- [Instructor] We would like to welcome you to our five-part training series on domestic violence, sexual assault, and disability. This series is brought to you by the Miami Inclusion Alliance, or MIA. The Miami Inclusion Alliance is comprised of four organizations that have spent the last three years studying the domestic violence and sexual assault services in Miami-Dade County and how persons with disabilities are utilizing these services. What we have found is that there is a disconnect between the services that our community provides and the outreach to persons with disabilities. This training series is the first step to bridging that gap. We are working internally to train our organizations and then we will be going out into the community to share the knowledge and information that we have gained. Disability Independence Group is an advocacy center for disability rights. Dade Legal Aid is a legal aid that handles domestic violence cases. MUJER is a licensed sexual assault center, and CVAC is the Miami-Dade County one-stop for domestic violence. This project was supported by Grant Number 2015-FW-AX-K001 awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women. The mission of the Miami Inclusion Alliance is to learn about the intersection of disability and domestic violence and/or sexual assault in order to promote a culture of inclusion within and between all collaborating agencies. This collaboration will implement the necessary changes so that persons with disabilities who are affected by domestic violence and/or sexual assault have access to services. This is a five-part training series. You will notice that we have embedded accessibility features into the trainings. All of the videos have been captioned so that you can read the words that we are speaking, all of the videos are being interpreted in ASL, or American Sign Language, the font size of the words on the slides are large, we are using a sans serif font that is easy to read, and the colors used on the slides have been tested to make sure that there is a contrast between the colors for better viewing. You can watch the trainings in any order that you would like. The training you are about to watch is called Disability 101. You will learn about the Disability Rights Movement, reasonable accommodations, disability etiquette, and the best way to work with a person with a disability. Hi, my name is Deborah Dietz and I'm going to be your speaker today. I am one of the founders and the Executive Director of Disability Independence Group. Disability Independence Group, or DIG, is a non-profit advocacy center for disability rights. It was founded in 2002 and our mission is to expand opportunities for participation, education, employment, and acceptance of persons with disabilities through advocacy, litigation, education, and training. DIG provides both advocacy and legal services in the areas of disability rights and community integration by educating, advocating, and litigating for persons with disabilities to live and work in our community. DIG works with people with all different types of disabilities and on all types of issues, from education to housing to employment and to access to information. There are four objectives for the training today. The first objective is to increase your understanding of the Disability Rights Movement. The second objective is to increase your knowledge of what is a reasonable accommodation and the importance of accessibility. The third objective is to increase your knowledge on disability etiquette, and the fourth objective is to increase your knowledge about the laws governing service animals under the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA. We're gonna start by looking at the pictures on your screen. What you're gonna notice is there's a title to the graphic, it's called equality versus equity, and you're going to see three different pictures, somewhat similar but slightly different, and the differences between the three pictures are really gonna explain what we're doing today and the importance of what I'm going to talk about today. Let's look at the first slide. You're gonna see a baseball game, you're gonna see a fence with wood planks in front of the fencing, or as the fencing, you're gonna see three children watching the game, each child is on a box that's the same size, the children are three different heights, and when you look at the picture, you notice that two of the children can see the game and the third child, even though he's standing on a box, is too small or too short to actually see the game. In the first box you're gonna notice that all three boys have been treated equally. Each one was given a box of the same size to stand on. If you look at the second slide, you're gonna notice the same baseball game, the same wooden plank fence, however this time you're gonna notice that the tallest boy has no boxes, the medium-sized boy has the same one box, and the shortest boy now has two boxes and is tall enough to see over the fence and watch the game. In the second box, or the second slide, you notice that everyone is given the support that they need so that they can have equal access. They are being treated equitably. This is like getting an accommodation to watch the game. Now look at the third slide, you're gonna notice that the fencing is different. This time the fencing is chain link and see through, not wooden planks. You're also gonna notice that none of the boys have boxes and all three boys can watch the game. In this third slide, everyone can see the game, there's no support, no need for any accommodation. The field or the fencing around the field was built so that inequity was addressed from the beginning. There is no systemic barriers, or all the systemic barriers were removed, and everyone can enjoy the game, nobody needed to request an accommodation. They were treated equally and equitably, and this is really the goal of what we're trying to do, or one of the goals of the disability movement is slide number two where, if it's not the same experience for everyone, then you can request a reasonable accommodation be given it and get to be treated equitably and enjoy the game or whatever the program or service is, but ultimately, long-range the goal is let's think from the beginning, how are we building structures? How are we building our programs so that they're equal and equitable for everyone from the beginning and from the design so that there is no reason for a person with a disability to even need to request an accommodation, that all our programs are designed without any systemic barriers? All right, let's talk about some statistics. These statistics are from the US Census, and in the US Census, the United States was 19.3% people identified as being a person with a disability. As we continue to drill down and look at our state, the State of Florida, actually the number slightly increases to 22.2%, and as we drill down farther and look at Miami-Dade County, the number goes up to 25.7%, which is about a fourth of the population identify as a person with a disability in our local community, and as we even look closer at the City of Miami, the number continues to increase to 29.4%, or almost a third of the population. The City of Miami is second to only Patterson, New Jersey, who's 29.8%, so as you notice, the City of Miami, the city where we're working in, is one of the highest places for people with disabilities, so we need to be even more sensitive than other parts of the country to make sure that our services and our programs and our facilities are accessible, equitable, and ready to help anyone. We're going to stop for a second, and I'm gonna show you a video. This video was filmed right before the 2016 Paralympics in Rio, and it's an outstanding video that says yes we can, and the name of the video is called We're the Superhumans. ♪ Yes I can, suddenly ♪ ♪ Yes I can ♪ ♪ "Gee, I'm afraid to go on" has turned into "yes I can" ♪ ♪ Take a look, what do you see? ♪ ♪ 133 pounds of confidence, me ♪ ♪ Got the feeling I can do anything ♪ ♪ Yes I can ♪ ♪ Something that sings in my blood is telling me ♪ ♪ Yes I can ♪ ♪ I was just born today ♪ ♪ I can go all the way ♪ ♪ Yes ♪ ♪ I ♪ ♪ Can ♪ ♪ Yes I can ♪ ♪ Yes I can ♪ ♪ Yes I can ♪ ♪ Yes I can ♪ ♪ Yes I can ♪ ♪ Yes I can ♪ ♪ Yes I can ♪ ♪ Yes I can ♪ ♪ Yes I can ♪ ♪ Hey, yes I can ♪

