Disability Inclusion Roadmap

To help your organization advance disability inclusion, The Jewish Federation has developed resources to guide you throughout this journey, from changing attitudes and making structural accommodations to collaborating with those inside and outside the disability community.

Federation’s Disability Inclusion Roadmap will guide you throughout this process. While there are many paths to advance disability inclusion, the steps below are flexible enough for any organization to use while still ensuring that our community will achieve a shared vision.

Disability Inclusion Roadmap: 5 Steps

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Step 1 – Getting Started: Explore & Discuss

Gather your colleagues and start a conversation within your organization about how to foster a more inclusive environment. This dialogue is essential to increase awareness, encourage changes in attitude, and explore how best to accommodate individuals with disabilities. As with all disability inclusion work, the voices of those with disabilities are essential to this process.

Resources to Explore & Discuss

  • Community Resources – Explore a virtual library of crowd-sourced tools, including articles, videos, websites, and blogs created by individuals with disabilities that highlight the value of disability inclusion.
  • Inclusion Around Town – Learn how organizations in our community are practicing inclusion by reviewing the Individuals Resource Page or Congregational Disability Inclusion Chart.
  • Inclusion Activities – Review a growing database of activities for a variety of age groups.
  • Discussion Guides – Spark the disability inclusion conversation with questions from Federation’s Discussion Guides.
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Step 2 – Determine the Path

There are six Discussion Guides focused on a particular area of inclusivity. They are designed to spark conversation to assess how welcoming and accommodating your organization can be. The guides include two types of questions—“welcoming” and “accommodating”—to help you understand the different ways in which your organization can advance disability inclusion.

  • Welcoming” questions and comments refer to changes that that may involve modifying attitudes and require minimal resources.
  • Accommodating” questions and comments focus on specific accommodations that may require strategic planning and additional funding. Some costs are ongoing, while others involve initial structural changes followed by maintenance.

Six Areas of Inclusivity


Physical Accessibility


Communication


Worship & Ritual


Volunteer & Employment


Education


Social, Recreation & Leisure

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Step 3 – Explore Resources for Each Area of Inclusivity

The Community Resources are a virtual library of crowd-sourced tools. In addition to the “Getting Started” and “Testimonial” sections, there are sections for each of the six areas of inclusivity, as well as questions you might have regarding legislation and policy, and a list of global partners who are working to advance this cause. You can also find more resources online, including those specifically for Jewish organizations.

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Step 4 – Create an Action Plan

Best practices require that your organization determine which actions it will take to become more inclusive and who will be responsible for completing these tasks. We have created an Action Plan template to help guide this process.

The Action Plan includes:

  • Identifying a task/action within the six levels of inclusivity
  • Assigning a project manager
  • Setting a timeline for completion

It is important to communicate what is already being done to make your organization more inclusive and to communicate when new tasks have been completed.

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Step 5 – Share & Collaborate

We can only accomplish the shared vision of advancing disability inclusion by working together.

Share: As you discover additional resources, please let us know so we can continue to update our virtual library of Community Resources.

Collaborate: We invite you to join our growing Disability Inclusion Network, a public forum designed to advance disability inclusion, by engaging in thought-provoking dialogue. The Network meets several times per year, or more regularly if you choose to join an individual Working Group. For more information or questions, please email inclusion@shalomdc.org.

For more information or questions, please email inclusion@shalomdc.org.

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