Introduction
Welcome to PEAT Talks, the virtual speaker series from the Partnership on Employment and Accessible Technology. On the Thursday of every month, PEAT Talks shows various organizations and individuals whose work and innovations are advancing technology in the workplace. My name is Corinne Weible. I'm the deputy director for PEAT, and I'll be hosting today's talk. Before we get started, I'm going to quickly going to review a few logistics.
We will have time for questions and answers, so please enter your questions into the chat window anytime. You can also use the chat window if you are having any technical difficulties and we will do our best to resolve any issues. You can download the presentation on PEATworks.org, and an archived recording will be posted online following today's event. We will be live tweeting today's event from @PEATworks, so please join us and follow on using #PEATTalks.
Today, PEAT is pleased to welcome Shea Tanis. Dr. Emily Shea Tanis is the associate director of the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities and assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. She has also been involved in many wonderful past collaborations with PEAT, including as a participant on our Think Tank.
Today, Shea will be sharing with us why technology and information access is a critical right for everyone, how technology solutions are changing employment opportunities for people with cognitive disabilities. With that, I'll turn it over to Shea.
Presentation
Thank you, Corinne, and I first want to thank the entire wonderful PEAT team, Josh, Joy, Wynn, Lauren, Corinne, and Emily for, really, the opportunity to talk with you all today, this afternoon, some of you still in the morning, if you're on the West Coast. The Coleman Institute at the University of Colorado has been a proud partner of PEAT for several years and we've been incredibly impressed by all of the work that they have accomplished over the time that they have been in existence, and so we first want to say thank you and congratulations to them on such a wonderful job.
So, I am fortunate to be able to talk with you all today. I will go through a little bit of understanding about the Coleman Institute so you know where I am from and the perspective that I bring. For many of you some of the topics or items of discussion in my presentation will have been things you have heard or know well; however, I certainly feel for those who have not heard them. They deserve the attention, and I hope that each of you can come away with something meaningful from today's presentation.
So, again, My name Shea Tanis. I am associate director at the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities, and the mission of the Coleman Institute is to catalyze and integrate advances in technology to promote meaningful quality of life for people with cognitive disabilities and their families. So, since our inception in 2001, the Institute has been actively engaged in supporting research, development, dissemination, and education around cognitive disabilities. So we have worked on public policy, leadership, and, really, to strengthen the voice of those with cognitive disabilities, alongside them, and their families to promote, really, areas around accessibility and technology innovation.
So, over the years, the Coleman Institute has been involved in funding and supporting several areas of technology. We began, really, in health technologies, which is application knowledge in the form of devices, medicines, vaccines, and procedures that help solve health problems that were specific to cognitive disabilities. And, simultaneously, we somewhat round into assistive technology, which is really those that mediate impairments in communication, language, mobility, memory, and comprehension.
We've also done a bit in cognitive technology, which, today, the term has taken on different meanings as new forms of technology that are coined cognitive technologies or those used by machine learning have come out. When we started working in cognitive disabilities, in cognitive technology area, it was around developments that could assist or augment cognitive functioning, so perception, memory, comprehension, and decision-making and technology. However, as we have evolved, then I would say, really from our inception our primary focus has been in applied cognitive technologies, which, until recently, wasn't necessarily defined.
So, the field of applied cognitive technology is really the research and development that allows people with cognitive disabilities to successfully function in an inclusive environment and to increase participation in those environments. So, what we really do is we look to build cognitive works into technology that is already used by all. So, not necessarily building specialized technologies but building cognitive supports into technologies available.
So, just for clarity, I want to talk a bit about cognitive disability and who we mean by cognitive disability, and then I'll get into neurodiversity. So, when we talk about cognitive disability, this is what we're talking about. This is our cognitive pie, and it's what we call, for short, "the cognitive pie" here in the Coleman Institute, and it's really the prevalence in areas that we support by diagnostic category; however, when we do our application we do it by kind of functional approaches rather than diagnostic approaches. So, when we talk about definitive areas, we talk about Alzheimer's, stroke, brain injury, severe persistent mental illness, as well as developmental and intellectual disabilities.
So, you know, when we look at the census data of cognitive disabilities, the way it falls out in terms of different sensory disabilities based upon this census data in 2015, and these vary based upon source, you've got hearing and vision constituting 5.1% of the population; cognitive 3.6%; and then, if you do mobility, that is 7.1%.
