Building inclusive organizations

Hello everyone. Welcome to the IDEA Speaker Series.

Our regular host Dan Samosh is off this week, so I'll be filling in for him.

My name is Francis Fung. I'm the co-lead for engagement at IDEA, and I'm also the National Manager for rehabilitation and clinical services at March of Dimes Canada.

Um before we begin today's webinar, I want to let you know that we have French interpretation and closed captioning available.

Um and in the Zoom platform, if you point your cursor to the "show captions" icon at the bottom of the screen,

you should be able to talk us through the settings.

For those of you who may not be uh familiar with IDEA, um it is a social innovation laboratory

focused on helping create stronger and more diverse labor markets that includes persons with disabilities

through knowledge to practice. And IDEA is the acronym for Inclusive Design for Employment Access.

Before we dive into the webinar, I'd like to share a land acknowledgement relevant to the IDEA national office in Toronto,

where the national office of the IDEA social innovation lab is situated, um and has for thousands of years been the traditional land

of the Huron Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit.

Today, this land is still home to many Indigenous People from across Turtle Island,

and we are grateful to have the opportunity to conduct our work on it.

Please note that this acknowledgement is relevant to Toronto. However, since we are gathered

for this meeting virtually, we suggest thinking of the communities in your respective locations as well.

This monthly webinar speaker series serves an opportunity to hear the latest about current topics in the work disabilities

policy arena and learn about the activities underway within and beyond IDEA.

So, during the last 20 minutes of this webinar, we'll hold a question and answer period. You can type

your questions in the question and answer box at any time throughout the presentation, and we will answer as many questions as we can at the end of the webinar.

Now let me introduce our speaker today. Um it's my privilege to introduce Dr Mukta Kulkarni, professor at the Indian Institute

of Management in Bangalore. And most of her research is focused on workplace inclusion, on persons with disability,

and she has been the Mphasis Chair for digital accessibility and inclusion at IIMB, and has served on

the National Community on Special Abilities of the Confederation of Indian Industry.

She serves as an honorary advisor for EnAble India, which is one of India's largest disability livelihood agencies.

Mukta will be joining us today to talk about building inclusive organizations, very exciting. So welcome Mukta, and over to you.

Thank you so much, Francis and for such a wonderful introduction. Well, hello to everybody.

What I have done here is I have put together all of the research that I have... across about 15 years on disability.

Some of it is in India, some of it is in the United States. So, it's a mixture today. So, let me get started.

Um one of the things I looked at, this is India specific, is what do proactive organizations do for inclusion of persons with a disability.

I was very curious, because we've had seminal laws in 1995 and more recently, in 2016 that have mandated, for example,

quotas, which is like affirmative action, and, for example, the government institutions have to take a

certain percentage of persons who are self identifying as persons with a disability into the employment space.

Uh so that is going on well. But then I said, what about the private sector that does not have to follow this kind of quota?

What are proactive organizations in that space where nobody is mandating anything, doing proactively toward inclusion.

So I spoke with 17 very high level informants: directors, CEOs, and people of that C-level class.

I also spoke with five different founders or CEOs of livelihoods agencies. These are agencies that employ,

they train and employ persons with a disability, and they are very powerful across the country.

And this was spread across the country, not in one neighborhood or not in one state of the country.

So these are very high profile respondents in this particular qualitative research. And I asked them about, what do you do

toward inclusion and especially career development of persons with a disability? The common points are the five

that I have noted on the slide in here. The first thing that I found was common across these organizations

is all of them wanted to signal meritocracy. They said, look, we want to hire people

and we want to showcase people, not because we are focusing diversity. Somebody is a person with a disability.

Each one of these persons is very, very good at what they do, and we want to signal meritocracy alongside that inclusion.

So they said, everybody is equal and everybody is merito- meritocratic. The second common thing across all of these organizations and respondents,

they were very careful about the person's first language. Now you may not find it surprising,

because the laws come from the North American continent

...

And sent a signal to everybody that said, look, you cannot call somebody a cripple or a spastic or disable,

which were all kinds of words that were actually used in the past. They said, no, we have to call people by their first name and person's first language.

The third common thing that all of these organizations did was periodic sensitization programs. Now that, in itself, is not surprising.

