An affair to remember!

by Rachel Talen

Here’s my intern Kelly Zatlin with another guest post.

The intern and the red seal

by Kelly Zatlin

It wasn’t that long ago that I was a student at Dordt College in Iowa trying to get an internship at a place with a Marketing and Corporate Relations department. I’ve been here at Easter Seals Headquarters two months now, and I’m amazed at what an absolutely incredible organization it is. I had no idea I would become so passionate about people with disabilities in such a short time. These days my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages display the famous red seal mixed in with touristy pictures of me and my friends gallivanting around Chicago. Easter Seals is probably the number one topic of my social media updates and my personal conversations with friends and family, too. I am now a self-proclaimed Easter Seals advocate, and I will be for the rest of my life. Sometimes I joke that I should just run around the streets of Chicago with a red “Easter Seals #1” foam finger.

When I started my internship back in January, my eyes were immediately opened to the great number of people in this world who have disabilities and are in need of services. I was also exposed to all the things so many people with disabilities are capable of. Easter Seals has the tools and the services to help them, and as a big part of my job I get to read about these people and how they are reaching their full potential every day.

Lately I’ve been working on some projects with the Easter Seals Make the First Five Count campaign, which is all about promoting early intervention for children ages zero to five. Many days at my desk I get to read remarkable success stories about these children who are exceeding in ways their parents and even doctors never imagined possible. Thanks to services at Easter Seals, these kids all over the U.S. are walking, talking, eating, playing, and living lives along with their peers. Oh, but it gets better!

A few weeks ago, I got the chance to meet Maurice Snell, one of Easter Seals’ former national adult representatives, and watch him do an interview live on the air on Chicago’s public radio station, WBEZ. When I met him, I knew immediately why I loved my job and why I loved this organization. Maurice has autism, and he’s accomplished so much: graduating from college, working as an administrative assistant at Easter Seals Therapeutic School and Center for Autism Research, and he’s an expert at public speaking and doing live radio interviews. Now, he’s contemplating getting his master’s degree. Meeting Maurice and then having the privilege to spend quality time with him after the interview was a major highlight of my internship semester so far.

This week, the Marketing and Corporate Relations department here in Chicago held a Make the First Five Count Spokespersons Network and Affiliate Marketing Partners Meeting (try saying that ten times fast). Easter Seals representatives came out from all over the nation to learn more about Make the First Five Count and how to spread the word. It was pretty darn cool to see so many great people gathered together, coming up with new ideas and initiatives to help children who may have disabilities or developmental problems. It was equally inspiring to witness the passion and excitement in the room for what Easter Seals does now and what we can do in the future.

Overall, having this internship at Easter Seals has been one of the most valuable experiences I’ve ever had. Working here may not have been a part of my plan a few months ago … but you know what? Sometimes it’s a great thing when our own plans don’t work out. I’ve learned so much from the smart and dedicated women in my office and I look forward to the rest of my time here at Easter Seals. I think it’s safe to say that I will remain very faithful in this life-long love affair with the red seal.

What a creative bunch!

by Rachel Talen

I just came back from spending an amazing couple days with a group that is very passionate about Easter Seals. The Make the First Five Count Spokespersons Network is a group of experts on early intervention, early detection and child development. They are the go-to people in their markets on these topics.

Representatives from Seattle to Los Angeles came together at Easter Seals headquarters in Chicago to put on their reporter hats, pin on their press passes (name badges) and whip out their reporter notebooks to become brand journalists. We all brainstormed ways to tell the Easter Seals Make the First Five Count story.

The spokespeople discussed and shared ideas about how to raise awareness and funds to help the more than one million kids who have developmental delays that are not identified each year. What a creative bunch! The group is looking forward to April as Autism Awareness month and really getting the word out about this great national effort and the free online screening tool for developmental delays.

Props to these spokespersons who are helping kids with disabilities across the country!

Extra help at security checkpoints

by Beth Finke

I’ve been doing a fair bit of traveling to conferences and other presentations this month. All of the events have been close by, so someone could drive us, or my Seeing Eye dog Whitney and I could get there by train.

Whitney and I will be taking a couple flights later this month, though, and when I did a little research to see if the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had any helpful tips about getting help at airport checkpoints, I got word about a Passenger Support Specialists Program.

Passenger Support Specialists are Transportation Security Officers, Lead TSOs and Supervisors who, in addition to their regular checkpoint duties, have volunteered to take on the extra responsibility of helping passengers like me who may be in need of special assistance. From the Transportation Security Administration web site:

More than 2,600 Passenger Support Specialists at airports across the country assist passengers who require additional assistance with security checkpoint screening.

