Welcome to the 2020 TASH Conference - Virtual Edition website! We’re so glad you are here!
Each year, the TASH Conference brings together individuals with significant disabilities and their allies to share resources and success stories, learn about field-driven best practices, and network within a community engaged in shared values. The conference is attended by passionate advocates, leaders, and subject matter experts from every corner of the disability community. Conference attendees play an important role in supporting individuals with significant disabilities to overcome various barriers in order to live their best lives. Central to this work is the premise that individuals reach their optimal potential only when they are given the opportunity to live, work and thrive across the lifespan in the same communities we are all members of. The conference is intentionally designed to support the interests of professors and researchers from leading institutions; those involved in local, state, and federal governments and public policy; special and general educators, and school administrators; home and community-based service providers; students, family members, and most importantly, self-advocates with lived experience.
This year, while we are taking the conference virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe that our unique approach to providing exceptional first-rate content and building strong community ties and connections across various stakeholders will yield an extraordinary event! We have taken extra steps to bring people closer together during these times, as well as to create an amazing virtual environment that expands our knowledge, spurs our creative thinking, and focuses on healthy living and having fun! Our conference theme, Feel the Power of Inclusion, reinforces the importance of our continued commitment to promoting a world of equity and opportunity for all, and is predicated on the value of bringing together diverse perspectives and experiences in an effort to build strong human connectivity and spur collective action.
Need technical assistance during the conference? Please email our support staff at helpdesk@tash.org.
The recording for this session is located under the title, "About TASH Talks (Part II). NOTE: TASH Talks are a take off the popular “Ted Talks” - short 8- to 10-minute presentations on critically important topics facing the disability rights movement followed by a brief Q & A session during the one-hour session.
In this talk, I would like to highlight my experience as a student, educator and policy maker across two countries and embracing multiple stakeholders. As a blind student growing up in India, I had a very different idea of inclusion. This idea has been reshaped after I came to America for graduate school. Although America has a policy infrastructure that is extremely developed in comparison to India, the belief systems, point of view in schools and other institutions remain the same. Using examples, highlighting policy gaps, I would like to talk about my experience as a student, doctoral research assistant and a policy advocate in two different settings. A good example is the Reasonable accommodation claws within the ADA. While a lack of policy holds back inclusion and employment in India, interpretation of the law holds it back in the US. How do we combat systemic issues that hold us back from inclusion and equity within all spheres of life.