But what was surprising and what was fantastic I thought, was I said, look, we don't have to sensitize just people who

are not identifying as persons with a disability. We have to also sensitize persons who do identify

as persons with a disability. And they said, well, what should this sensitization look like?

They said, look, you, if you identify as a person with a disability, and if people are not recognizing your marriage,

you have to speak up. You have to showcase what you're capable of. You have to sensitize people that, look, you're not being very good to me.

And importantly, the sensitization also told persons with a disability: Are you sure you're asking the correct amount of help?

Are you asking too much? Are you asking too little? What do you think should be done? So sensitization happened both ways,

for managers, for coworkers, for subordinates, and also for persons with a disability to tell them, look,

maybe you're asking too much, maybe you're asking too little. What should you be asking for? And so on.

The next common thing was a lot of focus, enormous focus on assistive technology and accommodation.

And they happened, this focus happened, through periodic audits every six months, which I found to be so fantastically amazing.

Every six months, there are an accommodation audits, there are an assistive technology audits, and they say,

do we have cutting edge material to help everybody? Do we have space that is appropriate?

Is the lighting appropriate? Is the sound appropriate? Is everything going on smoothly?

For an organization to do it every six months across everybody, I thought was a lot of effort, and that I thought was wonderful.

The last thing that was common across these organizations was ties with external disability associations. For example,

the likes of the livelihood agencies. So a whole bunch of organizations admitted that, look,

we may not be the best suited to help everybody, we may not be the best suited to make sure the accommodation audits happen appropriately.

We don't know what language is appropriate. Everybody comes from such different backgrounds, so we don't know

if we are being sensitive, we are being good. So why don't we tie up with someone outside who happens to be an expert.

So a lot of these ties with external disability agencies worked out beautifully. Now, is this slide true of all of India?

Absolutely not. We have to remember, these are really high profile organizations, relatively successful organizations,

and wealthy organizations. But my hope is, when we do work like this, and we put it out, and we talk about this kind of work,

other organizations are sensitized to say, maybe we change the way we speak about people. Maybe we should

signal meritocracy more. Maybe include people in a different way, and so on. So that's one part of the study.

Now, then I looked at what a successful employees do toward inclusion, because at all points in time,

we cannot expect that only the organization is going to help, but we have to do something too. So I looked at what is

successful employees do toward inclusion. Now these are different studies that I have combined for the sake of this slide.

The first study was initiatives taken by respondents in India, and there were 58 respondents. I also did another study in

the United States, and here we had 40 respondents The second study in the United States, that's with a dear friend and

co-author, Professor David Baldridge, and he had phenomenal access. He self identifies as a deafened person himself,

and he helped with this study, so I must acknowledge him in the United States study. So put together, I'm going to mix

respondents across countries here, but what was the initiative taken by people who considered themselves successful

employees and who also self identified as persons with a disability. The first thing each one of them played up ability,

and they said, to play up ability, I have to do something very, very differently. Some of these respondents were very wealthy,

some were not. Some worked in excellent organizations with a lot of assistive technology and accommodation,

some of them didn't. So my examples might come across as unusual to you, but this is reality.

One of my favorite stories is that of a professor. He worked in a place in India that is not very wealthy. They don't have too much accommodation,

but they're good people. They're genuinely wanted to help him continue working there as a faculty member.

Now this gentleman has no use of his lower limbs. He sits in a wheelchair and his hands are also not very strong, but he has use of his hands.

And I met him, and I asked him, how do you conduct your classroom? And he said, you know what, I have a special assistive solution of my own.

So he has a cloth scroll, and if I don't make sense, you ask me a question later. I don't know if I'm going to, if this translates

in your context. In India, we have cloth scrolls, like a paper scroll, a cloth scroll, which we keep in shops. And you can buy

a whole scroll, you can buy a few meters to stitch your clothing or whatever. So this gentleman, this professor,

I found it so interesting. He bought a whole white cloth scroll from the shop. Thick, thick white cloth.

And he used to write out all of his notes on the cloth scroll, as if he's writing on a PowerPoint. Hm. So he wrote that, and he

used to hang it behind him in the classroom, and he had the whole class prepared. He knew what he

was going to say for those one and a half hours, and as he's sitting in his wheelchair, he used to just pull the cloth

scroll down behind him, and he taught the class, and he was very successful, and the students loved him. They thought he

was so innovative and, you know, he did things so differently. Another professor told me, again a person with a disability,

he said, look, I'm in a wheelchair. I can't quite get up, but I can always ask my students to write on the board before class.

