Inclusion Awareness is Growing!

Hello, Friends!

Is it just me or does the distance between Fridays seem to be getting shorter and shorter? I think here at KIT we are experiencing a time-space compression. We are certainly cramming a lot into each week! Today Anna shared that over the past 12 months we’ve delivered 470 live trainings, which breaks down to 9 per week. Add to that all of our online courses (Anna also shared that continuing education units were awarded to 9,000 learners this year!) and a dramatic increase in our call-in Support Center (45% increase in calls during May 2018 as compared to May 2017), the demand for information on disability inclusion is on the rise. With some planned expansions that we will share more about in the next few weeks that number is only going to increase.

I see in our data that interest in and awareness of disability inclusion is growing. There are other signals catching my attention too. Recently, Fast Company magazine featured this piece about Getty Images and their new initiative to include people with disabilities in their stock photos. This is a huge need! It’s been a frustration of ours for years that we have not been able to find quality photographic images for our design and marketing projects that reflect inclusive communities. Images featuring children or adults with disabilities were always separate and usually in a medical context. The article states that while approximately 15% of people have disabilities only 2% of current stock photos contain any representation of their lives. Getty has also seen searches for “wheelchairs” and “autism” spike around 400% from 2016-2017.

I am excited about this development. It shows that people want to present more inclusive images and I think more inclusive images will help move the public perception of disability and show that people with disabilities live rich, fulfilling lives that aren’t so different from their own.

Until next week,

Torrie