- No, you can't.

- Yes I can! ♪ Are you ready? ♪ ♪ I can climb Everest ♪ ♪ Yes I can ♪ ♪ I can fight here all night and never rest ♪ ♪ Yes I ♪ ♪ Can ♪

- [Instructor] OK, so let's continue on with the presentation. We're now gonna look at some of the history of the Disability Rights Movement, and look at the difference between institutional living versus community-based living. The picture on your left, if you look, institutional living or living in an institution, this is what we think about back in the old days in the past for people with disabilities, and this was really the way that people with disabilities were, in our community until about 1972 when Geraldo Rivera did an expose on a place called Willowbrook. Willowbrook was a state school in New York and it had gruesome conditions and very much neglected mentally disabled children, and he went in and really exposed it on TV and showed what was really going on, and it was really the beginning of this transition to shut down these institutions and move towards community-based living. The organization Willowbrook, the location was closed and has now become part of the College of Staten Island. Second picture is community-based living. Notice people doing all different things out in the community, interacting with people without disabilities, and that is where we are at today. This community-based living has been made more possible from a Supreme Court decision known as Olmstead that came out in 1999, and what the Supreme Court said is that keeping people unnecessarily segregated and in institutions was discrimination under the ADA or under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and if at all possible, people needed to be taken out of these segregated institutions and brought back into community living, what we call community-based living. Let's look back at some of the history. These are pictures kinda hanging out with no real interaction. This is the old model, we called institution. It's where society would warehouse children with disabilities, with severe disabilities, and keep them separated society. Children and people with disabilities were abandoned in these institutions and would stay there usually for the rest of their lives. Once they went in, they really never were transitioned back out into the community. This was done because society believed that this was the best option for people and children with disabilities, that they were taking care of the people and that this was what was best. You'll see some more pictures coming onto the screen. And now let's look at where we are today. This is the community-based living... Let me tell you what DIG does this once a month and we call it a neurodiverse dinner where we invite individuals with intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorder and we go out to a restaurant in our local community, have dinner, talk about superheroes and movies, what's going on in the world, voting, and just have a fun dinner. The next picture, this is Nick. Nick was also one of our clients, and in this picture, he's out at a painting store where you go and have an evening and paint art, and he actually has an adaptive tool where he has a special paintbrush so that he can paint his own picture and be a part of the family activity. This is Jansiel. Jansiel is or was one of the interns at DIG. He's now in college getting his degree and matriculating like other students his age. At the bottom, this newest picture, this is another one of our clients, Oliver. Oliver and his mom created a business where Oliver and other individuals who have intellectual and developmental disabilities started a bakery, and they now bake sweets and cookies and desserts and cater parties. The last picture you're gonna see here, this is part of a project at DIG called the Wallet Card Project, where DIG goes into the community, the schools, the parks, and teaches young adults and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities how to safely interact with the police and law enforcement so that if they're ever stopped by the police they know what to do and how to communicate. We also make something called a wallet card, which is a communication tool to help them disclose their disability. We also teach law enforcement and police how to safely interact with individuals with disabilities, so it's a two-way project, and the importance of the project is, if you're gonna have people out in the community, then you need to teach them the skills they need to be successful in the community, and this is one component of that. As you get the gist of all these pictures, you're gonna see people with disabilities are now fully integrated into our communities. They're social, they go out to dinner, go to art stores and projects, they're employed, and they have families and are out in the community. This is, you'll see that that transition from those pictures in black and white of institutional living to where, unnecessarily segregated, true or false? And the answer is true. We really don't want to unnecessarily segregate people with disabilities and put them in institutions. This actually is discrimination under the ADA. So what is discrimination? Discrimination is, what we're gonna talk about is that all persons are entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of programs and services available to public, and when this doesn't happen, that's discrimination. So when a person is denied, treated differently, or segregated because of their disability, this is the definition of discrimination. What we're doing in these videos is making sure that you, in your