I can always ask an assistant to write on the board before class. So some of us, for example, who still use the whiteboard or the blackboard

when we're teaching a case, for example, we write as we speak, as the case unfolds.

He used to just get other people to write it up front, and he taught the class, and he was fantastic. So there were lots of these small solutions

that people came up with on their own, and they said, yes, we expect institutions to help us.

We expect the law to help us. We have disability commissioners we can complain to if things don't work out.

But the burden, the onus, is also upon us to do something to showcase that yes, we are innovative people.

We have ability, and we are going to do cloth scrolls and things like that. Now, this was in India.

Now, somebody else in the US, now this particular study that I did with David, all of these people had sudden hearing loss.

Now, imagine you're a doctor. You work in the emergency room. You're successful. You've studied so hard. You know, you've you've got a great career,

and you become deafened because of something. This was one of the respondents in our study in in the US,

and he said, you know what, I have made a little bit of money. I can no longer practice emergency room medicine. I can't do that,

but why don't I use the money that I have made, and I will start working on disability associations and helping other people

with some kind of tangible help or connections and so on, and he made the pivot.

He said, I have enormous ability to help people. I have knowledge. I have some money to help people. Why don't I do that?

Yet another person said, look, I have an understanding of disability rights, and I cannot practice anymore, remember sudden hearing loss.

I cannot go to the court anymore. I can't hear very well, but I can use my knowledge of the equal opportunity,

equal employment opportunity understanding, and maybe I can do a law practice where I don't go to court, but I practice elsewhere.

So a lot of these people, whether the onset of disability was sudden or if they had a disabling condition

or a functional limitation from the very beginning, each one of these people who identified themselves as

being successful and also as persons with a disability, worked really hard to play up their ability.

They used informal help. They came up with innovative solutions. Some of these solutions were very simple, some were quite complex,

but they all tried to play up ability. The second common thing I found across respondents

across these two countries that I have conducted studies in, was ongoing advocacy. Unbelievable work.

They really worked very hard to negate any kind of myth that people might have about their performance,

about their ability. They started building a collective. They said, you know what,

if I cannot speak up on my own, and if I do speak up on my own, how many times can I speak up?

Let me collect similar others, and we can together engage in advocacy, to showcase to people, look, you're not thinking right.

Maybe you have a myth. Maybe you don't understand how we function. So they really did a lot of awareness building,

not just for themselves, but for the broader collective and this positive spiral was just wonderful.

Sometimes this advocacy was also done through the help of agencies, the disability agencies within those specific countries,

where they said, look, maybe we can't explain really too well, why don't you come along? We can do a seminar series.

We can do a speaker series. It could be an hour. It could be a sensitization workshop.

It could happen every six months, it depends on the company. But why don't I get external others

to help me with the ongoing advocacy so I can negate any kind of silly thought, any kind of a myth

that people might hold in their minds. Similarly, the third and final point, a lot of them began a lot of disability networking,

within and outside the organization. Now, within the company was not so surprising for me, because it's very common to have these resource groups,

employee resource groups, but a lot of these resource groups were across organizations. Now this was more common in India.

I did not see so much of this in the US, at least in my limited understanding. But within India, for example, we have these special economic zones,

which means a lot of organizations are physically located together in that particular economic zone,

and a lot of persons with a disability, they say, look, we have all these, especially in Bangalore, which is where I'm from, a lot

of these companies are trying to do the right thing, but maybe there are so few persons with

a disability within that particular company, that it's not really much- much is happening there.

So they started talking to people within the SEZ, within the Special Economic Zone, across the organizations,

and they all got together and said, look, maybe we have five people in one company or 15 people in one company,

but if we all work as a Special Economic Zone, we come together, we are now talking hundreds of people who can work together,

who can form a disability network, who can help each other, and in doing so, also help our respective organizations.

So one, we had what successful proactive organizations do toward inclusion, and then we had what successful employees do toward inclusion.

Now, then I looked, this was India specific, I was very curious. This is an older study. I think um

I forget, it's a couple of years old. And I wanted to see, especially in India, you're spending so much effort

and so much money on disability sensitization workshops, and I was very curious.

