
This video presentation was created
with funding from the DO-IT Scholars Program,
hosted by Accessible Technology Services
at the University of Washington.
Copyright 2019 University of Washington.
Permission is granted to copy these materials
for educational, non-commercial purposes,
provided the source is acknowledged.
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