programs, your services, are fully and equally accessible and do no discriminate against people with disabilities. So how do you create an accessible environment? You need to make sure that when you build and renovate your facilities that your construction and renovations ensure accessibility. Make sure your entrances are wide enough, have doors that can be opened, and that your accesses to goods and services are all accessible. And you need to be conscious of the needs of your customers. This includes not only the physical building, but all of your programs and your services. You need to make sure that your bathrooms are accessible, that if you have seating, that your tables are high and low, because if you only have high tables, if you have a person with a wheelchair that goes to the seating, they're gonna be looking at everyone's crotch and not at an equal level of the table or they have to reach up to grab their drink off the table. So you wanna be conscious of this. You also wanna be conscious if you're having a meeting or a theater that there's seating throughout the room, not just one separate section put off to the side that's the disability or accessible section. You wanna have seating and choices for people with disabilities to sit where they want to or where they're comfortable seating. When you're doing all this, you wanna make sure that you're looking at people with mobility impairments, people with visual impairments. For example, you wanna make sure your elevators have Braille on the buttons and that there's no barriers in the path of travel. You wanna make sure that there's no furniture in the hallways or that if there's trees outside that the branches aren't low so that people will walk into them. Another thing to look at are curb cuts, ramps, and sometimes elevators have beeps in them, and that's so that a person with a visual impairment can listen to the beeps and know if the elevator's going up and down, and sometimes even what floor it's, the elevator has stopped on. The United Nations also did something and has discussed accessibility, and the United Nations says that accessibility is a basic human right, and when they talk about accessibility, they mean that a person with a disability's able to enjoy, is to enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms, and accessibility falls under that, and they define this under something called the CRPD, or the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and this was adopted in 2006, and it was a bit modeled off of the ADA and what we have in the United States. However, what's interesting is that our, the United States has not actually officially adopted the CRPD of the UN, and we're one of very few countries in the world that has not adopted this UN resolution. So let's talk about reasonable accommodations. Reasonable accommodations are changes in policies and procedures that encourage inclusion. If you look at the picture on our screen once again, you're gonna see the Litigation Director from DIG, and you're gonna see him with a mom with a little boy and a dog, and what we did in this case is get the policies and procedures changed in the school system to make sure that this little boy could take his service animal with him to school. His service animal was a seizure alert dog and was able to let the teachers and the school staff know if the little boy was going to have a seizure, and the school initially did not want to allow the dog in with the little boy to school, but we were able to, using the court system, get the school to change their policies, and now the dog is able to go to the school with the little boy every day. You gotta make sure that, when accommodations are being done, that they are necessary and reasonable modifications or adjustments that ensure equal enjoyment. An example is remember the boxes I showed you at the beginning. In the second square that I showed you, the little boy needed that extra box in order to watch the game. That was his reasonable accommodation in order to watch and enjoy the game. Other examples are accessible transportation, extra time on a test, a one-on-one aide, or an auxiliary aide or service such as an American Sign Language interpreter or documents being printed in Braille or in large print so that a person with a visual impairment can read them. Anything that will level the playing field so that the person can have an equal opportunity to participate is a reasonable accommodation, and these are individualized for the specific need of a specific person, so you can't just make a rule that any person with a visual impairment will need the same accommodation, because that's not true. As I said, they are individualized for the specific needs of the person, and the best thing you can do as an employee or as staff at an organization is ask the person with the disability what reasonable accommodation they would need to make them be able to get the full enjoyment out of the program or the service that you are offering. They're the best resource for you to know what they need. Don't make assumptions and don't guess what you think a person needs. Let's look at effective communication. This is usually for people with sensory disabilities, and a sensory disability is a vision, a disability related to vision, hearing, or speaking. What's important and what the law says is that a person must be able to understand the communication that they're receiving and be able to give back information, that effective communication must be two-way communication. So whatever accommodation you need to give a person so that they can understand