Sounds good. Thanks, Gail. Oh.
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And thank you again for being here today. It is February. Can you imagine?
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We're going to get started in just one more moment.
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Hi, Jen. Hi, Valerie. Thank you so much for being here.
All right, let's go ahead and get started. Welcome and thank you for joining us. My name is Sway Stewart. I am the Equity and Inclusion Advisor for Greater Public. And in today's conversation, we are bringing focus to the importance of reaching and meeting the needs of people with disabilities within our communities.
Public Media has a responsibility to develop relationships and co-create inclusive initiatives and practices with all people in our media, our community events, and within our organizations.
The move to include initiative invites all public media stations to join as a partner station and receive hands-on support with authentically connecting with and representing people with disabilities.
So here to guide us as we delve into this topic is Sarah Murphy Abumante. She is the Move to Include project manager at WXXI. And later on, we will hear from Amy Shoemaker, Associate General Manager of Content at WGCU Public Media, which is a member of the Move to Include initiative.
Please use the Q&A function for all questions today and the chat for comments and connections. We will answer or acknowledge as many questions as time permits. We are also posting the PDF of the slides in the chat, and this webinar is being recorded and will be available on the greater public website.
So with that being said, I'm going to turn it over to Sarah to tell us more about Move to Include. Welcome, Sarah.
Hi, everyone. Thank you, Sway. And thanks everyone for joining us this afternoon. I'm very pleased to be with you from Not currently snowy, but certainly very, very cold Rochester, New York.
And as Sway said, we are the home station for Move to Include.
Which, just to give you the official blurb, and then we'll delve into this a little bit more.
But move to Included is now award-winning national initiative and community of practice dedicated to promoting Disability inclusion, representation, and accessibility in public media. So while we work with partners within the public media sector, we also have partners from throughout kind of film, media, and entertainment that are doing things both in the public and private sector regards to inclusion and accessibility.
To move to include really was built on the principle that some of you may have heard of called nothing about us without us. And this came out of the disability community and it really just means that, that the disability community should be involved in a consulting
Role in a co-creation role, anything that you're doing within disability should spotlight the lived experience of people with disabilities and highlight important issues around disability. So we do that in a number of ways that I'm going to get into.
And a little bit more. But here's just a little bit of the why we do this work. So one in four Americans, according to the CDC, identifies as having at least one disability. And in a lot of cases.
These people are having multiple disabilities There are… visible or apparent and non-apparent or invisible disabilities that folks are dealing with. So it really is a wide spectrum. And what I like to share with people just to kind of get you in the right headspace for this work is
If you're not a person with a disability, the chances of you knowing and loving someone who does have a disability are incredibly high.
And that's probably the number one reason that we do this work.
So that second statistic there, 20 million households have at least one disabled family member.
But we're not seeing this prevalence of disability really manifesting itself on our screens, in our laptops.
What have you. Only 4.1% of programs in the last Nielsen study featured disability themes.
And only about 3% of characters that you see on screen are people with disabilities.
That's a stark contrast to the 66% of audience who are unsatisfied with current representation of disability and mental health, which was a statistic from the inevitable foundation. So people are hungry for these stories. They want to see themselves represented. They want to see their loved ones represented and they want to know more about these communities.
So that's really where we're coming in in the public media sector.
To give you a little bit of background on Move to Include, because I think it's important that we are where we are Now, but it took us a while to get here. And so dialogue on disability was the beginning or the seed
Of move to include and that was more than 20 years ago now. So we began an annual collaboration with a community partner, the Al Siegel Community of Agencies.
And basically, they were recipients of some funding and they were doing an annual lecture series around different topics in disability So you're getting kind of the same audience, maybe a couple of hundred people are listening or hearing this lecture.
And they really came to us and said, you guys have this amazing platform at XXI and within public media.
We think you can take these funds and really share out our messaging and get a larger audience for this really, really important conversation. So that is a partnership that continues to this day. And just a quick plug for our onboarding welcome workshop that we do with new move to Include stations. You'll hear from some of our partners, including the LCO community of agencies on just how
We've started this work and we continue to steward and foster those relationships within the local community. Because again.
We're the experts in public media. We are not the experts in disability or any one specific disability.
So it really is kind of a whole village holistic approach to the disability inclusion and accessibility.
And around 2014, we actually have the start of Move to Include. So we expand our work on disability inclusion in partnership with another local organization, the Golisano Foundation. And they've continued to be our funding sponsor throughout.