I said, look, how effective are these workshops? Do people just go sit there? Because it's the,

you know, it's, it's a signal that, look, I am doing it, so I have to sit through it.

Is it a check box exercise? Are they effective? How are they effective? So I looked at the most common format,

and this was in most of this was in Bangalore, India, but although we had some other states also.

The most common format I found was they do a half day workshop. Now this workshop can be done by the organization or in association

with the external disability livelihoods agencies, and these half day workshops are actually quite powerful. I sat through some of them myself

across organizations because I had access. They're wonderfully done. They talk about the language, they talk about the technology.

Both sides are given opportunities to talk to each other, get on the same page. They're wonderful.

But I wanted to see, is it a half day thing and people forget about it, or is there a longer term impact? So again, I went hunting

for respondents, 33 respondents in this particular study, and this is what I found about these half day sensitization workshops.

The first thing I found was general awareness 100% increased. That was very good news.

In fact, I spoke with people, and they had a recall of striking things of the workshop, not the full workshop,

but they said, I remember one thing, even after a year and a half or two years. So the first point was good news,

at least some people could remember overall and general awareness definitively increased. People knew what

kinds of disabilities, people knew what kinds of laws we have in India, all that was wonderful.

The second bullet point, the second finding, maybe is not so wonderful. The workshops resonated more so with

people who already had some prior experience with disability because they had a family member who had a disability,

they had a friend who might have had a disability, and I found that if the workshops were voluntary, you can't mandate

people to attend workshops. So these were mostly voluntary, and I found that these voluntary sensitization workshops

ended up attracting those employees who had the least need for sensitization because they already

were sensitized to disability inclusion, given their own experience. Now that was that really did make me think,

and we can chat about that later. The other thing I found was the workflows did make a difference, for sure,

but only, and the long term impact was that only when there was a broader culture of inclusion.

For example, there were technology audit. For example, the managers enabled people

or success stories were shared and so on. Just doing these half day sensitization workshops every six months, eight months,

every year, whatever that was, was not very useful in terms of genuine inclusion, genuine socialization,

career progress, and so on. Unless there was a broader culture, people were sensitized after the workshop, but not much changed.

And that's not good enough. The next thing I found was who runs the workshops made a huge difference, huge.

Typically, in the beginning, we had people who are relatively able bodied or who do not have functional limitations

run these workshops. Now, good, all good. That's fine. But we went on to find that

if someone with a functional limitation, if somebody who self-identifies as a person with a disability, if

they conducted the workshop, the recipient was much more interested, and they really understood what was going on.

For example, I remember attending one session, I didn't know about these apps myself.

A person who's legally blind, he came to the workshop. He said, I'm going to run this workshop.

And he said: How do you think I get dressed in the morning? How do I know that I'm wearing socks that are the same color?

And now people were very interested, because they had not thought about this. He said: How do you how do I know? And this is before India became

completely, at least, Bangalore is very UPI driven. We don't use as much cash, and we just wave our phone at a QR

code and we pay, but before this, when the workshop was running, he said: How do I know what currency note, what bill I'm giving to somebody

when I'm buying a cup of tea in the stall, in the company? Now, people are even more interested.

And he went on to show them how he uses different apps that tell him how he is getting dressed in the morning for work,

how he understands currency, what kinds of software he uses, and so on. So who runs the

workshops, I found, makes a huge difference. So sometimes a person with a functional limitation, when

they talk about how they navigate the world, how they see the world vis a vis somebody else, makes a very big impact on the listener.

The last thing I found in terms of running effective sensitization workshops is the format of the workshop matters a lot,

even if someone with a disability like this person I spoke about shows up and comes and speaks it's good,

it's powerful, but there's something even better that we can do. So what is this format?

The best formats, the most impactful formats, are ones where not only someone like this person comes and speaks

and does real life demonstration, but also gets the other person to experience what they're experiencing.

For example, some of the best sensitization workshops that I've attended, they said: You know what,

why don't you, you know, sometimes we did like a blindfold or something, and he said: Now you navigate.

What obstacles do you face? What kinds of software would you want? What kinds of physical, tangible material would you want in this particular office?

So when people themselves experienced this, that was by far the strongest. So what we could do going forward, I felt

at least some of the experiments that are happening in companies in India, I do not know of the United States for this particular research question,

is, where experimenting with a lot of formats, and we're trying to see if sometimes maybe sensitization workshops need not

be completely voluntary. Maybe we could, like do strong nudges or something for more people show up, and that's the experiment that's going on at this point in time.