Passenger Support Specialists receive specialized disability training provided by TSA’s Office of Civil Rights and Liberties, Ombudsman and Traveler Engagement. Training for Passenger Support Specialists include how to assist with individuals with special needs, how to communicate with passengers by listening and explaining, and disability etiquette and disability civil rights.

The site said that travelers who need special accommodations or are concerned about checkpoint screening can ask a checkpoint officer or supervisor for a Passenger Support Specialist to provide on-the-spot assistance. Travelers can request a Passenger Support specialist ahead of time, too, by calling the TSA Cares hotline at 855.787.2227. TSA recommends you call approximately 72 hours ahead of travel to give TSA Cares a chance to coordinate checkpoint support with a TSA Customer Service Manager at the airport if necessary. I may just give this a try. Experience has shown me that you can never get enough help when it comes to navigating O’Hare Airport!

A woman we admire

by Rachel Talen

I just heard about something very cool happening with a friend of Easter Seals. Eileen Howard Boone, Easter Seals National Board Member and SVP of Corporate Communications and Community Relations for CVS Caremark, has been nominated for the Ad Club’s 100 Women We Admire campaign!

Eileen is a valued spokesperson for Easter Seals and the Make the First Five Count campaign — you may remember her from Audio News Releases over the years.

I hope you’ll cast your vote for Eileen because we definitely admire her here at Easter Seals. Here’s how:

1. Please visit the 100 Women We Admire page.
2. Scroll through the entries to find Eileen’s nomination. (Note: please don’t create a new nomination for Eileen. Scroll down to find her name which leads with her role as the SVP of Corporate Communications & Community Relations for CVS Caremark. If by some chance you can’t find it, just hit CTRL-F and insert “Eileen Howard Boone” in the search window, and her entry will appear.
3. Once you find Eileen’s entry, please check the “I also admire her” box. A “thank you” message will appear next to the box — which means your vote has been cast).

Vote today because voting ends tomorrow, March 8th!

Coinciding with The Women’s Leadership Forum this month, The Ad Club is recognizing the top 100 women identified as women admired in their local communities and industries. These women will be recognized in a variety of ways leading up to and during the forum as part of the Ad Club’s “100 Women We Admire” campaign. These are women who are making a positive impact in our world, are leaders across all generations, and they all have stories behind their accomplishments that motivate and inspire.

Let’s help Eileen get the recognition she deserves as a leader in Corporate Social Responsibility committed to Easter Seals!

Assistive technology … good for business!

by Beth Finke

After writing that blog post last week singing praises to Apple for creating products that include assistive technology as standard features, I read a story in the Wall Street Journal about Samsung trying to get an injunction to block Apple from selling devices that come with VoiceOver.

VoiceOver is the function that blind people like me use with iPhones — we get a description of what the iPhone is showing by touching its screen. VoiceOver describes text and icons — including audio descriptions of the battery level and the network signal — and it comes free of charge when you buy an iPhone. Turns out Samsung holds a patent on a feature that allows users to touch a button to make devices read text aloud, and they said VoiceOver infringed on its patent. The judge did not grant the injunction, and I found it so interesting to look (so to speak) at the case from a business point of view in Reporter John Paczkowski’s Wall Street Journal article:

Samsung has now identified itself as a company willing to accept the loss of accessibility for the vision-impaired as collateral damage in its battle with Apple. It has made a big public move to make it more difficult for the blind to use computers. That’s just foolish — more so, now that the judge presiding over the case has stayed the suit.

How refreshing to think that including assistive technology is more than a “do-gooder” thing to do — it can be good for business too. As John Paczkowskiwrites, “Leaving aside the ethics of asserting a patent against a feature designed to help the blind, this is unwise … it’s the PR equivalent of punching yourself in the face.”

What we’re reading at Easter Seals

by Patricia Wright

A few weeks ago I found myself talking with Erik Cook, one of my colleagues here at Easter Seals, about the books we are reading, and book clubs we belong to now or have belonged to in the past.

Erik and I agreed that having shared experiences around text is a wonderful way to connect with people and develop shared background experience. An article in The Guardian suggests book-reading groups could do this at a workplace, too:

For many people the biggest plus of working in an office — salary aside — is the chance to chat, exchange ideas and form friendships with those around you.

But if you’ve grown tired of office discussions revolving around negative equity and who said what on Paris Hilton’s British Best Friend, it might be time to make a dash for the cultural high ground — so why not start a book club?

