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>> this conference getting back underway shortly. tonight q&a will continue with carlos lozano, the "washington post" book critic. that's q&a today and all this week at 7 p.m. joe nasise into. booktv in prime time tonight focusing on political memoirs. a quick program note, 8:00 tonight o on c-span, eastern ti, donald trump's speech earlier today on the economy that he delivered in detroit. [inaudible conversations]

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[inaudible conversations] >> hello and welcome back. i'm jennifer laszlo mizrahi, president of respectability, a nonprofit organization, advocating for advancing opportunities for people with disabilities. we are very to let it to be your with congress talking about an intersection of politics and voting.

and the millions of americans with disability, 51% of voters. i'm going to turn over to our moderator ben spangenberg in just a moment but i wanted to just say a few nice things, because there are so many nice things you said about him. he is my right hand man. i myself am an individual with a disability. you can see his because he is a richer user. you can't see mind. i literally have difficulty filling out a calendar program and the computer because of my dyslexia. it's very hard for me to tell the difference between the number 18 in the number 81. tried to put in your calendar, you can't do that. we help each other. that is one of the things about having a disability as anyone who has a disability has

abilities, and the disabilities i have, then one ought events and backstop date and vice versa. for the teamwork of our organization. respectability values people with disabilities. we encourage people watching c-span to learn more about it to apply. it's a program for young people in college or who are recently graduated college or graduate from graduate school a one -- to learn really cutting edge skills and again great context. i want to say, that fellows did so much to organize this event today and that they've done so much in public, published so many wonderful articles. i want to thank brian, also our fellowship director, has been terrific with this terrific

cohort of fellows who are a really talented group of people. we really are thrilled to have them and avoid remind all the viewers to just go to www.respectability u.s.a..org to find out how you, too, can come to washington and have a fellowship program here where you can gain the skills and contacts. but ben spangenbergcoffee on our behalf went to iowa and new hampshire and interviewed 100% of the presidential candidates alongside the other people who are on the panel. they were educating people about the importance of ensuring accessibility of events and the trails as you will hear. but previously he worked on capitol hill and he spent seven years working at a government contractor on several disability related projects pertaining to employment, education, and community living. and i must say that i enjoy working with him because he's so

incredibly talented, as are the of as are the other people thought on this panel that you're about to meet. so i'm delighted to have them introduce the rest of the team for you. let me turn it over to ben spangenberg. >> thank you. page very much, jennifer. good afternoon. my name is ben spangenberg and i am the special assistant to the president at respectability, and nonpartisan nonprofit advancing opportunity for people with disabilities. respectability is fellowship program allows people with disabilities and those interested in disability issues to gain first hand knowledge of disability issues and working for a policy centered nonprofit in washington, d.c. we have fellowships in policy, communications, religious conclusion and evolved. fellows learn to write op-ed's,

social media outreach, fundraising and research, among other tasks fellows are given a $250 a month travel stipends, lunch everyday and infallible training and coaching. -- and valuable. today we're three wonderful speakers who along with me traveled to iowa and new hampshire during the primary election season to ask presidential candidates substantive policy questions on disability issues. the issues were a part of respectability's presidential campaign questionnaire, which you may have seen published on our blog at www.respectability report.org. senator tom harkin said it best when he said if you are not at the table, you were on the menu. too often people's disabilities do not engage with selected

leaders and candidates. imagining as a political power is a piece of pie. into the ashes of our political power it will be taken from others -- if we exercise. political partners like a flame, passed from one camp to the next. the candle making the room that much brighter. respectability has turned its attention to competitive gubernatorial campaigns and come out with a new questionnaire to talk about how you can get involved in ensuring candidates fill out the questionnaire. i want to now introduce our panel. justin chappell come democracy and outreach coordinator, spent months on the trails engaging presidential candidates in early primary states. previously worked for senator

tom harkin, the national council on independent living, and the white house. justin has served on several nonprofit and local civic organization boards, and as an elected official focusing on employment, affordable housing, education, environmental protection, lgbt, and mental health issues. james trout, our policy of democracy fellow, diagnosed with asperger's at age 15. james joseph respectability because he wants to work in an environment that helps people with disabilities successfully achieve employment. as a policy and democracy fellow, he spent months on the trails engaging presidential candidates in early primary states. in addition he conducts research on the campaigns policies and