This is my last slide, although I have from other things to say. Now, this really was

an unusual study. This is not so much about a company, it's about the country. My students and I, at the time

they were my students, now they're faculty members elsewhere. We did a lot of, we put in a lot of effort

to find out how the broader institutions ascribe an identity to a person with a disability. So we looked at

the Indian newspapers. What the narrative was from 2001 to 2010, this is the time period between two census counts,

which is when disability was counted, and in the 2010 census is where disability was really going to be counted very

carefully, the 21 different types of legally recognized disabilities and so on. So we wanted to see how is the overall institutional narrative changing

with regard to persons with a disability? We got all the Indian newspapers with national subscription. We then zeroed it down

to one particular newspaper that had maximum circulation, yeah, that's the word circulation, across the country.

And we then filtered articles and came to 3,176 total articles in this time period, non redundant, unique articles,

and we said we are going to read each one of these articles to figure out how the language is changing in the country,

because just one company cannot change anything. A whole Special Economic Zone can't change anything.

The whole country has to speak a certain language. So what language was being spoken and how the language should change,

and was changing is what we looked at. The first thing we found was the label that was used to ascribe an identity

upon this collective was one of welfare recipients. Now this, again, might not make much sense to you as a listener, but this is true of my context.

We use, the Government of India, there's a lot of welfare schemes, which means they will, for example, put aside

some money and say, this money is going to be used for a welfare scheme, for scholarship for persons with a disability

or things like that, and because these welfare schemes are so many, they're actually quite good. Some of them are really, really robust and wonderful,

but because those schemes were being talked off so much, sometimes I wonder if it backfired,

because now you're ascribing an identity here of somebody, not so much, who has an agency, but somebody who's a recipient of welfare.

That was the maximum number of articles across the time period between the census counts.

The second maximum number of articles were portraying this as a collective with human rights,

and this particular narrative became increasingly more prevalent towards the end of the study,

and today, I think that narrative has taken over the narrative of welfare recipients, collective with human rights.

And this is a really good narrative, because now we are portraying people as people who have rights in this country.

They have a right to be able to go to the bus stop. They should be able to access the railway network, the trains.

They should be able to get good education. And a whole bunch of these articles were increasing, which was very good news.

A small number of articles portrayed the collective as being very vulnerable. We had articles that spoke of: Oh no, they have

to be taken care of. Oh no, this particular woman was in trouble. Oh no, this person was sexually molested because

she could not do something, she couldn't defend herself. And while those articles were important, they did portray

a frame of vulnerability, good, bad, whatever, but that was the frame. And the smallest number of articles,

which really worried me were portraying some groups of people as being naughty, as being miscreants.

So what were these articles? For example, they were portrayed as cheaters. For example,

where one of the schemes that used to run, which I think is dying down now, back in the day, we had telephone

booths, and I remember this distinctly, even when I was growing up, specific telephone booths were kept aside

so a person with a disability can man that telephone booth and all kinds of calls and internet and whatever could be done from there.

And a lot of times, what was happening was a person without a disability or not much of a disabling condition, was occupying

them, and that was perceived as cheating, and that was not done. So that was what showed up.

And this particular um study, for me, was eye opening, because we have got to be careful of not just what happens within the organization,

but as a broader discourses, for example, one of welfare recipients, then for the person in the organization, it might

become difficult to say, you know what, I am a person who has great merit. I am able. I have rights.

I can, in fact, teach people how to do things differently. So to me, the institutional ascribing of identities

is very, very critical. Um so that is what I had to say, uh but if there are any questions at this point, I'm happy to take them. Yes.

Yeah. Thank you, Mukta, um for a very interesting presentation, and the, and the perspectives from, from different countries in the different parts of the world.

Um yeah, so we have a we going to open up our Q and A session now, and if you are in the audience

and you're not familiar with the Zoom platform, the Q and A button should be on the bottom of your screen, and you can click

that and you should be able to type in your answer. So we have one uh comment already in the question and answer box,

and it says: Thank you for the great presentation, and the audience is curious about the

networks of persons with disabilities within Special Economic Zones, and are there any specific industries and

zones where these networks are particularly successful, and if they are,

um do you have any thoughts on why those networks are particularly successful?