Some of you may be familiar with the pilot we did in 2019 with support from CPB and of course, because timing is everything with these things, we were kind of having to pivot and shift and move some things around because COVID hit very soon after we started this project with the pilot stations and you can see them listed there.
But fabulous work was being done around the 30th anniversary for the Americans with Disabilities Act and some really great content and conversation came out of that event.
We're really looking with this new phase of Move to Include to kind of re-foster those arrangements that we had with the original group of pilot stations and then expand it to new cohorts of of stations. And you can see there that move to include
We're kind of building back that program, that pilot program, and we're creating more of not just a content hub, but a real intentional community of practice around disability inclusion and accessibility.
And it's not on this timeline, but just to share as a little bit of further insight.
I joined XXI in 2023. So I've been there just almost two years and my job is full-time project manager on Move2 Include. So that means I have a team across all of our departments at the station But really, I'm the full-time person working on the project.
That's not to say that that's how it should be structured in every station, but just to share with you that please don't think if you reach out to me that you're impinging on time or anything like that.
This is my full-time focus. So I am here for you.
And just to share some aspects of Move to Include at XXI, again, it's not going to look this way at every station, but some of the things we do is national programming.
Very easy. And I know Irene Fink, our amazing rock star programmer, is on the call today. Thank you, Irene. But we have things like inside our autistic minds, which we've shown now I'm not sure I read several times now. And that came to us from the BBC. That's been spectacularly successful for folks. We have the new Carl the collector from PBS Kids, and we have things like Richard the third from Great Performances. So this is content that's already available from different distributors and from different national leaders.
That you can program at your station. And it really is just as simple as that.
You can even go to our playlist on pbs.org. We have a move to include playlist that has some of our original programming, including the one you see there most prominently is Deconstructing Ableism, which is the record of a community conversation that we did With a national keynote speaker. Again, it was through a community partner that we kind of got hooked into this project.
We made things available as far as the studio and the tech crew and reporting. And we did a full hybrid event So that we were able to then take the content of that really amazing, amazing conversation and make it available to folks on demand through both PBS.org and YouTube.
And then you can see our feature documentary, A Good Life, that just came out a few years ago that I know several of you have programmed in the past, and we thank you for that.
We're also taking move to include out into the community. So we're going and we're doing things with local community partners on the left here, you see a shoot we did with the local special hockey organization, Rochester Ice Cats.
That then turned into a two minute piece that we can now use as an interstitial. We can use it online. So similar to the deconstructing ableism event, it was really how do we take this content, work smarter, not harder with them?
We're kind of in a unique position in that we also have a small independent film house that's under the WXXI umbrella. It's called the Little Theater here in Rochester. And we love, love, love being able to do screenings and panel discussions and different events with them.
And I'll talk a little bit more about how that relationship is kind of unique as well with what we do with them.
We take folks out into the community like Julia. We've done a couple of Carl the collector inspired events.
And then, of course, we're out with you. This is a panel discussion that Erin McCormick, our previous executive producer, was involved with talking about Move to Include at PBS Annual in San Diego, as some of you folks were there.
We're also online, obviously, so content gets put both on pbs.org and YouTube.
We have virtual discussions that we've done, particularly during COVID, but we're not leaving that practice behind because we want to make sure that our events are as accessible and inclusive as possible. And so we're always working to include different
Technical and assistive accommodations for any of our events. We also have a dedicated move to include page on our website.
We have a Facebook page, so we do have a little bit of a social media presence. And then we have the national move to Include website, which will be linked to later.
We also do content for PBS Learning Media. So there's professional development for parents and educators.
There's different pieces around, as you can see, arts and music, sports and recreation really anything um these These are things that we're constantly revising and adding to, but that's a huge collection that you can access.
And then we have WXXI Classical, which last year came to me with an amazing idea, again, around dialogue on disability, because this is just a whole team approach.
And they said, we want to feature classical musicians who have a disability and talk about how that's impacted their practice or their performance.
And so now with the second year under their belt just this past January, they now have 14 kind of vignettes or featurettes that they've produced.
With different across the spectrum performers, musicians, composers, conductors. Talking about unique ways that they've taken their disability and had an impact on their professional lives. And it's really, really interesting from drummers who are deaf or hard of hearing or folks who have repetitive stress injuries, just really kind of
Crossing the gamut. And then again, with the little, not only do we host our own events there, but we partner with them on things like sensory friendly screenings. They also do two screenings of every film each week.