creates contact databases. dahlia joseph is a former communications fell at respectability. she spent months on the true engaging presidential candidates in the early primary states as well. her reporting and videos from the trail can be found on respectability report. in addition she created graphics for use on social media and assisted with the daily maintenance and social media accounts. she also insured all youtube videos that we posted have captions for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. we are happy to have the three of you here today. james, would you like to start us off? >> yes, i would. thank you very much. can you all hear me back there? now, you may be wondering why all of us feel that this issue

to support. we feel that this issue, the issue of voting, of getting these people, getting people with disabilities involved in the voting process is important because there are 56 million americans with disabilities. and 70% of those are not currently working, which is, if you think that sounds alarming, it is, because it's the same amount in terms of people there was when the ada was first passed into law 26 years ago. currently, and from, i've been working with respect to build as a fellow since june of 2015 and basically, essentially the very start i've been following around presidential candidates in here

in the d.c. area and in iowa and new hampshire and cleveland, ohio, on trips. from my personal discovery and the discovery of my team, we have essentially discovered that the more that, politicians are much more likely to be, and active and involved and willing to talk about and have disability issues if they are repeatedly and relentlessly pursued on the question over and over again. we feel that it is our country, too, and people with disabilities we have the right to essentially to have the same rights and privileges and responsibilities as just about everybody else. now, for example, now is an example of me at work. after christmas break in between semesters, i am truly a graduate student at george mason

university in arlington, virginia, but i have the push of asking, for example, john kasich, the government of ohio about disappointed -- dissolute employment, not just disability employment but about voting issues, accessibility in des moines, iowa, at a coffee shop. and escape i asked him about an article in the "des moines register" about voter accessibility. because in the iowa caucus come in many cases homes were not ada accessible so people often left out. and asked him that if you any intention of talking to republican state officials and other, the ones who run the caucuses, and he told me that he absolutely would do so and he mentioned that he did, in fact, pursue it and bring it up with officials as required.

you are going to see some photos of myself following the campaign trail here. now, how do you attend -- what's the best way to attend events? we basically came, after spending months on the trail, we basically found that the best places to go for campaign events is to go on to the individual candidates websites. they generally list if it's worthy of a presidential candidate or a low-level county or city official. that often state whether they are a rally for a town hall. we found that town halls when it comes, for much more effective when it comes to asking the individual candidate, asking the individual candidate questions because at your standard rally, the politician just goes out

there, makes a speech of shakes some hands and think instead and then leaves. but oftentimes during q&a you can and will get called on if you put in the effort. would also suggest, we also suggest you go to these individual rows that you arrived early, at least one to two hours early because oftentimes the ada section gives taken up. study showed the closer you are to the front, the more likely you are going to be called on by the individual candidate. oftentimes in iowa and new hampshire these events, it would be difficult to ask questions after these. we also suggested that we go to these events you go to the front and ask the first question because the earlier you asked the question, the more likely

you will get a response. now, here i am in concord, new hampshire, just before christmas. unmasking governor kasich question about disability unemployment. i made sure in this situation i was seeded third close to the front and asked the question early so that i would get called on every disability issue would get addressed. now here, i'm shaking hands with secretary hillary rodham clinton at an event in des moines, iowa. this photo was actually taken literally the day before secretary clinton revealed her autism plan. she was actually the first candidate from either major political party to have a substantive plan on the issue of

autism. and give him with my fellow, dahlia joseph and lauren appelbaum husseini out in the audience with marco rubio. this was taken at an american legion event in new hampshire just before christmas. and asked him about people with disabilities being the victims of violent crime and what he would do to help solve the iss issue. and here i am with martin o'malley in manchester, new hampshire, at an american legion event. this was about a month before the iowa caucus. so we at the time was still in the race for president. and here i have to get in new hampshire being interviewed by a member of the bloomberg press. i believe this was taken at the

john kasich event, but i was not attending at the time. and here we have a list of all of the gubernatorial and senatorial races that we are going to be asking questions about. the eventual goal of respectability is not just so that we can work with the presidential candidates, but also, and with the centaur and gubernatorial candidates. for those of you who may of noticed, we had a list of all the races coming in here for your information as of tomorrow vermont as their primary tomorrow for governor, so that's going to change but pretty much going to be the same deal. our eventual going back to what i am saying, eventually the goal is for not just our organization but for other candidates to have similar questions asked of state senators, representatives, u.s.