Ah, yes, that's a really good question. So the Special Economic Zones that, at least the ones I have visited,

not to point out, that's a really good question huh, most of them are technology companies in Bangalore, they're not

manufacturing their technology. And in these groups, it's the easiest to hire and do assistive solution for persons with a disability.

Hmm, so yes, so the answer is these zones where this inclusion is most successful, now that I'm thinking about it,

is technology, banking, and those kinds of companies not manufacturing. Manufacturing is harder because, one, there are

fewer people in manufacturing zones, yeah, and to change your manufacturing zone is harder in India.

So, yeah, so the answer is, just given the smaller numbers of people in manufacturing zones and the and the difficulty

in changing and adapting those spaces to become accessible, the answer is the tech zones

and the banking zones. Yeah, that's, that, that's where it will work out more.

I see. So, there are some differences between the industries, likely because of the nature of the business and the resources they may have

and so on. Okay, very good. Another question that we have is that when you spoke about the language and

how it influenced people's perspective on disabilities and the questions about whether you have done any outreach

to journalism schools or other ways to sanitize, like journalists about the language they use about disability?

Ah, yes, yes. I have done only a little bit, but my colleagues have done a lot more. So, for example, um

we have something called the Right to Information Act, which means anybody can ask a question of any government

official or or something. It works beautiful. I think it's called Right to Freedom or something like that in some Western countries.

Here it's called Right to Information. So what we have done, my colleagues have done not so much me, but I have attended them.

They do Right to Information seminars that are completely free of cost, so people like us might go

and sit there and teach other people how to do Right to Information. In that space, I have seen a whole bunch

of outreach to journalists and to uh different newspapers and magazines and so on,

where very much the language we have spoken about, yes, yes. So that is being done, yeah.

That is wonderful to hear that there is uh this kind of work is out in the community, and people do genuinely care

about these things, um and especially is published on their kind of the public channel there.

Um another comment on um from our audience um is that that we don't often get to learn from someone outside of Canada,

so we really appreciate that the learning from you, um and a question that comes after that:

Policy at the government level is often central to discussions here in Canada and but it always,

it doesn't always deliver. Um so are there any recent policy developments in India that you are excited about?

Yeah, well, that is true everywhere, huh? We speak a lot, and we here also, we have so many high power discussions,

but they don't always deliver. Um I have wanted to do something, I have also failed at the delivery. So that's, I think, common everywhere.

Now the policy, the one development I'm really excited about is in the education space, and I must say, my goodness,

I mean, the way we're enfolding neurodiversity into our classrooms is a marvelous.

My school, for example, and we are a shining star gold in the way we help our students,

and we we are also learning along the way. So when the 2016 Act came out and neurodiversity and every all of that was

included, earlier it was only physical disability. So now we have 21 recognized disabilities and more, if the doctor says so.

Hmm. Now to include these kinds of students or employees with an organization, a lot is being done.

Now we have special educators. We have study circles. We have special mentors. We have all kinds of things that I

think are just really, very helpful in the education space. That is critical, I think, and that I think the country

and a lot of activists and a lot of persons with a disability themselves are doing well, yeah.

I See. Thank you. We have a couple more questions. The next questions that we have is

and um wondering if you can comment on sort of the makeup and the categories of people with disabilities in the workforce in

India because in Canada, um there's often views to have several categories of disability and pain

actually being one of the most common condition that people report, especially in case of employment.

Um all the other categories sometimes are seems to be underrepresented in certain ways. So, so wondering about

the categorization of people with disabilities in India's workforce?

Ah, that's another good question. John, you know what, I don't know. I might be mistaken, but my gut feeling after so many

years of doing disability work here is pain is not even a thing here. Pain is not a recognized disability.

Somebody will say, oh I, for example, somebody who works with me, she has a neck injury because she was in a car accident.

Nobody is going to even consider that a disability. Okay, you have been, you go get some injections, and you show up,

which is so interesting. We do not talk about that as a disability. The biggest representation by far is physical disability,

not even neurodiversity, we have just begun that. Physical, so you will have a lot of people who have limb issues, you

know, hands and legs. Uh that's the first one you, the first thing you'll see is wheelchair access in India.