Has open captions and we're working on getting even more training and adaptive technology into the theater to make sure that if you can't make one of those screenings, you do have the personal captioning device that is available.
Or if you need an additional sensory friendly environment, we have some tricks and tips that we can put in place for you.
And this is the newest thing that we've started doing. So every day on our news station, because we are dual licensee, I should have said that.
We have a midday public affairs program. So it's two hours every day, Monday through Friday. It is an amazing lift.
I've been lucky enough to guest host now for a couple of shows.
And I mean, I had respect for Megan and Evan who do this on a daily basis, but seeing it firsthand and experiencing it.
I'm just like blown away by what they do for us every day with this show and the latest development is that we are now live streaming to YouTube.
That started in the middle of January and it was a learning opportunity for us. We didn't have a ton of turnaround time between the decision being made and doing some some experimenting with what we have as far as the space and the cameras.
But what we've learned in just the past couple of weeks has really impressed upon us the importance of the inclusion aspect. So whether it's ASL interpretation.
Or captioning. And when you get the slide deck, you'll be able to click through to this video. But you can see this was a panel that actually did include a deaf panelist and we had an ASL interpreter that we then featured You know, on screen throughout the entire hour. So again, that's something that we're working on.
These are very expensive things, some of these, and so they're not always going to be an easy add, but we try to make it as inclusive and accessible as possible from the get-go.
So that our audience can participate to the fullest ability. And just sharing some of the feedback that we've received from our move to include either community events or we always do an audience feedback survey for dialogue on disability each year.
And really, these are to me the gold standard for why we do what we do.
Giving people who haven't had this experience in their lives a window into what that's like and making them think about things in a different way, changing their perspective and hopefully changing In many cases, their behavior, but definitely the hearts and minds piece is very, very important.
And then for those who are within the disability community, making sure that they see themselves, whether it's a community event or content that we're putting on air or online, making sure that they feel like they have a voice, that they're a partner with us in this work.
And then again, they're seeing themselves in the work itself. So I'll talk a little bit about what a partner station actually means now that I've given you kind of the case study of what it means to move to include at XXI.
So first of all, you know your community best. For us here in Rochester, we have one of the largest deaf and hard of hearing communities in the country. And so that directs a lot of what we offer and what we do.
That's not to say that we don't work with other folks in the disability community. We absolutely do. But when we're thinking about we're having this event. It's not a question. We have an ASL interpreter there, even if no one has requested it. We're lucky to live in an area that has
A lot of interpreters and we always want to make sure that the community feels like they're welcome and doing this one thing, one less thing that they have to kind of advocate and ask for on their own.
Is fostering that sense of belonging and welcome. Also, accessibility and inclusion, it's a journey without a final destination. Once you get into this work, you'll understand that it's very fluid.
Language changes, technology changes. I'm going to be at an assistive technology conference Just next month. And I'm sure I'm going to learn new things than I learned at the one I was at in October.
So that's just kind of the nature of the beast. So giving yourself a little grace.
Definitely key to this work. And also knowing that you're already on your way. I mean, being here today, showing an interest and considering committing to promoting disability inclusion with your station or in your community That's the biggest hurdle is just kind of putting up your hand and saying.
I want to do this. I want to commit to this. I want to be part of this work.
That being said, there are some things to consider before you kind of onboard, whether it's move to include or just some disability inclusion accessibility practices.
Within your station. What are you currently doing? Here at XXI, we talk about diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging.
Because we agree that all of those are important and of equal weight. And for me, the work that gets done sometimes in the DEI space leaves off that A of accessibility and making sure that the that's prominent. And so we use that in all of our communications as standing up and saying this is an important value for us.
You also want to consider how might move to include fit with your current and future plans and programming.
And no one can answer that by yourselves which current staff teams or board members could support this work.
Once you start talking about this work to your community advisory boards, your board of trustees, your community partners.
Even just the people that you work with day in and day out you're going to find stories that maybe they haven't shared in the past or experiences that they haven't shared.
Everyone has a connection to this work in one way or another. And it's been just amazing to hear these stories from folks that are in just in my circle and even personally talking to friends and family now that I do this work full time and hearing
Things that you know people for 20 years and they never shared with you so it's It's really an untapped resource and you will find kind of a wellspring once you start digging.
You also want to look at which segments of the disability community are represented in your area. So I shared that we have a large deaf and hard of hearing community here.
We're also a very resource rich community for neurodivergence. But you may be in a different situation. You might be in a community where there are a ton of folks who are blind or have low vision.