We are a large proportion of the U.S. population, when you talk about disability focus, and, yet, within that is this category that we have defined as neurodiversity or the neurodiverse, and this is an area that really has been coined — well, I'm going to go back to some of the history of it — was coined in, really, 1988, from my understanding, by Judy Singer, but not until 1999 did it came out where she, as a self-identified person with Asperger's, said, for me the key significant for the autism spectrum lies in its call for an anticipation of a politics of neurological diversity or what I want to call neurodiversity. The neurologically different represent a new edition to the familiar political category of class, gender, race, and will augment the insights of the social model of disability." So that was the beginning of the term "neurodiversity."
If you look online, if you look under neurodiverse, there's a great video on YouTube done Daniel Obejas from last year's Autistic Self-Advocacy — he's from the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network but was presenting at the University of Southern California on the art of autism, and so he did a really wonderful job — and you can YouTube it — talking about the three facets of a neurodiversity. So, there is the neurodiversity of the biological factor, that, as a movement and that as paradigm. So, really, I want to lay this out so when we start to talk about neurodiversity we know what the general — or what a definition is.
So, when we talk about it as a biological factor, it is that neurons are wired differently as biological characteristic in all human beings. When we talk about the paradigm, it's really the set of beliefs that falls in line with positive psychology, and the functional model of disability and/or the person to fit environments, where there is really a richness of different kinds of brains, and every mind should be valued based on the fact that — valued and respected as a facet of just diversity, so it's just a piece, another form of human variation, and then the neurodiversity movement is really the social groups and activists who promote the neurodiversity paradigm.
Now, what's important to recognize within this, and it's why I bring it up, because we're hearing a lot about neurodiversity, but it is a relatively fluid definition, in that the definition, when you look at groups that are associated to it, when you look at their diagnostic criteria, it's really ADHD and autism and down syndrome. When you look at the Developmental Adult Neural Diversity Association, they talk about dyspraxia, ADHD, and Asperger's, and others involve some nonverbal learning disability and Tourette's, but it has been commonly associated with autism spectrum disorder and autistic.
So, when we hear about neurodiversity — and where we've been hearing a lot about neurodiversity is in the media lately. It really started, actually, if you look back, it started in 2012, in "The Economist," where there was an article called "In Praise of the Mystic," where it really was talking about those with autism who were demonstrating their strengths, and people have modified to the environment to relate so that drinks are valued so you could identify and that is what we have started to see come up more frequently in the local media around your Neurodiversity and what they are talking about is technology companies advance companies and the Forbes has been talking about it but what they are talking about is a Neurodiversity in terms of people who may identify as autistic or on the autism Eckstrom and there are folks on this — autism spectrum.
It should be noted that this really is looking at companies like air B&B salesforce Amazon link in Facebook Microsoft who are but the thing that I think that is important to note here is that Brian Jacobs stated that these folks are generally technology companies and the software object executives and they know that there are already scores of people on the autism spectrum in their companies and the industry is accustomed to a comedy — accommodating these unique needs so it is easier to think outside of the box if you are already living out right of the box and a Neurodiversity we are excited to that we are seeing more people being hired with autism and more people with diverse cognitive — cognitive needs that are starting to be targeted as a board targeted as a talent pool and those companies doing that should be applauded and yet we are still seeing that the statistics is that 20.7% of the US labor force is people with disability and that narrow defined groups that the mass media is talking about is still a small chunk of that large percentage of folks who are unemployed who have a disabilities so who is missing from the talent pool and not only that but what strengths and assets can be brought outside of the tech industry. We are simply just not doing enough and we are not doing enough targeting larger groups as a talent pool so how can we start to do this so they would say the disability advantage is that at least based upon what we are seeing in the media and the definition of Neurodiversity and the population that that compasses. So certainly a disability advantage that individuals have as human beings that they bring with her own strength so rather than saying we will focus on Nero diverse we need to reframe that has the advantage that people with unique strengths have and I don't believe we have done that yet. We need to actively seek out people who are uniquely positioned to bring natural strengths and talents to benefit a company or business. It takes active seeking out and in order to do it successfully in order to encompass true diversity we have to consider functional conceptual model of a diversity to ensure the most productive outcome throughout the entire lifecycle of employment and it takes a gradual long where we can use the conceptual model and applied technology in the wake which one will show you to address a larger talent pool that we are not able to access thus far.