and participate in a communication is the definition of effective communication. Information must be presented in a form in which the person with a disability can have equal opportunity to gain the same understanding as a person without a disability. And you need to let the person with the disability tell you what is the best way that they can have effective communication. Let me give you an example that just happened in the last couple of weeks in our office. We got a phone call from a, a person that was, that is deaf, and she and her fiance went to the court, the Clerk of the Court, to get married, and they were so excited and they were ready to get married and the Clerk said, "No, we're not gonna marry you." And they said, "Why won't you marry us?" And they said, "Because we didn't order "a sign language interpreter in advance." And the woman and her fiance said, "Well, we don't want a sign language interpreter, "we can read lips, and this isn't complicated communication, "and we're fine with writing back and forth "and reading lips." And the Clerk of Court refused to marry them because they decided they knew what type of accommodation these people needed, and not the type of accommodation that these people wanted. So that's an issue where there's rules and policies and procedures, but the staff really wasn't adequately trained on knowing what to do or the best way to do it, and the end result was that this couple was unable to get married on the day and time that they wanted because of the Clerk of the Court deciding what they thought was the right and appropriate accommodation. So be very careful, as I say, and I'll say over and over, make sure you ask the person what type of accommodations, if any, they want. We're gonna move on and talk about deaf culture, and when you talk about deaf culture, it's really interesting, it's more than just a person that cannot hear or communicates in sign language. It's actually a cultural identity, and the way it's distinguished is whether you write the word deaf with a lowercase d or a capital D, and you'll see the little cartoon of the big D versus the little d, and we could do a whole webinar just on this concept, and in the future we probably will and you'll be able to see it, but for today we're just gonna give you a taste of what it means. So capital D Deaf means that you identify as being, a person identifies as being culturally deaf, that they're part of the deaf community, that they socialize and kinda live in a world, a deaf world. They communicate in American Sign Language and they think they're normal. They don't think there's anything wrong or that anything needs to be changed about them, that this is how they were born and raised and these are their friends and the way that they identify as a culture. Now, lowercase d deaf is more related to a hearing community, and it's usually people that have a medical issue or hearing loss, and that they usually can still speak and/or read lips and that they don't usually communicate in ASL or don't want to communicate in American Sign Language or ASL and they want to be normal, they think that there's something wrong with them, and they want to be normal. You'll see there's a very big difference, and a very different mindset, so be very aware that if you ever are interacting with a person that is deaf, and make sure that you're sensitive and understand that there is this big D Deaf and what it means to be culturally deaf. Question number two, accessibility means that a person with a disability should be able to be included in all programs and services in the community. What I did is I changed the question a little bit, and let me say it again. Accessibility means that a person with a disability should be able to be included in all program and services in the community, and then we can add in and to fully enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms. True or false? And the answer is true. This is exactly what we've been talking about and what should be happening. The next thing we're gonna look at is this image on the screen, and let me read it to you and describe the picture. It says nothing about us without us, and you're gonna see that the typical symbol for disability, which is a stick figure of a person sitting in a image of a wheelchair, but in this one the arms are raised and there's chains on the arms and the chains are being broken free, meaning that the person is, with a disability is breaking free and doesn't want you telling them what they need. They wanna be part of the decision making, they wanna be part of the policies, they want full and direct participation as a member of a group that's affected by a policy. So don't tell me what I'm gonna do, ask me what I want and let me be part of the solution. This has evolved, going back to that institutional model, where doctors and professionals knew what was best for a person with a disability, and then it evolved to parents making decisions for children with disabilities and adults with disabilities, to now being that the person with the disability wants to be the one deciding what happens to them and that they are at the decision-making table and part of the solution. In our organization, DIG, we take this very seriously, and always incorporate people with disabilities into the project and programming that we do. I'm getting ready to show you another video. This one is by a gentleman named Zach Anner and his Quest for the Rainbow Bagel, and it's a serious topic about accessibility, but he does it using comedy to make his point, so I'm gonna start this video and let you watch it.