The second one, I think, will be visual. Followed by hearing. That is how I think I would think about the different categories here.

Pain, interestingly, is not a thing. I don't know why that is.

Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So switching gears a bit. Earlier in your presentation, you talk

about, you know, the different portrayal of people with disabilities, and you talk about, within the organization, there are

different workshops being run, and who runs the workshops matters, and there's, you know, differences in terms of the success

on those workshops, but, but the question is more about, what about like, any recent innovations,

um you know, aside from those workshops that you see at the organizational level,

um whether it's programs or initiatives that that are really helping workplaces become more inclusive.

Hmm. I tell you one, a very interesting one. I, I couldn't attended... the, I sit on this, this, this board,

the advisory board I sit on, EnAble India. They are working heavily with the Government of India.

You should look them up. This is fascinating. They did something called the Purple Economy Fest- Festival.

This was in Goa, which is in a different state, not not this state that I live in, and in this Purple Fest, they had invited

government officials, all the big industry people, huge numbers of persons with functional limitations and disabilities.

And in this purple, purple economies, the economy of persons with a disability, that's purple, the color purple in India at least,

and under this huge umbrella where thousands had gathered, they all got together and said,

if we look at disability as an economic driver for the country, how does the narrative change?

So they said, for example, let us say I cannot walk, hypothetically. If you enable me to walk, what do I need? I need a crutch.

Somebody makes a crutch. I pay him. He benefits. I benefit. I can walk. I can go to the bus stop.

I can sit in the bus and go to work. When I go to the bus and I pay somebody, the bus driver, makes money.

The state of Karnataka makes money. I go to work. I pay taxes. The government makes money,

and they started this very beautiful line of thought, not at the organization level so I'm sorry I'm not answering that question,

but the biggest innovation right now is this collective ecosystem of how we can do a purpose ecosystem where

multiple diverse players can come together and just make a huge difference,

not at the level of the individual or the company, but at the level of the economy. Look this up later, you know, Purple Fest.

It was done in Goa last year. It was a huge success, huge. Yeah, yeah.

Purple fest, we'll take note to that. Thank you. Um, another question, so is that Canada is a very multicultural.

We're very diverse, and in fact, it is predicted within the next 20 years or so, that 50% of Canadian populations will be made up by

immigrants and immigrant's children. So, um so intersectionality is quite a hot topic, and it's not just related to different

culture, but also, you know, religious background and sexual orientation, how people identify themselves. So,

is there any discussion regarding disability and intersectionality in India?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, so there is disability, rural versus urban. There's gender.

There is a socio economic class. I tell you one story. I promise to like, make it quick. I know we are, like, going to push time, but

it's a really good story of intersectionality. I know this gentleman, let's call him Rahul. That's not his real name,

but that's what I call him in the journal article, also, it, I published about him. I've known him for many years.

He came from a small village. He came to Bangalore, and he was, he told me when he first came to Bangalore, he was very shy.

He couldn't speak any English, and he was trying. He he spoke only Kannada, which is the native language of this state.

And he said, I'm, he was very poor. He didn't have good clothes, and his shirt was not very nice, and I remember he used to wear this slipper.

Uh what do you call it in- slides? I think that's what you call it, slides, yeah, yeah. He was wearing a slides slipper kind of thing,

which he he was really poor. It was all worn out and not nice looking, and you should try to go and get jobs and whatever.

He really struggled. He really struggled. Then he met with a disability training agency, livelihoods agency.

They helped him a little bit. He got little bit of money. He started wearing better clothes, and whatever.

They still wouldn't get any jobs, very difficult. Fast forward the story to, I don't know, five, six years later, right?

I kept in touch with him. He got a job, and he, in fact, it's a small job, but he got a job, and in fact, he saved money

and he could send it back to his village, and he became quite the hero, and he said: See, ma'am,

I'm so dashing now huh? Before I was this poor guy with no good clothes, I'm so dashing now.

And that really made me think, you know, when should we stop telling the story of somebody who's a

who's who's, you know? So when I think of intersectionality, if I had stopped following Rahul after two years,

my story of Rahul would have been "ah, poor guy." Maybe I would have elicited from you pity.