So the functional conceptual model you will call it the impersonal environment model will help organization to talk about it as the functional definition of disability and it is the concept that moved away from the diagnostic criteria where we can conceptualize the function of the fit between the persons capacities and the participation expectations of that content being a misstep. So what you see is an environmental fit so it is not the traits but a state of where functioning is impaired. We see the infrastructure or environments are too rigid to include all people and as a result of that rigidity those personal capacities that are outside established of what are socially established norms have the disabilities so it is what results from a smoker from our job to is to figure out ways to essentially removed this disability between the fit of personal contacts and the environments and what I would like to say today is that technology can play a critical role in helping modified that fit. Technology changes of the environment and changes the expectations or supports changes in expectations to allow strengths to better fit the context. So, part of what I will do for today is a briefly talk through some of the aspects of the ways that technology can do so and in turn establish that technology will help us provide that key and is important for future next steps for our culture and society.
So we will now look at how and this is just a clear physical adaptation of technology who you have seen in the media who became paralyzed from the waist down but has a technology adaptation which is the standing wheelchair that allows him to still continue in his job as an orthopedic surgeon. The problem for him was the physical environment but people with cognitive disabilities or intellectual disabilities as part defined by diagnostic categories there is a difference in the areas where they find challenges in the environmental fit and the expectations.
The expectation the functional areas of misfit with the environment with folks with a diagnosis in these categories fall in these ranges so they fall in memory and learning, reason and idea production, language ability and auditory reception, visual comprehension, processing speed, reaching and writing and acquired knowledge and achievement.
We have seen some tremendous advances in technology. Many of these can help change the environment to allow folks who have these additional areas of misfit but have tremendous strengths to fit the what would be the social environment and will now go through and I will say that I tend to shy away from doing show and tell of technology I will do a bit of it today but I will tell you why I shy away from it. Generally that is what people want to see give me the tools I want to take them but the reality is there are a tremendous number of tools out there to knowledge he is advancing every day and it's not that technology isn't there. It is there you just have not found it to apply to their specific situation and the reason I tend to shy away from show and tell is because what we have seen happen is we get people and idea of the type of technology code to a go and participate and go with it and suddenly they find it is not a good fit for just like the personal environment fit it has to be a good fit between the person and the technology and there are programs in each of the states that can help identify the correct technology. We want to do not only assistive technologies but mainframe technologies. Big companies are doing incredible work in terms of making their products success — accessible they're making great strides and working hard to do so so we have to applaud these companies because they are getting better and better at making mainframe technologies accessible to all people. That deserves some praise we are not quite totally there yes we need to take a look to see where we have technology making a big difference. Let's start at the beginning of the lifecycle which is the recruitment and where we can help use technology to eliminate misfit of the expectations. One thing we have seen is so 85% of all jobs are filled by a social networking so not necessarily through open shop apps but through people's relationships with each other and we have social media that provides the mechanism for allowing people to get jobs that network with others and use bridging networks which abridges people to external sources and give them access to new opportunities. Social media is providing a great source for how do we change the beginning of the lifecycle and the way that we can recruit folks to use technology that is now more accessible than it was in the past.
70% of all employers use social media to screen candidates before hiring and 60% of the hiring managers are less likely to call someone in in for an interview if they are not findable online and did these are statistics that demonstrate the power of social media for the people who have not traditionally had access to job applications can start to build the network for obtaining jobs.
We also need to look at how we look at resumes and how we look at applications. PEAT has done an amazing job at looking at the accesibility at different web applications for doing resumes. They have worked hard in that area and have amazing accomplishments but we also can change traditional cycle and the traditional way of fulfilling an application does not work for people with cognitive disabilities. One thing we have started to look at is video resumes. How do you provide a visual portfolio that doesn't necessarily conform to the fill in the blank answer box. A different way of turmeric demonstrating a SK different skill set. Another thing going on in companies is instead of giving applications is doing work trials inside the workplace seeing folk use apprenticeship model to learn about individual skill set whether it will actually fit in the environment of that business and the reality is what you go to the business cycle your first couple of months is learning the job and people are still in the trial phase and if we moved that cycle back and we use that as the acting cycle we can change the application of how we use the HR process and now we do hiring and recruiting. The other thing that has been beneficial in using technology is the opportunity for remote working. That had opened doors for a lot of folks within employment. We do know that there is a large percentage and workers of a higher there is a lot of folks using technology and they have changed the employment cycle and more companies are adopting remote access and remote working as a potential opportunity for weight may not fit into the norm or the idea of what is a office what is it for going to work perspective? So remote working is technology that allows people to do more from different environments that they would not have had the opportunity to do in the past and allow flexibility that is also very helpful.