- Hi, how's it goin'? Today we're just like, we'll do something real simple like go and get a bagel. We've been waiting to go downstairs for about 25 minutes now. All of the elevators that have come by have been full. There's other elevators in this hotel, but we can't get to them. Can we get in this one? Hi.

- Hi, hello.

- OK. It only took an hour to get from my room to downstairs.

- How can I help you today?

- This film crew wants to send me on a solo New York adventure to get New York bagels.

- You can get bagels anywhere in Manhattan.

- I know. They've come up with the idea that it's best to go to Brooklyn--

- Whoa, Brooklyn?

- To a place--

- Bagels?

- Yeah. They want the rainbow bagel in Brooklyn.

- They want the rainbow bagel? Wow, that looks pretty though. That is a pretty bagel, I must say. Take the E subway.

- OK.

- Right to Metropolitan Avenue, and they got good bagels there, my man. Look at that.

- All right, all right.

- Rainbow bagels, baby.

- I'll let you know how it is and if it's worth the trek.

- Hey, could you bring me one back?

- I will bring you one back, yes I will.

- I appreciate that.

- How long are you working, Judd?

- I'll be here until three. You gonna be back before I leave?

- Well, I can try. We have less than five hours to go get a bagel, so let's go catch a train. Bagel quest! Bagel quest! See, I thought she'd be bigger, honestly, but I'm glad I saw it while I was here. Oh, I think I found it, and I scared a baby. It says subway. There's stairs. Oh, you got a map? Awesome.

- Perhaps it might be across the street?

- Thank you so, so much. OK, just hit it with some speed. Ah . I did it! New York, the city that never stops with you. What? There's more steps. If I don't find this entrance, I'm giving up on life and bagels. I see an M, there's a little wheelchair underneath the M. Tada! An elevator, so let's go. We're taking the A train. No one else is as excited. What are we gonna do?

- We have to take a boat.

- A boat? There's no accessible train and we have to take the bagel ferry. All in all, a pretty fun, efficient day. I'm gonna just assume that nothing will go wrong and we'll happily get our gagel of bagels. Whoa! There's a man named Judd waiting for me in Manhattan. So it's 1:15, we've got exactly one hour and 45 minutes to go get Judd's bagel and coffee, and if we don't get it, then he's gonna be starving back at the hotel, so we've gotta find out where this place is. Do you know where rainbow bagel is? Oh, no? Do you know where rainbow bagel is, sir? Do you know where rainbow bagel is? What the? Look at how hip that guy is. I love fair trade coffee. Isn't Whole Foods the greatest? Do you know where rainbow bagel is?

- [Man] What?

- Brooklyn has not accepted me and this is my best outfit. Bunch of ableist hipsters, I think. That's a nice hat, though, sir.

- Bagel store, the world's best bagels, that must be the one, 754 Metropolitan. When you go that way, you make a left.

- Those bagels are gonna taste so good. What the ? It's not accessible, let's go home.

- Hey, good afternoon, boss, how you doin'?

- Hello.

- How you doin'?

- I'm doing all right.

- How can I help you today?