Folks who are disabled veterans a lot of chronic illness, depending on where you are, that's going to inform the work that you're doing in your station.
And then who in your community can act as partners? Are there local fundraising and corporate support opportunities? And again, it's going to come from all of those developing those relationships within the community itself and making folks aware that you're beginning this journey and the work that you're doing.
So kind of the first couple of steps once you've thought about those questions and decided, yes, we want to do move to include in our station.
You want to have a point person. And that can be someone in any department. We've seen it done in many different ways with our partners.
Maintaining a move to include landing page within your station's website, that's great for communications and sharing out to your audience what you're doing.
Again, promoting different ways within your community and actively building relationships with local partners.
And again, it can start just as simply as promoting national content like independent lens POV, A Good Life, Carl the Collector. I was just screening films from Sundance last weekend. And there's some really great stuff that's coming up. There's the Marlee Matlin documentary that's coming up from American Masters.
There's two independent lens films that are going to be disability related.
Programming that stuff and kind of calling attention to it when you're programming it.
That's the start. If you do decide to join Move to Include, we do actually ask you to provide quarterly reporting, which we are in the process of kind of refining those efforts. But that's for us to show impact on a national level, but then we'll also be able to share some impact
Data viz and statistics for you to then share out locally.
And this is something that we can talk about. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of questions about, but making sure that we adhere to inclusive language guidelines and branding guidelines.
So now is the fun part. I get to share with you what some of our partner organizations are our partner stations are doing. So Iowa PBS, and these are all linked. Once you get the slide deck, you'll be able to go to these pages themselves.
Iowa PBS has done the Life Autistic series WCNY and WNED are working on World of Adaptive Sports. We are starting to join them in that effort here at XXI. We are media sponsors for the local state level winter games for Special Olympics, which are starting in a few weeks. And we're really excited to be sharing content and building that relationship as well.
And then I'm going to turn this over to Amy for a few minutes to share with you their virtual book club, which is just so much fun and has been going on. You're on 15th book? No, Amy?
10th. Okay.
I think the 10th. But there's other clubs Yeah. Meaning I'll talk a little bit more about the stations who have to do the book club. So really happy to be here. We were one of the pilot stations for a move to include and that was
A variety of opportunities for us to work with the disability community.
We did a storytelling workshop. We did little vignettes For YouTube, we also got into programming and we still do this. This is an easy lift.
When we have programming that's move to include, we use the animation that is one of the things that XXI provides. They have a lot of assets. So we work with our programming service and they let us know when something fits into
The move to include buckets so we can let our audience know when that is airing and that's something we continue to do today. Just real quick before I get more into the book club, one of the things hopefully ann's on on
She works with us Ann Stably. She did a hurricane preparedness webinar for people with disabilities. So if you're in one of those areas that has a lot of natural disasters or you're at risk, that's something that you can do and partner with agencies to provide that information.
And we found out that even beyond our broadcast area, people signed up to tune into that in Florida.
So there's just so much we can do, but we are going to focus to tell you on the virtual book club.
Which spun out of spun out our work that we did because of COVID, we kind of had to flip the switch and do things more virtually.
And one of our instructors came up with this idea to do a book club. And they've been very successful.
And we have done, like I said, we're on our 10th one, but this one we're doing right now We're considering it national because we've gotten together with PBS Kansas and think tv PBS to put on this book club, but the idea is we're going to share responsibility so we can do three a year.
So this first one, we're kind of engaged in making happen with our partners and then somebody else will take on because there are some expenses for our instructor, but you may have a volunteer that would love to do this.
So we'd be happy to tell you more about it. So we're reading The Hunger Games, which is everybody's very excited about. And Sarah actually joined us at our first club to get a feel for what it was about.
So we have adults on the autism spectrum with an autism diagnosis and we also have adults young adults who are just peers and they love books and they want to meet new people and make new friends.
So you can see we did the Harry Potter series and we have some other books here that we've done.
And we've kept some of the same participants. But sometimes we get new people and we try to get the word out. But these national book clubs We're hoping that if you're interested in doing something like this.
That we can partner with you and kind of get more of these going.
It really breaks the isolation for young adults who are home and and want to make new friends and love to read and talk about books. So we do some other fun things during each book club, some games and puzzles and
It's just been a wonderful, rewarding experience. I get to go uh to most of them. So I find that Thursday or Tuesday night that we do them, one of the highlights of my week.