Okay. So more technology support these go in line with some of the areas and functional areas that I discussed before in processing.
I talk about specific products but also generalized areas in technology and the first one you see is called a virtualize or and in terms of research for folks who are distracted by auditory sounds this is a system that directs sound to a person's ears specifically around the room and that as sound as amplified in that particular area for that person so if you are to people who are distracted by a person sitting next to you this sound will be projected directly towards you and not everyone in the room so that can help target attention. Virtual training I would say for employment for people with cognitive disabilities with of the things is augmented reality. That is because it aligns the back ground of the platform of what is in that environment and allows for simulation. Ritual training and coaching holds a great promise to be able to allow those who don't generally have environmental context to have the ability to use them and when we talk about remote working this telepresence is just one form of it and we are doing some of that right now with virtual meeting being able to engage in a dialogue from a different location is helpful with tactile reminders and this is an I watch but having vibrations as a reminder for things to do there are a number of hops that I can go through examples of and there are many. There are also a lot of wearable reminders for folks to be prompted for an next steps for the past and a list that provide feedback so you have tactile and a virtual reminders. There is a lot of work going on in content changes so changing actual literary content text and modifying that content to be more of a simple language is a contact clarifier which is one of IBM's products that we have folks working on and there are several of these applications where they are looking to take dance content tends language and simplifying that language that can be incredibly helpful. Also I think for the problem-solving and attention spans that is a functional area that there is need for assistance in. Machine learning provides a lot and a huge growth in machine learning area which holds promise to be able to simplify tasks that are unnecessary if you have another team learning algorithms and social media and a lot of these employment groups and companies that I highlighted earlier that have been looking at Neurodiversity many of them have support groups within their structure social media also provides the support structure for folks in the employment to be able to have that dialogue and to build cohorts of support around them.
And who can go further without talking about work in allowing people with cognitive disabilities and disabilities in general to have access to smart phones with assistive technology. They are increasing substantially by those even with lower socioeconomic abilities or capacities more people own smart phones but we have to ensure that there are amazing applications for peoples with cognitive disabilities out there and we need to make sure that they have the hardware to be able to access these wonderful exit sensibilities. So a couple of quick examples.
There is the visualized scheduler, a couple of schedule is and these are not all in copacetic in — encompassing. There are tons out there and I am not promoting any specific ones just giving you an idea of what is out there. You can see this is a new output — application that came out that speaks to the person about what is in their environment that can be helpful for people with visual processing needs.
Videos voice stream readers screen readers there are a ton of screen readers out there that reads content and transforms platforms back and forth so one can be more readable than others and picture routines there are prompting task analysis drops so taking a test breaking it into pieces and giving it chunks into the next steps that is something that can be helpful in having routines broken down and many of us do that when we do our schedule we know what we do each hour we do a task analysis breaking it down into steps and this is just another mechanism to do so.
If first this now that there are so many applications and technologies how do we deal with the cross-platform support? How do we allow these to interact with each other? Companies are working hard now to ensure that they can get multi-systems on a single platform so they communicate better and this is a nap to help do that and helps props get a visual image of what to do. It is basically augmented reality where you add prompts with individual images.
These are just some examples of things that are out there and again I want to reiterate this note by no means encompasses everything there is a tremendous number of things out there to see what makes the most sense to them.