- I need a rainbow bagel.

- Anything else?

- Um, no, just a ramp. New York City is actually one of the most accessible cities in the country, and they still have a long way to go, so in order to make sure that happens, you gotta donate to places like the Cerebral Palsy Foundation and keep having the important conversations to make sure people like me can get access to whatever color bagels they want. I may have struggled getting this bagel today, but I didn't get this for me, I got this for my friend Judd, and friendship is what's really important. Oh I just took a bite of Judd's bagel. I barely knew the guy, who cares?

- [Instructor] OK, so as you saw, using comedy to make the point of why accessibility is important and why it matters. Now we're gonna move on and talk about disability etiquette and what you should do as a person that is going to be interacting with people with disabilities, and the three main overarching points that you wanna remember is, recognize individuality. Everybody's different, and you need to treat them and respect that, and not all disabilities are visible. A person might identify as being a person with disability and you look at them physically from the outside and say, "Well, I don't think they're a person with a disability." Don't make an assumption that's not true, because they might have a disability that we call invisible, or that you can't see, and always ask before you help someone. Don't reach and hold someone's wheelchair, don't touch someone's walker, definitely don't touch their service animal, and always ask, "Do you need help "and what type of help do you need?" And we're gonna go through these throughout the next few slides and show you some examples of what we mean by this. So the first thing we're gonna talk about is people first language, and what this means is use the person first. Use the term disability, not handicap. For example, use a disability parking spot or accessible parking spot instead of a handicap parking spot. Let's look at people first language, and what this means is that you want to, as I said, use the person first, so it's a person with a disability, not a disabled person. And this gets tricky and nuanced because there's certain types of people with disabilities that actually do use the disability first. As I said, nothing about us without us earlier, and so there's people in the autistic community that like to be called an autistic person instead of person with autism, so this goes back to what we were saying is ask the person what they need or what they want, but as an overarching rule, you wanna assume people first language unless someone tells you otherwise. The next thing, and we said this over and over, talk directly to the person with a disability. Do not speak to the person that is with the person with a disability. This happens all the time, that a person with a disability comes in with a friend, a caregiver, a parent, and they're completely ignored by the person at the front desk or that's trying to serve them and they only communicate with the person they're with, so try not to fall into this trap and really make an effort to talk directly to the person with the disability and find out what they need and what they want and why they are visiting your office and needing your services. Here's some examples of things to say and not to say, and as I said, this is a part of the disability community or the disability movement that is ever-changing, so always kinda keep up on what's the latest and make sure that you're following along with what's going on. But for now, you do wanna say disability, you don't wanna say differently abled or challenged, and you wanna call a guest or a person with a disability, that's the people first language instead of the disabled or handicapped. Also, the person uses a wheelchair. You don't wanna say someone's confined to a wheelchair or wheelchair bound. That has a very negative connotation. You wanna say someone has an intellectual disability instead of that they are retarded or have mental retardation, and we now use the word service animal or service dog instead of seeing eye dog because there are service animals for lots of types of people that have different types of disabilities, so it could be a seizure alert dog, or it could be a hearing dog, there could be a diabetes dog, so many different types of service animals. Also you wanna say psychiatric disability or mental illness, not someone's crazy, psycho, or schizo, and you wanna say an accessible parking spot or restroom or family restroom instead of a handicapped parking or handicap restroom. Now, what's interesting is, some of what we do is, has a legal component on it because we're into the court system, and the legal system still has the word handicap in some of the legal definitions and in some of the statutes, so when it's being used as the legal term of art and the laws and the statutes have not caught up with the changes in the movement, it is OK to use those words as long as you're understanding and making sure that they're in the confines of the legal terminology or legal definitions and not just in normal conversation or when you're interacting with a person with a disability. So as I said, how this is ever-changing, the laws and statutes have not caught up. Now I'm gonna show you another video, and this kind of shows through the video an example of those dos and don'ts we just talked about.

- Hi, I'm Michelle, and I've got cerebral palsy. Sometimes the first time people meet me, they act a bit strange. Everybody with a disability is different, but from my experience, here's a list of dos and don'ts that should help you the next time you meet somebody with a disability.

- Did you go to that party last night?

- Yeah, it was dead good, you know?

- Oh, yeah.

- Is your friend OK there?

- Why don't you ask her yourself?