There's just there's so much you can do. And I just want to thank Sarah and WXXI for bringing this to all of us.
And for creating a hub with resources that will make it an easier lift for you.
So if you have any questions, I think we're going to be opening that up soon.
If I can answer any as a station partner, I'd be happy to do that.
So thank you.
Thank you, Amy. Yeah, please pop those questions into the Q&A box. We're going to get started on those in just a minute.
But I do want to share with you what kind of the next steps could be.
Let me go right direction. So if you were here to answer your questions today, but if you want to learn more.
Check out our national website. Again, all these links are going to be in the slide deck and I think they're coming in the chat as well.
You can download a copy of our updated and expanded station playbook.
So as part of that pilot program, we did put together a public media station playbook of kind of how did you do move to include 101.
We've recently expanded and revised that. So there's a lot more information in this one. And then it has a companion production playbook as well, which goes into some of the more nitty gritty type of stuff as far as captions, accessible media, production considerations through filming.
All of that kind of stuff. And if you're ready to get started, if you've had those conversations, or even if you just want to have an initial conversation with us, sometimes the easiest way to do that is to complete our partner station interest form, just a Google form. Let us know some information about you, and then you and I can have a call.
And discuss it further. But you're always welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn or by email there.
Again, this is what I do, I would say 40 hours a week. I think technically I have to say 40 hours a week also. You know, it's kind of become a vocation really.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to me. You do not have to be a quote unquote official move to include station to reach out to me if you have any questions, want to bounce some ideas off or just have a conversation.
Please feel free to reach out. And then our next welcome workshop and training is scheduled for April 1st and 2nd here in Rochester, New York.
So we do have more information on that coming. Please, if you want to join our network and community of practice, we really welcome you at that. It's going to have more kind of nitty gritty stuff about move to include and what all the mechanics of the program are
But then it's going to have some really great disability related content as well, inclusive language, accessible social media, giving you kind of a rundown on assistive technologies, all sorts of different things.
And, you know, and kind of topics like that. We also share once you join the network and the initiative, we do have virtual trainings quarterly.
So just this past December, we did a training on empathetic storytelling with who tells the story out of Boston.
And that was really great. It was highly interactive. We had breakout rooms. So folks within Then move to include initiative no matter what station you were at. Got some really good key information and then were able to bounce ideas off of
Other folks that are in the initiative and say, hey, I'm working on this. Has anyone encountered that?
And kind of think through some of the ways that we could be better storytellers, more compassionate, empathetic storytellers.
And so with that, I think I turn it over back to you, Sui.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, ladies. Such a wealth of information and a really good reminder in terms of what service can look like to people who have disabilities within our communities.
I have yet to see any questions pop up in the Q&A box. Please don't be shy. I know that everybody is busy, but this is such a great opportunity to ask those questions of Amy or Sarah that you may have about how you can become a partner. I'm going to kick us off, though, because I have questions. So Sarah, when stations join the initiative, what questions or concerns typically come up?
Come up and how do you work with those teams to resolve any of those questions?
Yeah, I think just from more of a mechanical standpoint, the biggest concerns or considerations are around time and funding.
So making sure that you have, you know, not every station needs to have a full-time person, but have someone on the team who has the bandwidth and has the opportunity to really be the point person, the person that I communicate with or other people in the initiative network communicate with who attends the trainings, that kind of thing.
So it's really key to make sure you have one person, maybe they, you know, you share that with, you know, a second person But really making sure that you have someone who can kind of keep leading this forward and being an ambassador within the station for Move to Include.
And all of the disability inclusion work that we do. The second is around funding. Obviously, that's always a concern, particularly right now.
And I would say that, again, we provide training and assets so we're not, you know.
We're not asking for a large outlay of funds to get this started. And even if you're just running that national content that then has a move to include, you know, banner or messaging around it.
That's the way to get started and that's the way to start conversations within your community.
And out of that, out of those relationships with the community will come opportunities that include funding. So for example, the Dialogue on Disability Week that we do every year, the Deconstructing Ableism hybrid event that we did you know that all came out of
Building those relationships and um you know Those of you who come from a philanthropy background, you know that it's not the short game. It's not the immediate return on investment. But once you start having these conversations and you become a player in the local community.
Folks know that you're a resource, whether that's for your news team, having folks who they can go to when there's a story about a disability related topic that they want to include. And we work with our news team here on that.
And making sure, and that kind of leads me to my next point is a lot of people want to get involved in this work but are afraid to put a step or a word wrong.