Ah maybe you felt bad for him. But if I complete the story, and now I tell you that Rahul is the sole earner who is sending money back to his village,

hm, it's a story of fortitude. It's not a story of misfortune. So when we look at intersectionality,

you know, of course, there is a rural, poor person, this person with a disability, but over time that intersectionality can change,

and the story of a misfortune can become one of fortitude. So, you know, when does the story stop?

Is it a story of intersectionality or something else? And importantly, I have thought, you know, whose story are we telling?

Is it a story of Rahul? Or when I tell a story of, of, of him, am I telling a story that I want to tell as a researcher?

So sometimes I wonder who's shaping the story, and whose story are we telling? Especially in qualitative research, we have

so much power over the story, so we should, as as researchers, step back and do a little bit of reflection I feel, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Very interesting, yeah.

Yeah. Quantitative, it doesn't come up, but in qualitative, okay, I'm going to be quiet, you know?

I'm going to start telling stories. Okay, sorry, yeah.

Yeah. It's very interesting that self identity can evolve, and also is changes from the perspective of the observer

as well. I'm fascinated about the collectivism that you spoke about in India, and the success through

that collectivist effort, and when I think about the North American, the more Western culture sometimes is a little bit more focused on

entrepreneurship, individual performance, and individual's achievements, things like that.

And I think one of our audience is also interested in, you know, the experience that you have in India and US

and what would you say would be the major difference between the the workplace disability inclusion in those two countries

and, or maybe other countries that you you're interested about as well.

Ah, the biggest one, which, now it doesn't surprise me anymore, but the first time, it surprised me,

I don't know other countries, and I know other countries a little bit, but US more so because of data.

The biggest differences in US, the first thing people talk about is the law and accommodation.

In India, in conversations with people, the law doesn't come up at all, which I think is so fascinating.

Nobody says, I'm going to sue you. It just doesn't come in the picture. It's all informal. It's all ad hoc,

and it's not really, I mean, the law is there, of course it's there. The newest one is written, actually, very beautifully,

but that doesn't come up in conversation. The word accommodation also doesn't come up as much, and now it has come,

of course, we borrow from the US heavily. So of course, it's come here too, but law and accommodation were not conversation topics here.

Law is still not a conversation topic as much when you talk to respondents. It's more about helping each other

and informal help and relying on informal networks. Like the clock scroll story, like the professor.

I don't know if it would even be allowed in a Western country, or this gentleman, professor who got people to write

on the board informally. I don't even know if that would be allowed here it is applauded. So yeah, so the ad hoc, informal.

Yeah. Very interesting. So certainly the legal compliance and sort of the human rights

and versus employers rights, sometimes it's a bit of a, you know, debate, you know, in our systems here.

I think we're coming close to sort of our the end of our time and webinar, but maybe I can ask you one more question, and

and then, if you wouldn't mind, I'd just like to introduce sort of, the next series that we're going to have in a few weeks, but

one of the questions that we have is that you spoke about so many different things, so many different issues

that are on the forefront of people that are working in this space. So for organization that maybe just starting

with this inclusion journey, this disability inclusion journey, what would you suggest them to prioritize,

especially, you know, between like small business versus like a large enterprise?

Ah. The first thing I would tell organizations is, don't assume. Talk to the person,

because sometimes you might want to help, but the fundamental assumption may be wrong. You may give them what you this is

helpful, but it may not be helpful. So whether a big company, small company, I think it would be so helpful. Ask me, hey,

what do you want? You know, this is what we have on offer, does it really help you or, or stress you even more?

Because I may not even want that assistive technology, I could do something differently.

So I would really leave that with organizations. You know, please don't assume.

Right. The the active listening and really getting the the perspective from the person that perhaps will require that support,

it's really, really, really crucial. So thank you so much for your time. I think we've learned a lot from

you and joining us from far away as well, too, and I also want to just take a moment here to friend- to thank our French interpreter,

and hopefully for those who uh need it, French interpretation that's working out for you.

Um and also for the audience, we would like to invite you for a next Speakers Series, which is going to be um

on November 29 on the Friday, and the speaker is going to be Sinead McCarthy from Youth Employment Services.

So please watch out for that. In the meantime, do reach out for you know to us through our email info@vraie-idea.ca

if you have any questions or suggestions for topics, and follow us on various social media accounts as well.

But wonderful to see you here, Mukta, and hopefully we'll connect in some other ways as well,

and thanks for everyone for joining us and have a nice weekend. Thank you. Bye, bye.