house members, all the way down the ballot. we also have contained a link there to our own organization's questionnaire which we've included in the packet as you can and. and here are some sample questions from our questionnaire. do you want me to be reading these out loud? and here i have listed in my information, i can be reached at james kraut dashed or call 410 patch or send a contact me on

twitter. now i'd like to turn the microphone over to my coworker, justin chappell. >> thank you, james. i appreciate it. and good afternoon. a show of hands. how many of you here today have a family member with a disability, including chronic conditions like diabetes? show fans. what about a friend or you yourself as a person with a disability including chronic conditions? show of hands. disability leader justin dart once i get into politics as if your life depends on it. because it does. going to talk about today one howler perspective of the alliances as we went around the country to iowa and new

hampshire building alliances with the disability organizations in the states and reaching out to both campaign staff as well as media on a local and national level. also going to talk about how we made ourselves more visible to candidates as we went on the campaign trail. and how we made ourselves more visible the media as we move around on the campaign trail. prior to heading to iowa and new hampshire, respectability built list of the disability community stakeholders, campaign staff at local and national media. we worked with a number of other disability organizations on a national level to find out what types of local chapters that they may have come and we

reached out to them. we were going around to town halls interviewing candidates about issues that affect people with disabilities. there were a number of other terrific efforts he made on a national level that have been mentioned throughout the day, including the crip the vote hashtag which you can see on twitter, along with a hashtag that respectability created pwdsvote. in addition, once we've built these lists and reached out to the organizations on the local level, respectability facilitate opportunities that allowed the stakeholders, particularly the disability organizations as well as the campaigns of the presidential candidates, to meet

whether it be through coffee or other meeting opportunities. one of the other important things that respectability made sure to do it is to consistently coordinate and follow up with the stakeholders about upcoming events and issues to ask the candidates. we did this through e-mail when we talked about where we had been and we coordinated and recruit individuals to come with us to upcoming events as well as through social media that allowed us to communicate stories about where we had been and also about where we're going to be heading that day and by the people and the local community know that we wanted them to join us. we want to encourage those that are watching at home on c-span

and following us on our twitter chat that you can do this, too, and that we need your help, in particular as james mentioned, we have gone out now to the candidates in competitive and open senate and gubernatorial races. we need your help to contact those individual candidates and encourage them to fill out our questionnaire. you can find that list for those who are watching at home on c-span, you can find that list on our website at respectability u.s.a..org. now i want to talk about being invisible to the candidates because myself as bad as everyone as your today and others, we are part of a very close knit team that without particularly to iowa and new hampshire and met with the

presidential candidates, particularly as james mentioned, going to town halls. as you do that, as you attend events, you want to make sure that you know a candidates position on key issues before you meet with them. one of the reasons that so important is what i would always do it i would bring a candidate usual talking point in my own questions so that i would prompt the candidates to talk about something new. debris candidates, for example, that would talk about the dignity of work, or the need to give people with disabilities the freedom to find jobs. so i would incorporate their language and my question so that i would get more in depth answers from them. as james mentioned, you want to arrive one to two hours before doors open to everyone to emphasize for those that are back in the states, that you

want to make sure that you get seated next to one end of the rope line. one of the reasons why that is so important is by focusing on getting seated not only on the rope line, which is the closest that you'll be able to get to the candidate also by focusing on, sitting on the end as opposed to the middle is you have less competition from those around you that are trying to speak to the candidate. if you sit in the middle you always have to worry about the person on one side that still is trying to hold onto the candidates attention, and the person on the other side that is waiting for the first opportunity to speak to that candidate. by going on the and you have an opportunity to get as much one-on-one time with that candidate. you also, i found it beneficial to beware of the candidates exit and entrance doors, and also where their security a standing. whether it's secret service our

weather on the local level, they have a county police officer or a state trooper that follows them around, as far as their security. i can think of few experiences where i was at a postdebate rally for one of the candidates in iowa, and while all of the other media was going directly at the candidate to compete to ask the question, i had noticed where the secret service was standing at that notice where the exit door was that the staff a standing. i went over, very carefully, to the staff there of course the secret service because i did not want to concern anyone as i was approaching the candidates exit route and i politely asked the staff member, you know, i have a question that i want to ask the

candidate as they are leaving. lef.. the attendees trying to. >> guest: the candidate while another individual in our group went around back and was able to stand right next to the tour bus of the campaign and was actually waived in by the candidate after they had already finished

speaking with everyone else to come backstage and get an opportunity to speak 101. that example is emphasized my next point which is you want to have a group and you want to assign individuals in your group, one to. >> guest: a candidate, to to film the response and three to meet with the media. there are certainly times where every individual in your group needs to be prepared to do all three of those activities at once because in a large crowd, you may get separated and your camera person may not be with the person who was prepared to ask the questions. you want to make sure that everyone has the resources to be able to fulfill all three of those roles.