- This kind of thing happens all the time. I can speak for meself, just talk to me.

- Sorry, love.

- That's OK.

- Oh, let's give you a hand, love.

- Moving me without permission is never OK. I wouldn't pick you up and move you without asking.

- And then he hasn't even text me since yesterday.

- Yeah, if my boyfriend doesn't text me every couple hours, I'd get worried.

- I know he's busy with college and all that, but you'd think he really would make the effort.

- True.

- You know, my boyfriend's awful, too. He never texts back.

- You've got a boyfriend?

- Making assumptions is not OK. Don't assume that just because I've got a disability I've got nothing to say. I don't mind people asking me questions, but sometimes people ask me things that are kind of inappropriate.

- Do you, you know, wash yourself?

- Can you drink?

- Do you have sex?

- Oh, do you go out?

- No, I just sit at home and cry about me disability every night.

- Oh yeah, my friend's in a wheelchair, so I kind of know what you're going through. What's his name again?

- Don't assume that you know what I'm going through. Every case is different.

- Oh, it's Kevin. Do you know him?

- Oh yeah. We've got our own secret club.

- You're so gorgeous.

- Aw, thank you.

- Yeah, it's a shame now.

- What is?

- That you're disabled. What? I was trying to be nice.

- No, I'm not joking, this really does happen, and it's really disrespectful. I'm not a cat. The most important thing to remember is we're just like everybody else. Talking to someone with a disability shouldn't be a big deal.