Here are all of the technologies and like PEAT there are other federal programs supporting technology access. We run into this inclusion paradox so based upon research we know that people with disabilities are not using or are under utilizing tech knowledge he. So we ask ourselves, why do we continue to struggle to provide people with that information for technology and access to that technology? The reason is we still have a tremendous number of barriers that remain to allow people to have the access to technology not only in the work twice but in general. First we have lack of universal design for all products. We still struggle and it is not just a singular area of design but also a component of universal design and this deals with products in the entire work environment. We still have challenges with literacy skills and using technology and our employment per focus of apprenticeship models don't necessarily focus on technology for gingival literacy for populations of students who may or may not be in special education or have learning disabilities. It is still very under represented for this community. There is challenge with equal opportunity he equal opportunity to speak out and be heard so there are no barriers. Knowledge translation being able to know what we know and translate that information to various forms so everyone can understand using things such as content clarifier and other tax simplification applications and forms on the web and also knowing how people learn. One of the transmission pathways of what is the best way to obtain information about a new job? Is it always through a monster. Are there other avenues in which we can translate this information to a population? Can we know already if this is at a disadvantage for using technology and how do we figure out to the transmission pathways for understanding. Social context is a misunderstanding of the strengths and values of this entire population and many others. So understanding that there is still a barrier that is embedded in our social and cultural norms that we need to overcome and last and at the lowest and are the economic barriers. We know there is still economic barriers to technology but that is now as more products are in betting accessibility features into all of their products that is getting less and less cumbersome and less of a barrier for people and yet we still sat see that there are a number of barriers that remain. So the Coleman Institute in recognizing this not only for employment but for all areas and a person for all of their life. Without technology you have a challenge in functioning and you cannot participate as meaningfully without having access to that technology so in 2013 the Coleman Institute along with other national organizations and stakeholders came together to build and draft of what we know and have title to the rights of peoples for informational access. This is a statement of principles that we believe everyone should have an opportunity to engage with. They must be able to utilize this technology. To this date we have 455 national disability you organizations which endorsed the declaration which you can do online. We have to legislative resolutions when in Maine and one in Colorado and there is a resolution bill going to the floor this week in California. This will also embed this important information with access for people.
I will now show so Corinne and Lauren you may need to help me is a quick video.
I don't know if I can play this.
It may not work. I am sorry we didn't realize we want to that you wanted to show the video today. We could try sharing if you have it on YouTube we can try sharing that. Yes it is on YouTube. You will have to put your computer speakers very close to the phone.
All right I will pass on that. Just because I also understand as much as we love technology I will ask folks if you are on this call is you want to learn more it is a very powerful video which talks to folks about self advocates and the service providers and the legislators and academics about why it is so important to have technology. Technology is not just for employment and it is under utilized in employment significantly for access for people with disabilities overall. It is underutilized by employers and employees and it can be provide an inessential support for more people to contribute drinks to and an environment to a work environment. So I want to invite you to look at that. I think it will help you understand why we feel that this is not only just a or it is a critical issue for long-term for people for quality-of-life outcomes not just for a simple application. It is not about a single piece of technology it is about the changing culture that we find ourselves in and ensure that people with disabilities overall have an opportunity to engage. They must have an opportunity to be meaningfully included. So I was kept that but I invite you to go look at that and also that the Coleman Institute drafted and produced when we did our Coleman conference in 2013 we do a conference on cognitive disability once a year and it is one of the primary roles of our Institute that we want to bring together national and international folks who care about cognitive disability and technology and we are the only folks to focus specifically on this cognitive area specifically and I want to be sure that I put out to invite you to that on November 2. We will be thrilled to have voice PEAT to participate in that again this year and we want people to understand that it is time to get everyone up to speed. With the disability computer the community when it comes to technology there are always four or five steps behind so a new technology comes out and gets hyped up and people use it and two generations in we find that people are starting to use it people with cognitive disabilities are beginning to engage with it and three and four then we begin to get a mass use of technology and then we start to look at new iterations but what we are trying to do with our conference is to allow people to have meaningful dialogue around technology and around accessibility and bring consumers self advocates family members together to engage with public and private entities around that dialogue and to be a head of the curve be at the forefront or be the drivers of tech as a second thought at the backend and how do we address these users. We want to be I am a little bit overtime but I want to give a little extra time since we did didn't to the video so we will spend it on Q&A for people with questions and we want to thank you for your time we hope you were able to walk away with something that was valuable to you and you will be able to help folks more.
Q&A
Shae, thank you so much for that wonderful talk. I especially want to highlight that conference that you have is a wonderful abandoned and force PEAT is excited to — participate PEAT. If you have questions please place them into the chat box now and I can also tweak them to us at PEAT works. Let's get things is started.
So what is the biggest challenges when it comes to developing innovative technology that is common with people with disabilities.
That is a good question. I think we are still seeing some of the key functionalities and products not being built in so there are areas of functionality in products. We look at particularly for people with cognitive disabilities we look at products that are more flexible in use and of those that use techniques such as error minimization, perceptive ability personalization and preference can sit or platform consistency and those are challenges we're still seeing but they are not already embedded into those products and I think part of this is because we still see accessibility as a mandates instead of an author who wrote and it was about accessibility as being treated as a mandate whereas universal design is a movement that we need to think more about product and applications where universal design is a movement and that needs to be embedded in the work twice so that needs to be all about the work place and it is not going to only serve those with cognitive disabilities but it serves all folks in that environment so it is about making an environment more effective efficient and productive for the bottom line. That is where I see we still have that problem and we are still not quite there in understanding applications and it becomes a mandates rather than a culture.