>> okay, sorry about that. the next thing i want to talk about is being visible to the media. with regard to the beginning of the event is the best opportunity to meet with campaign staff and media prior to beginning of a campaign event, you want to be able to collect business cards. it's very important to build relationships with these individuals at the campaign event and once the campaign event get started, it's very difficult to be able to speak to them and once the campaign event is over, a lot of times they are quick to leave the room. you want to be sure to get an opportunity to. >> guest: them prior to the

beginning of the event. again, a dimension, you want to find seating on the rope line but you also, particularly with regard to media, you want to understand that in our cable news age, the media is always looking for the best sightlines in the best visual for asking a question or filming an answer for them the candidate. if you want to have a sense of where the media cameras are positioned in the direction that they are looking at because you don't want to have your back to the media camera. also, you want to position, as i mentioned a minute ago, someone, you want to know the fact that the media often times will leave as soon as the event is over so you want to position someone in

your group to be there prior to an event before they leave them before you lose that valuable connection. >> here we are now we have meet the candidates 2016, a picture of me speaking after i had spoken with donald trump as well as the picture of me with another one of our fellows, ryan noble, after we had spoken with the former secretary of state hillary clinton. of course the official democratic and republican nominees for presidents. we also have several first-person experiences on our website which, for our campaign reporting is respectability report.org, and of course we

have our main website respectability usa.org. i want to just read one passage before i close from actually a first-person piece that was written by our moderator of this panel. he said, large crowds, bitter temperatures and snow present challenges to a wheelchair user like me. those were inconveniences i encountered at every event on my recent iowa trip. they pale in comparison to the issues people with disabilities deal with throughout the united states every day. i will just close by saying respectability wants to work with those that are in the audience as well as those that are watching us on c-span.

they want to go and us candidates on a local level, particularly those that have not yet filled out the candidate questionnaire for u.s. senate senate and gubernatorial candidates. certainly feel free to contact us. you can reach me, my name is justin chappell you can call me at (301)802-7720 you can also e-mail me at justin c at respectability.org and we have our twitter and facebook pages for respectability as well. i would encourage you all to follow and like those pages. thank you. i will turn it over to dahlia joseph. >> my name is dahlia joseph and i am a former committee case and fellow with respectability. i did a variety of work on the

campaign trail this year that ranged from being the videographer to uploading and captioning videos on youtube and making documents assessable. like justin and james said, it's very important to be prepared. you you put in a lot of effort and time into researching those events and positioning yourself when you get to those events so you get a chance to speak with the candidate or representative. it is just as important that you document that moment. this is your validation. it's your proof that your encounter with a candidate or representative happened. i'm going to touch a little more with my experience on the campaign trail and also tips to make the process a little easier i don't know if many of you are familiar with the phrase that they say in the nursing, if you didn't document it, it didn't happen. i think that is totally

applicable here. documentation holds a lot of power, especially in this day and age. it's proof proof again that you got to speak with the candidate and they heard your concern. writing an article on a campaign event is great but with the combination of video, it's even more powerful. recording video is also great for references. if a candidate says something and you can't remember it you can always go back and reference that video. deal documentation is also great for creating transcripts which we discussed in an earlier panel today. that's just a document of exactly what was said. the transcripts are great addition to articles as well. it allows your audience to see exactly what happened without even being there. they are also really helpful for captioning videos which i will talk about in a little bit. >> how does one go about taking videos?

positioning yourself in preparation is key. you want to position yourself so you get a chance to talk with the candidate. generally by process upon entering a room is scoping out the room and seeing where i can get the best angle. in order to do that you should get there as early as possible. now here is an example of an event we attended in iowa. we arrived pretty early and in doing so we were able to get seats in the front. we were able to get really great footage. another great example is when we attended the 100th town hall. it was a very crowded event. i actually position my self next to his security and i had an

opportunity to get videos and take pictures. after the event we were able to take pictures and ask questions as well. you do not need to be a professional to take video. you do not need fancy equipment. i use it camera that i already had and on occasion my iphone six when i had no more memory on my camera. most smart phones work as well. now that you have video of your footage, now that you have footage of your encounter with the candidate, what do you do? there are many options. one option is you can send it to us and we can have it captioned and add a transcript. if you do decide to upload the video yourself you should create a transcript that can accompany the video.