And say, I don't know enough, so I can't do anything. And we… be here as the resource, you can ask me any questions you have. And I promise it's a judgment-free zone, but we will also provide the resources and the techniques for you so we have
Resources around inclusive language. We're going to train you into what the different models of disability look like.
So that you can kind of understand where folks are coming from within that space. We also talk about media representation and there's a great resource if you check out either a LinkedIn page or a Facebook page, we just shared a resource from forward doc filmmakers with Disabilities.
They just put together a fantastic it's like two you know two-sided sheet on what to consider with media representation. So, you know, our team is always talking about when we're putting something on air, is it authentic representation? What is the back of house look like? For Carl the collector, you know, that was so key to us that not only are you seeing
These authentic representations on screen for both children and adults. I watch it pretty much every morning, let's be honest. But you're seeing it in the cast and the creative crew.
Right.
That are working on the project as well. So there's a lot of different considerations, but really just getting started and knowing that, you know.
You may get it wrong, you will get it wrong. And coming at it with you know first of all, looking at who needs to be around our table and then coming to that table with humility and grace, not only for the folks that you're working with, but for yourself too.
Yeah, absolutely. No, I love that. And I really love the principle of nothing about us without us. It's something that we really need to standardize in many ways within our industry. So that's how we get more voices to the table and to create for the collective. We did get a question.
I'm thinking about this question as if you're here on this webinar and you're like, I feel like our station has a capacity to do this. Where do I start, right? So what are some of the first steps, the initial steps, even before finding that point person that stations can take to prioritize accessibility from within as stations consider becoming a move to include partner?
And maybe, Sarah, you can, or Amy, even you as a station, like what did you guys talk about? How did you guys know that this was the right move to make and what did you do first?
My thing that comes to mind right away is have sarah at one of your meetings as a guest or have somebody from the community come in I think that it's, I think there's a little fear, kind of the fear of messing up
Or this is an area we don't have any expertise. So maybe have somebody come in and be a guest speaker at one of your retreats or your meeting or maybe collect a small group of people, your education person, your programming person.
You're some content folks and development and and do maybe a smaller meeting and just present this idea and see what they have to say. I think one of the things you mentioned is we all know and love somebody with a disability and it's likely that somebody around that table is going to have a story and
Immediately buy in.
Absolutely. Anything to add, Sarah? What has been successful in your in terms of other stations that have signed up and what did they do right?
In those first.
Sure. Yeah. I think, you know, Amy put it very eloquently and she has been one of the greatest ambassadors that we have.
Or move to include, you know, I'm just really, I'm constantly, you know.
Taking something away when we have a conversation or she gives me food for thought when we talk. And I think for when we see partners come on board.
It's really doing that pre-work And talking about, do you have the bandwidth and the resources to make this happen?
So even though the commitments there, like being realistic, you know, we are able to provide as much help as you need, but we can't take the place of having someone in your station who's heading up this work.
And then I think it's really the folks who are saying.
We're going to give this a year and we're gonna we're going to give it our all, whatever we have, whatever that looks like for us, we're going to give it a year. We're going to see how this goes. And then making the commitment moving forward.
That was something that was really important to me when I was interviewing for this position and talking to the team that was already working on Move to Include.
That this is something that's now built into the fabric and the ethos at XXI.
And I'm constantly having just internally people coming to me and asking me questions, whether it's about language or technology or even just You know, Irene and I talk all the time about different representations and different shows and what's a
What's appropriate for move to include and what might not be um and so having that curiosity and that openness at the station I think is really key as well. And then as Amy said like working within the community. We should all be particularly at this time kind of um
Embedding ourselves within the community and making sure that we're serving our local communities first and foremost. And that includes your disability community, but it's just part of your community. And so making sure that you're out there and you're talking to folks and you're saying
Yes.
We know we don't know things. Tell us more. And then compensating those folks because we don't want to be taking over free labor if we, you know, if we can avoid it.
So that book's many different ways and that's something you'll have to work out at your own station. But making sure that we are giving as well as taking and that this is a reciprocal relationship.
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And I love that there are also, you know.
Along the way for stations that sign up, you're looking for quarterly reports. And again, that just holds yourself accountable, making sure that you're not being performative and that you're actually putting as much as you can and learning in terms of where your gaps are and where you need to put more resource behind this initiative in your organization. So really, really appreciate that. Amy, now.