Erik and I got to thinking. Maybe a book group at work would help us know more about our colleagues. We might even learn things from their life experiences to draw on in future collaborative work.

And so, Erik and I have launched the Easter Seals Book Reading Group. Interested readers will read the same book around the same time. We’ll start by reading My Lobotomy, a memoir by Howard Dully and co-authored by Charles Fleming.

Howard Dully is one of the youngest recipients of the transorbital lobotomy, a procedure performed on him when he was 12 years old. The book is about his experiences as a child, the effect of the procedure on his life, his efforts as an adult to discover why the medically-unnecessary procedure was performed on him, and the effect of a National Public Radio broadcast about all this that aired in 2005 on All Things Considered — that’s where I first heard of him, on NPR.

Depending on the interests of others in the reading group, we’ll have a sit-down discussion of the book, or we can just use the book to help build a background of shared experiences. We’ll be reading this first book in April and May, and if any of you blog readers have tried something similar in the workplace, please do leave a comment here. Erik and I are open to any suggestions or ideas that might help make our new Easter Seals reading group a success. Thanks!

Watch My Gimpy Life and learn about disability etiquette

by Rachel Talen

Here’s my intern Kelly Zatlin with another guest blog post.

And her first name is my favorite color, too

by Kelly Zatlin

Teal Sherer is an actor in Hollywood, and she’s trying to make an impact, just like everyone else. She has one thing most actors don’t, though: a wheelchair.

Some might think a wheelchair is a disadvantage in the world of showbiz, but Teal doesn’t let it stop her. She’s a great actor, volunteer, and dance teacher for children with disabilities, and she stars in a five-episode YouTube show called My Gimpy Life. The quirky sitcom documents and highlights the daily awkwardness an actor in a wheelchair goes through while rolling around Hollywood, meeting new people and going new places.

What I like about the show is how real it is. Despite some seemingly humorous exaggeration, I think it’s probably spot-on with what Teal deals with on a daily basis and how she is treated by others once they notice her hot wheels. I can’t claim to be an expert reviewer or anything, but I could see this turning into the next Parks and Recreation or The Office. It has that real-life, documentary feel, with the added eccentric humor and hilarious monotony of everyday life.

One of the aspects of the show that stands out to us here at Easter Seals is that of disability etiquette when it comes to interacting with a person who uses a wheelchair. While the show pokes fun at some of the ways others may act, it also drives across the point in a very effective and humorous way. Here’s an example: when it comes to disability etiquette, you shouldn’t make people with disabilities out to be a hero or a victim. While Teal is auditioning for a play in episode three, the directors unnecessarily applaud her after every single line. In addition to applauding her, one of the directors tells her how “inspirational” her performance was, patting her on the forehead as she leaves. That is a disability etiquette no-no if I ever saw one!

Overall, I think this show is quirky, real, and has a lot to say about disability etiquette, just in an unlikely way. The show may not be appropriate for children — Teal uses some strong language at times — but she and the producers do a great job of showing how life really is for someone who uses wheels instead of legs.

In addition to her role on My Gimpy Life, Teal was cast as the lead role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play PROOF. She performed in the Emmy Award-winning movie Warm Springs. She also did a commercial for Liberty Mutual that was directed by Laurence Dunmore.

It isn’t Teal’s wheelchair that got her noticed and put her on the map; it was her talent and drive to be a great actor and volunteer in the community. She’s a successful actor who doesn’t define herself by her disability AND her name is my favorite color. I definitely hope to see more of Teal Sherer on screen in the future.

Try using your iPhone with your eyes closed

by Beth Finke

A lot of devices have to be adapted before I can use them. I had to add Braille labels to our microwave, oven and washer/dryer at home so I’d know which button does what. I buy specially-made watches and clocks that say the time out loud for me. And we had to equip my laptop computer at home and my PC at work with a computer program called JAWS to read the text on my screen out loud. That’s how I’m able to read your comments here and write and edit blog posts.

Assistive technology is wonderful, but it gets tiresome — and expensive — to special order it and then wait to have it delivered and installed. So I was pretty excited when iPhone 3GS came out — it was the first touch-screen device that blind people like me could take out of the box and use right away. Turns out a lot of Apple products include assistive technology as standard features at no additional cost to users. From Apple’s Accessibility page:

For example, iPhone, iPad, iPod, and OS X include screen magnification and VoiceOver for the blind and visually impaired. To assist those with cognitive and learning disabilities, every Mac includes an alternative, simplified user interface that rewards exploration and learning. And, for those who find it difficult to use a mouse, every Mac computer includes Mouse Keys, Slow Keys, and Sticky Keys, which adapt the computer to the user’s needs and capabilities.