you can use that then for closed captioning. you can use this in microsoft word or pages. if this is the type of document you intend on sharing and you want to use the transcript with images and graphs, it's important that document is assessable. to make it assessable you should use text that's easy to use. a great text is verdana or georgia. also use properly formatted headings. it's not enough to make the text large. it needs to be formatted as a heading. otherwise if a person is using the screen reader, it won't identify it as a heading. when you're using images, please please be sure to provide alternate text otherwise it will refer to the image as the file name.

if a file name has a name of file image 123 that's what will appear. always give an alternate text of the image. if you add images, make sure the column heading are in the correct reading order. if you do decide to upload the video yourself it's important the video is assessable. thank thankfully youtube has accessibility features. the videos on the respectability website and youtube page are captioned and given a transcript as i said it's very important that you caption videos. there are a few options that you can go for when captioning videos. i prefer to not use automatic captioning majority of the time because a lot of times it can be incorrect. i would rather either use a transcript if the video was

longer, anything more than three minutes i prefer to create my own transcript and use that as a caption and upload it. or you can manually input the captions in youtube which i will discuss in a little bit. here is an example of captions gone wrong. this is just a youtube cooking channel and the automatic captions on this video say. [inaudible] i'm sure that is not what they mean to say. as you can see it does not make a lot of sense. what it should say is now it looks like it has been cooked in the banana cakes won't be good until you put on your apron. they are two very different captions. every now and then the automatic captions are salvageable meaning you can go in and make little corrections here and there but a lot of the time this is what the

captions end up looking like. the first step to captioning your video is to log in. once you login go to your channel page which can be found under the home button. when you get to your channel page go straight to the manager which you can find in the left corner of your youtube banner, if you have a youtube banner. step three, you should, it should take you to a page that looks like this were all of your videos are listed. then you choose the video you want to add captions to and then you select subtitle and closed captioning. as i said there are few options. the first is uploading a file. i prefer this especially if it's a longer video.

you can do this by using a transcript that you wrote for the video early on. when you finish creating the transcript document, instead instead of leaving it as word or pdf, save it as notepad if you're using microsoft and if you're using a mac, save it as a plain text document. then it should upload like normal and the captions will automatically be available on that video. option two is autosync. with this option you are presented with a box that you manually type everything in. that's everything that's broken in the video. the video will be beside them box that you see here. youtube has this really great feature where every time you type the video it pauses so you're not overwhelmed.

when you're finished, youtube will automatically sync your captions meaning it will automatically line up your text with your speech in the video. now your third option is to create new subtitles and closed captioning. what this means is you do everything manually. you type in the subtitles manually and you match up the timing to the text manually as well. this is probably my least favorite way of doing captions just because it takes a little bit longer and when you're completed the captions you can save it and they would automatically be available on your video. if you have any questions about youtube accessibility or captions, please please visit respectability usa.org. thank you. >> thank you so much for all of

that insight from the panel. does anybody have any questions from the crowd? if you do please come up to the microphone and state your name and where you're from and if you're from an organization, what organization you are from. >> hello, i asked a question earlier but i am a fellow at respectability and i just wanted to ask for those on the campaign trail who got to meet the candidates for the democratic and republican primaries, what did you generally find that the candidates use on autism? >> if i may answer, we are, as you know, partisan non-

endorsing organizations i don't want to go in depth favor one candidate or the other. there were a number of candidates that did talk about disability issues including autism. i would say in general the interaction that we had with the candidates was always respectful and a lot of them gave quite a lot of time and in depth response to our questions. >> from my personal experience, regardless of how good or poor the candidate was in terms of answering the question, i basically found and i'm sure justin and talia can say similar things, we found found the more we asked the individual question

about autism or disabilities in general the more responsive they were to the disability issues in general. persistence is key. >> definitely. another question for our panel, we saw every one of the presidential candidates multiple times. for everyone on the panel, did did you feel the candidate stopped calling on you after seeing you at so many events and if so, how did you make sure to still get your questions answered? >> there were certainly times when candidates have stopped answering the questions that i was asking, for example in one situation in iowa one of the candidates, and again were