We could not agree more.
I see a few questions. Are you aware of good training materials or tools for those on the spectrum?
I will referred that. There are a bunch of technology tools and I will stay specific to folks along the cognitive spectrum. There are applications of that talk about how to respond to interview questions so basically Q&A answers so I am not going to come up with the name of it at the moment that there are applications there. I know when you look at some of the more significant challenges along the spread time we of tools for transition agents that are working and how to direct their own employment and how to self direct their own employment. There are trainings out there whose future is it anyway is a self determination training. There are a lot of applications out there I don't necessarily want to state one or two but there are a lot of tools to be able to help with that application process. I hope that helps and I'm happy to talk with you to direct you to some other things.
Okay. Thank you. Another question from Natasha. Ice are there any developments around making online applications and employment tests more accessible?
There has been mainly a lot because of the force PEAT works that have been done. You have done tremendous efforts there.
Yes, actually, we have seen great works by a lot of companies in the last few years and I think accesibility is becoming more of something that we are aware of and interested in. One webinar we did a few months ago was with Oracle talking and it is of the platform behind the majority of online applications and market share in they have gone great works the last few years in making that platform more accessible so I recommend anyone interested in that to watch that archives are webinar. We will include that in the link in the chat window. So yes, I think people are making good strides.
Yes we are starting to see an evolution of not just using traditional method of applications. We are looking at new means of which to go through the recruitment and hiring process. Some of that process in itself is changing.
Great. One more question. What is an up and coming technology that you would encourage developers to create with input with from people with cognitive disabilities?
There are a bunch of technologies that we are excited about. One of the things that you can see on our screen we are interested in what is the idea of the tactile Internet where folks if you consider robotics at two ends of the computer between me and Colorado and PEAT in DC cash PEAT in DC we are interested in that. I would say also that machine learning is something we are also very interested in because it minimizes the need to do Monday a lot of the time so the Monday and can hold people off in employment and general domains of life and some of these machine learning applications allow for the mundane to be done automatically. So being able to engage to the community in some of those aspects of how to build algorithms and how to think about diversity and machine learning really does take algorithms and takes the norm and then utilizes that to apply to many other situations. Imagine also that we are a non-norm group we are the outliers so it is important to consider and there are folks already doing work in this trying to figure out how that applies to non-normed communities and how we can utilize the aspects. What — one of my dreams for years I worked in augmentative and alternative communication's to see a person who happens to be nonverbal who has an a system that advances to their linguistic and into their contacts. Environmental context for seeing this great machine learning application in a situation that for every environment changes can base some small sounds and change that into a communication that used to have to be programmed. I see that as an amazing application for this community to engage in so there are a lot of areas and I see smart cities are and I am more interested in smart communities and technologies in part of the smart communities rolls over into employment. You look at applications of using transportation. We use more efficient parking and a lot of the applications have to deal with smart cities also create smart communities and of that technology is a something that we are interested in seeing the applications for this community because it supports areas and utilizes natural support in a different way and Natural support now in a way that had to be done in person before we can see a connection of natural support through the use of technology so those are some emerging areas that we are the very much interested in.
Wonderful. Thank you so much say. — I believe that is all that we have for today and we are thrilled to have you join us here today. Thank you again to everyone. Please join us on Thursday, August 17 at 2 PM Eastern time for our next PEAT talk featuring experiences in making workplaces more inclusive from tech knowledge he solutions to how and why we can develop a partnership with access computing at the University of Washington for disabilities with mentors and assistive technologies.
Shea Tanis thank you so much for speaking with us today. We will post the YouTube link right now and we will encourage everybody to watch it and we also on the PEAT works.org we have it on the page with more information about it as well.
Thank you again and to all of you who took the time to join us today we hope you enjoy the rest of your app — afternoon.
Thank you. And Dr. Shea one last question. One question about the conference the November 2 is open to Colorado residents on July 2? It is open to all states now.
Great.
We narrowed it down because we wanted to encourage other state people to come and our in status were taking over so we allowed for people out a state to register before July 2 so our Colorado contingent is restricted the bits but we do want to encourage as many people from our state to come and let us know and please if you have any other questions please don't hesitate to contact me through the Coleman Institute I'm happy to talk with any of you.
Conclusion
Great, and thank you very much.
Thank you, and everyone, please have a nice day.