The Apple store on Michigan Avenue here in Chicago has a full-time associate (they don’t like to call them salespeople) who is blind. Ryan served as a role model when it came to learning how to use a touch-screen without being able to see.

The simplest way for you sighted iPhone users to understand how VoiceOver works is to give it a try yourself. Here’s how you turn VoiceOver on :

• Go to Settings.
• Choose General.
• Choose Accessibility.
• Choose VoiceOver.
• Turn it on.

Still with me? Okay. Now press the home key. Slide your finger around the screen, and Voice Over will call out the icon you’ve touched. Don’t worry, it won’t select that icon, it will just call it out so you’ll know where you are on the screen. Hold the iPhone so that the earpiece is facing up, toward the ceiling. If you touch the left edge of the screen about an inch below the earpiece, you’re likely to land on the top left icon. VoiceOver will call out what that is. Flick one finger right to select the next one. If you flick your finger four times to the right, you’ll get to the first app on the second row of apps. If you come across an app you want to open, tap the screen twice, and … voila! Note: If you open an app BY MISTAKE, just press the Home button and you’ll return to the home screen.

Is your head spinning? Then you can imagine what a dither I was in when I first started working with VoiceOver to listen to voice mail, Google, send and receive email using my iPhone. I can get into all that in a future blog post if you are really interested, but I’m guessing that all you sighted blog readers out there want to do right now is learn how to turn the #)@%! VoiceOver off. If you follow the bulleted directions above, below the heading at the top of the VoiceOver screen you’ll hear a button labeled “VoiceOver on.” Notice that VoiceOver gives you a hint out loud by saying, “double-tap to toggle setting.” When you hear that, go ahead and double-tap to turn VoiceOver off.

I use my iPhone pretty regularly now to check what time it is, and I’m starting to get more comfortable sending and reading text messages. Who knows, maybe soon I’ll publish a blog post here using my iPhone. I know I still have a ways to go, but it’s good to know I’m OMW. TTYL!

A “one-of-a-kind kid”

by Kristen Barnfield

The story below was featured in our March eNewsletter. We love sharing Easter Seals stories like this, so if you’d like to receive our eNews every month, sign up here.

Easter Seals 2013 Youth Representative Auburn Smith is a nationally ranked tennis player and aspiring musician who enjoys riding her adapted bicycle and loves to travel. This active high school sophomore doesn’t let a disability get in her way.

There was a time when her doctors couldn’t imagine Auburn doing what she does today. Born with spina bifida and clubfoot, she was just a day old when she had her first surgery. Her parents were told she would likely never walk — something no one in the family accepted.

As she’s grown and faced new challenges, Easter Seals has been there. Auburn’s teachers say she projects a calm confidence and that she is wise beyond her years. Her ceramics teacher says she’s a rock star and “a one of a kind kid.” You can read more about Auburn’s story here.

Is Your Child at Risk? Auburn and her parents attribute much of her success to the treatment she got early in life. The first five years are critical in a child’s life. How is your child doing? You only need 10-20 minutes to check via a free, online screening tool: the Ages & Stages Questionnaires®. Your results will help you see if your child’s developmental progress is on time and alert you to concerns that you can talk over with your health care provider.

Falling in love with Easter Seals

by Rachel Talen

My post last week described what it was like to be in the studio to hear Maurice Snell telling his story on Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ-FM). Maurice is an adult living with autism, and after the interview he took me and my intern Kelly Zatlin on a tour of Easter Seals Therapeutic School and Center for Autism Research where he works as an administrative assistant and helps with the music therapy program.

We saw so many different classrooms and accommodations for kids with autism — everything from an art therapy room to a calming room where kids can go to chill out and refocus. As Maurice led us to a school store where students work to stock items and cashier, he explained that the school doesn’t use fluorescent lights in the classrooms, and no patterned carpet, either. “It can be distracting for kids with autism,” he said.

I thought it was really cool that Maurice is a huge rockstar — everywhere he went, people were calling out his name and high-fiving him. He is a walking piece of encouragement and inspiration to other families living with autism, and it is so great to see him thrive.

Last Wednesday was one of those days when I know why I’m at Easter Seals and everything just makes sense. The combination of a little PR radio interview thrill and seeing the autism services which are impacted by the work at Easter Seals headquarters was extremely fulfilling.

At one point Kelly turned to me and gushed, “I’m becoming such a huge Easter Seals … fan!” I have to agree. Something about this organization just grows on you and makes you fall in love!