- [Instructor] Question number three. Always speak to the person with a disability, true or false? This is absolutely true, you always wanna speak to the person with a disability. We're now gonna switch into the last objective and the last topic of the training, and this is about service animals. We're gonna talk about what is a service animal, and we're gonna talk about the difference between a service animal and an emotional support animal. We're gonna start with what is a service animal under the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, and how is it defined, how is the law defined? And the way the law is defined is that a dog or a miniature horse that is trained to assist a person with a disability is a service under, service animal under the law. The service animal is permitted in all public accommodations and state and local government facilities, which means that your service animal can go to a restaurant with you, it can go to the grocery store with you, and it can go with you to really anywhere you wanna go to. And you'll see the two pictures below, and they're just kinda silly, but you've got a dog at the ATM helping the person take out money and then you see a horse, a miniature pony over here, a miniature horse that is, has a harness on and is helping someone walk. We don't really have many miniature horse as service animals in our community, but you can imagine it with a person that uses a wheelchair that they could help pull the person, or like in the picture you see here, where they're helping probably someone with their balance and with their walking. And as I said, there's a difference between service animals and emotional support animals, and in our community, a lot these two terms get confused. As I said, a service animal is covered by the ADA and is a working animal that can go with a person with a disability. This service animal is trained to do at least one task that's specific to help the person with a disability in that there's a nexus between the person's disability and the task that the dog has been trained to do. Now, this dog does not need to go to a school to be trained. It can be self-trained by the owner. As long as it does at least one task and that, as I said, there's this link between what that task is and the person's disability, people can go online and do go online and buy vests and licenses, but there's nowhere in the law that says that this is required. Sometimes people do it 'cause it makes it easier, and people think if they see a vest that then the dog is a service animal, but as I said, there's no rules about this. It's just kinda what happens. Now, an emotional support animal is not covered by the ADA, so because of that, that animal cannot go into public accommodations like a restaurant or a grocery store, but they are covered by the Fair Housing Act and the Air Carrier Access Act. What this means is that an emotional support animal can live with a person in their home and can travel with them on an airplane, but as I said, not in restaurants and grocery stores. Another difference is an emotional support animal can be all types of animals. It's not limited to a dog and a miniature horse. It can be a cat, it can be a bunny, it can be a snake even. So it's any animal that helps a person feel better and calms them down, makes them less stressed, makes them less anxious. Now, there still has to be a letter from a doctor and there still has to be a link to what the emotional support animal does and to the person's disability, but it, as I said, it's different and it applies to more animals. Now, we also have something in Florida that passed in 2017, which is Florida Statute 413.08, and in 2017 this statute was amended to make sure that the rights and responsibilities of an individual with a disability the use of a service animal, and it prohibits discrimination in public employment, public accommodations, and housing accommodations. So what that basically means is that the Florida state law now matches the federal law, because the ADA is a federal law, so now we have Florida law that also says that your service animal can go with you to restaurants, grocery stores, and they also put it into housing. Now, there's also a penalty if you lie, so if you lie and say you have a service animal when you really have an emotional support animal, that same statute can be used against the person who lies, and what happens is if either side lies, either if you're, if the business discriminates against you or the person lies and really doesn't have a service animal, they can be, get a fine and community service hours. It's an interesting law and it's trying to help people that abuse the definition of a service animal and try to take advantage, and this is a small way where there is some remedy or some action that you can do if you think someone is lying about their service animal. But you've got to be really careful, because there's only two questions that you can ask a person that is claiming to have or does have a service animal. All you can ask is, number one, is the dog a service animal required because of a disability, and two, what work or task has the dog been trained to perform? You are not allowed to ask them to show you any proof, any documentation, and you're not, and you cannot ask the person to show you what task or job that dog does, and you can't ask about the nature of the person's disability. So you can ask the questions and you have to take whatever answer the person gives you as the truth. Now, as I said, if you think they're lying and you don't believe them, you can call the police and trigger this Florida Statute 413.08, but be very careful and make sure that you are doing it right, because if you do it wrong, then the statute can be used against you as a person discriminating against or a business discriminating against a person with a disability that has a service animal. So let's look at some service animal facts. As I said before, there's no official license or registration, even though they're all over the internet, and people are paying a lot of money and good money for them. As I said, they're not official. There can be no surcharge to have a service animal, so you can't say, "Great, you can have your service animal, "but you have to pay $100 deposit." That is a surcharge and against the law. But you can have a charge if the animal actually does damage, so after the fact, if the dog chewed your carpet or chewed the leg of the wood furniture, you can charge the person for the damage done by the service animal. Very important, a service animal must be under the control of its user at all times. You can't have a dog that's barking and jumping and wild and all over the place and not listening, 'cause then that dog is not or that miniature horse is not acting like a service animal. And the last thing, a service animal can only be barred from a facility where it may be a direct threat to others, or a fundamental alteration to the facility. A direct threat is if the dog is growling, barking, and aggressive and jumping at other people around, then you can ask the service animal to be removed. Or a fundamental alteration of this facility, and the best example of this is if you're taking your service animal to a zoo or a wildlife park where the animals are roaming free, it would be a fundamental alteration to lock up all the wild animals so that the person could walk with their service animal, but it's very rare that a fundamental alteration would need to be made for a service animal to go, but those are the two somewhat exceptions, just to keep that in mind. Let's look at question number four. You can ask a person to show you what tasks their service animal does, true or false? The answer to this is false. You have to only ask the two questions and you have to take the person at their word that they're telling you the truth. Now, some people say, "Oh, people take advantage "and they're not telling the truth," and it's somewhat equatable to people that have handicap, to have the disability placards or accessibility placards on their car and wanna park in the accessible parking spots. Yes, do some people take advantage of that? Sometimes they do, but would you wanna get rid of the whole program? And the answer is no, you really don't, so you hope people do the right thing but keep it in perspective and understand that there's more benefits to having emotional support animals and service animals than to just ban them from everything. If you have any questions, please feel free to email Disability Independence Group at dv@justdigit.org and we will be happy to answer any follow-up questions that you may have. I wanna share with you that there are several resources available to victim survivors. For domestic violence there's a National Domestic Violence Hotline, and the phone number is 1-800-799-7233. At the state level you can call the FCADV, which stands for the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and their phone number is 1-800-500-1119. And at the local level, you can call CVAC or the Miami-Dade Family Justice Center, and their phone number is 285-5900. For sexual violence at the national level you can call RAINN, which stands for the Rape, Abuse, and Incense National Network, and their phone number is 1-800-656-4673. At the state level you can call FCASV, which stands for the Florida Coalition Against Sexual Violence, and their phone number is 1-888-956-7273, or at the local level you can call MUJER, and MUJER is one of our local sexual assault centers, and their phone number is 763-2459. Thank you for watching the training Disability 101. Please make sure that you watch the other four trainings in our five-part training series. If you have any further questions, please contact Disability Independence Group. Our phone number is 669-2822, or you can email us at dv@justdigit.org, or you can go to our website at www justdigit.org. Thank you.