So you all are doing these book clubs and you have this partnership going on, which is amazing. Again, more partnership, more partnership, more partnership. We need more of that in our industry. So beyond the partnership aspects.
How has being a move to include member really helped your organization? What are some of the things, some of the conversations maybe that you're having now that you might not have had before?
Well, you know, I think one of the things that you can do, you know, that we have done is like every now and then I'll have a conversation with our development department about hey, we're doing another book club do you think you have
Somebody interested and that would really want to support this and they may know somebody immediately.
So we have those conversations. The book club really is something that it only takes one or two people to do from the station. So I will say capacity wise it's not a heavy lift.
What we constantly look at anytime there's something about here's the language you use, if there's any resource we can send it to the news team you know just kind of keep it going. I will say that And I guess I want to encourage people to go all in and do as much as you can. But as a pilot station, we did a variety of things.
And we really didn't have the capacity to keep all those up.
But what we could do is continue the book club and we found some funding for it and then now that we were able to work with two other stations and they're interested and hopefully there's more stations that want to do this, I think that that those are kind of the things you have to look inside and really say what can we do
And what can we do well but even just the educational resources that you can provide your staff from the hub. I think that that's another first step is start getting that pushing that out to your station and your people
So it's just kind of like What is this? We need to do this and get those conversations going.
Yeah, absolutely. And funding is always going to be a challenge. And the more you engage with partners where you can partner together to get either access to funding for both partners or sharing your donor information in a way that is strategic, there's always opportunity out there. It's just a matter of where you're looking and who you're partnering with. So how do you, Sarah, how do you see the move to include initiative evolving over the next few years?
I think for me. I really want it to be this community of practice. I want it to be however many stations we get to. And we'd love to have all of you. But however many we end up having with us.
That we're learning from each other. And while we are the resource hub and we're providing a lot of training and information and assets.
That really You're the expert in your community. And so you may be trying out something to Amy's point, you may be trying out something, not sure if it's going to work.
But have some learnings out of it, want to share back with the team. And we really value that. So this is something that we are hoping that we can enroll as many folks as possible so that we are seen in public media that public media is seen
As a leader in this work, because we're not the Amazons, we're not the Apples, and they're doing some really incredible things around accessibility. I think for us, it's if that inclusion and representation piece that's going to be really, really key because our audiences want to see themselves reflected
On their screens, in their news coverage, on their music channels, whatever it is that we have under our individual umbrellas.
And that's where we really come in because we are a community resource.
In a way that a lot of our commercial partners are not.
Absolutely. And I've had the privilege of being a fly on the wall in one of Sarah's meetings, not only within her internal group with WXXI, which is just a fabulous opportunity again to get all of the departments together and hear from each other on how you're embedding accessibility in the projects around the station, but also for the partner stations coming together and talking about a particular topic, brainstorming in real time, some of the challenges that could exist. And again, reminding people that, yes, we have to make sure that we are paying people, that we are making sure that we're being supportive of their needs and
For instance, if you're going out into a story, making sure that the person who's being interviewed or profiled that you're meeting their needs, if they are a person with disabilities. And so it's like we just all have to, we can learn from each other. We can learn a lot from one another.
In this day and age, especially. Amy, what would you say to stations that are on the fence?
I hope no one here is on the fence, but you know, it's a challenging time.
But what would you say to stations who are just, you know.
Yeah.
Considering but weighing, you know, pros and cons, which are fine.
Yeah. Well, just looking at some of the things some of the chat And just knowing that, you know, the first thing you're going to think is capacity and funding that's going to be this big barrier.
So I would start baby steps. Kind of look at some of the resources that are available, attend some of the offering some of the webinars, but look at, you know, how can you start maybe with programming I mean, that is once you get the animation and it's something that can be done by traffic.
And you work with your programmer to make sure that those programs are coming down the pipe are identified and then also they curate XXI has a curated list of of things you can do that you might be able to look at that list and see some things that really work for your community.
I think meeting some folks meeting those potential community partners And just listening to what their needs are.
Might inspire something. Maybe it starts with a conversation But I would just know that you can do it to small bites.
Small bites. And then you'll find what works for your station and what works for your community.
And there's always partners out there especially you know if you do have a news team or a content team just getting them involved and giving them the resources they need to get inspired to do more of these stories and
To give the community a voice. Yeah, I'd say small bites.
Small bites. Yes. Sarah, anything?
Yeah, no, and just to echo that, I mean, you know, we have such an amazing team as you saw, Sway, when you were able to be a face on the wall, a fly on the wall at our meeting.
Yeah. This is really, you know.
I guess a little more than a fly.
Depending on how your station is structured. Is going to depend on, you know, that's going to be how you implement this But that doesn't mean you can't and shouldn't have buy-in from your entire station community. As I said, there's going to be folks that are, because you're starting this work are going to share their own personal experiences or, you know, passions that they're working on and
And that you may never have known about. But really, it's the team coming together with each of our subject matter expert hats on. So we have, you know, Irene is a fabulous programmer and we share out what's coming down the pike, but also folks from creative services who do a really great job even if it's not
A move to include specific ask or document they're working on inclusive photography and images in everything that we do now from our annual reports to different kind of promo materials.
Your fundraising and your corporate sponsorship, always having in the back of their minds that this is an opportunity to engage with folks on that level, your production team.
Your news team, we have the inclusion desk as part of Move to Include at WXXI.
And there's no one beat writer on it at the moment. Wbfo has wonderful Emily Watkins and we've definitely done some trainings with Emily in the past.
But we have kind of a full core press when it comes to our news team and the inclusion desk and so them just looking at a story and saying, what's the disability angle here and not just kind of regulating relegating the inclusion desk to disability stories. But knowing that that lens is always there, we just need to keep looking for it.
Right.
Absolutely. All right. I think that we've covered a lot today. Sarah, I did have one more question and I know I want to take several steps back because I think it's a good reminder to share with people what the disabled population community looks like in terms of what are the different types of disabilities
That people might not necessarily think are really disabilities so that we can remind our audience about that.
Yeah, absolutely. And disability can be a loaded term. I think a lot of times in the past.
The inclination for folks who are not disabled has been to find euphemisms or clever phrasing to mitigate the difference or things like that. But really, that's a type of erasure And the disability community writ large is so diverse.
And has smaller sub communities within it. So you want to really make sure, and I know this, and I don't mean this to sound kind of overwhelming to folks.
Because again, I think that is one of the largest obstacles that we have to overcome when folks are starting this work. But really, it's getting to know the individual community. So there is an autism or a neurodivergence community there's a mental health community there's chronic illness
We at Move to Include, and particularly when it comes to the inclusion desk that I just mentioned, we take the broadest description of disability possible. So how you as a person self-identify That's what we go with, particularly when we're like interviewing folks. We want to make sure that, you know, everyone is just as we got used to talking about pronouns.
Yeah.
We want to make sure that people are identified in a way that they're comfortable with and really catering to that. So that's the first and foremost.
Right.
But then also within these communities things are fluid and change. And so there are going to be folks who don't see themselves as disabled that may still kind of be caught up in the criteria that we have because it is so wide. And so we do want to be sensitive to that.
But I do think it's important to talk about disability as in it's something that impacts your daily life.
And so, you know, whether it's something you need an accommodation for or something that you mask for.
You know, I'll share with my own personal history For a long time, I didn't understand that I had ADHD and that I was neurodivergent.
And it caused so much. Internalized angst and value judgments put on the way that like I was always trying to act in a way that was neurotypical, which was against the way my brain was working. And instead of understanding that.
I really just kind of internalized it and was really, you know, had really awful self-esteem about it.
Right.
That's not something you can see looking at me. I also have a degree of hearing loss. So I consider myself hard of hearing and I use captions or transcripts or whatever assistive technology I need. But both of those things
I spent a long time masking. And it's really, you know, was first with the pandemic and you kind of had to open up a mouth and advocate for yourself in ways that I wasn't used to doing it in the past.
And then taking on this job you know this has been such an amazing personal and professional opportunity to take over the Move to Include initiative because it's really helped me cement myself Not only as an accessibility professional, but just personally sharing my journey, sharing my story and saying to folks, look.
This isn't necessarily what you think of when you think of disability, you may think of mobility challenges, you may think of deaf or blind, but it is all of these things combined. And it really is about having those folks represented
Again, on our screens, on our air, and within our coverage and within the community.
Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. And thank you ladies so much for all of the information you gave us today. And please make sure you are checking the chat to get those links to our audience. Please make sure you are reaching out to Sarah. She is a wealth of information and knowledge and support.
Thank you again, everyone, and we will be posting the recording as well as these slides and links on the Greater Public website. Wishing you all a fantabulous Tuesday and rest of your week and February. And we will chat soon.
Thank you again. Take care. Have a good one.
Thank you so much, everyone.