nonpartisan organization so i'm not going to name names and he deliberately did not call on me but he said that he or she had called on me on a previous event and to be perfectly honest with you i understood this question because again, if a candidate sees a guy with a full suit and a boston accent basically he's fairly recognizable. what we ended up doing is often we ended up dividing up among people who had seen the candidate several times so we wouldn't have that situation as often. >> if i may, my recommendation for those who are watching us today that may want to go ask questions to the same candidate on a regular basis, one of the

things that i learned is that again as i mentioned the candidates were very respectful and for the most part did want to answer questions so while there were a number of them that while they would see me five times in the same week and would eventually not have me be the first person they answered the question from they wanted to know if there were other undecided voters they could ask questions of, they would still give me an opportunity when the event was over to meet with them on the rope line and security or a lot of them were also just very assessable as i mentioned, the candidates, even if i didn't

get a chance to answer at the general form, they would would stick around and i would get a chance to ask it then. >> obviously i was curious, did you all have an opportunity to engage with some of the other reporters who regularly followed the candidates from place to place? we have all seen on television over the past many months candidates that we become familiar with. i wondered if you had a chance to chat with those folks and educate them on disability issues. >> absolutely. whenever there was an event.

whenever there was an event we would talk to the media and i know that the second week on the campaign trail in a particular state, whether it was a media person that was assigned to a candidate, the second or third time seeing me at the town hall they would come up to me and talk to me and say i recognize you at several of these forms. it definitely became us an opportunity to make sure whenever we went into a community that we build relationships with the local media. >> there were cases where security guards in general were recognizing myself.

the secret service and other security were covering different candidates and there were situations where dependent on their territory and whatever. >> i remember leaving iowa and running into a tsa agent saying tonight see you at a political rally a couple days ago and it was right there at the airport. what did you find most enjoyable about our time in iowa and new hampshire? i know we had a lot of fun. >> i really enjoyed townhall because there are a lot more personal and it's a more intimate setting and you get to speak with the candidate and hear their issue.

>> is somebody who spent 15 years on disability rights, it's very encouraging when you get a candidate to give you a response to important issues and this is definitely very important work that they are doing and we encourage people to join us. one factoid that i remember that is sort of a source of accomplishment, in the two weeks that we were in iowa, just two weeks we had two teams of individual that together, i had driven nearly 5000 miles and nearly two weeks in one state. >> honestly just about everything to me of these two states was in trouble. driving around both iowa and new

hampshire, i felt right at home going around new hampshire and just seeing this sites going to the townhall and eating local food in iowa and new hampshire. having actually experience the iowa caucus caucus and the primary up close, i've come to the conclusion that there really is no substitution for actually being there in person. when you're watching it on television and even if you're a political junkie, you often times feel distance from the candidate or from the supporters. when you're interacting with the candidate and asking them a question and shaking their hand, there is no substitution to face

to face contact. there was no complaints from me whatsoever. >> thank you so much to the panel. this was a great panel and brought back great memories. now i turn it back over to jennifer for the final event. >> thank you. i think they were just fabulous. [applause] we are going to turn the room very quickly in just a moment but i would like to give a special mention to a couple people. first of all, we have nine people in iowa and new hampshire and two individuals wrote checks to make that happen. one of them is jonathan murray and the other is andrew tisch who made this possible along with their fellowship program

and i want to thank joan alexander in houston texas for supporting the fellowship program because these young leaders are so incredible. i want to let people know across the country that they can apply to be part of our young leader covert where you can have amazing expenses like meeting residential candidates and being on the front line. we will turn the room very quickly so we can prepare for our two honorees. we are very excited about this. two of our board members will come up but meanwhile we will let these panels panelists exit the podium. thank so much. it was fabulous. [applause] [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation]

[inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] want to thank album med in the ccac who really made this particular event possible and i want to thank ccac for the live captioning that we have that made this event so much more assessable and i want to thank

our sign language interpreters and our incredible team. to my team from respectability and my counterparts here, after this panel with our amazing leaders we are going to take a picture so don't disappear for the fellows. we want to have a picture with these amazing role models. if you guys want to come on in donna and doc. by the way, both of our honorees are going to take questions. we want to address them appropriately and thank them appropriately. they will stay and do a little q&a. without further ado, i'm jennifer, president of of respectability. we are a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization devoted to enabling people with disabilities to have a better future, and for us

that's about opportunity. it's that hand up, not that hand out. it's that ability to achieve the american dream, whatever their background, that is part of our mission, expanding opportunities for everyone equally. our board of directors will be giving out our award and i'm delighted we have such amazing honorees. thank you. >> hi folks, hijack. i've been in politics for about 35 years years working on campaigns and helping people get elected and i will say jack is, without question, one of the most decent and smartest people

i've ever come across in public service. he had a unique path. he was successful in business. he had an mba from the university of chicago and worked at nextel and had mergers and acquisitions that comcast, a very successful business career and he chose public service to dedicate his wife. he became the treasurer of delaware, taught financial literacy to women across the state and ran for governor in 2009. he became governor of delaware and just to show you his success in to 2012 he was reelected with 69% of the vote. i'm a little biased but i would argue he's as good of a governor if not the best in the united states. his ability to create jobs and understand the economy sets him apart from the average politician. he took delaware which had one of the lower rankings in job creation and took it to the top. one of the top in the united states.

he also did something special which was to make those jobs inclusive. in 2012 jack became head of the national governors association and as chair you get the champion an issue, one issue for the year for all the other governors. i said this is great. i minute call him up. he's an expert in small business to start up and creating jobs. this is a chance to get on a national stage in a big way. it's an important issue for all of america. i called them up and i said it's time to write the story and go out and champion this in the creation of jobs in small business. he said to me i'm going to champion people with disabilities. i didn't think i heard right because in all the years i've been doing this, i've heard people champion for veterans and seniors in old and young, black, white, brown, brown and everybody, even endangered species but i've not heard

people in politics champion for people with disabilities. so i hung up i thought i'll take another shot at this. he obviously doesn't know what he's thinking. i called them back and i said jack you're really good at this job and good at reading jobs and think about this year democrat that creates jobs and knows business. this makes you really unique per he stopped and he said let me tell you a story he said he was in southern delaware and a plant opened up with about 700 jobs that he helped create. the young man came up to them 25 years old with down syndrome and he had a conversation with him. he said what you doing he said i want want thank you. this is my first job and jack said your first job, your 25. what have you been doing. he said i've been sitting home with my parents watching television, waiting for this day, waiting for this

opportunity. that's what respectability is all about, people getting an opportunity. he didn't choose politically correct thing to do. he listened to this kid, listen to this kid's story, understood the issue and became a champion for it. he championed it at the national governors association. today we have other states following his lead in wisconsin and pennsylvania they've expanded critical investments, as school to work programs for young people and they've adopted an employment first policy. he has made such a difference by promoting these practices and he continues it today as president of the council state government. it is an honor to present this award to jack.

i will say this, he is one of america's greatest governors, he has championed this issue for people with disabilities as well as anybody in the country and he is certainly one of america's greatest public servants and for that its honor to know you and an honor to present this award to you. [applause] >> thank you dock. it's great to be here. what doc didn't say is that i wouldn't be governor were it not for him. we worked together since 1998 when i first ran for state treasurer.

he embraced my campaign and we won five elections working together including 1i wasn't really supposed to win which got me to be the governor. i'm very grateful to him and i'm glad he told that story because i actually tell that story all the time and i tell people, he's the guy who got me into this role and he call me crazy when i got into the governors association. he really got the story right per the bottom line is there are so many people across the country who want to work who could add extraordinary value to a place of employment if they were only given a shot and a shot is exactly what they need. this story, i put it in the back of my mind and i knew if i ever had a chance to work on an issue at the national level this would be that issue because not only did that job represent an incredible improvement in the quality of life for that 25-year-old man who now had a reason every day to wake up, to

get dressed, to go to work and be part of something that was bigger than himself and part of a team and earn a paycheck, it represented in an extraordinary improvement in the quality of life for his family per his parents didn't have to sit at home watching tv all day long. they were so proud of him and he was so proud of himself. there are so many people around the country like this young man. when i did have this opportunity to chair the governors association, there really are not any perks other than the ability to choose one issue for all the governors to focus on. i do there would be a side benefit to choosing this issue which is that we live in a world where it's so rare that democrats and republicans work together for common cause, i knew knew the issue of employment for people with disabilities is something that all governors would agree on because every governor in the country wants to be the jobs governor in my view is we all need to be the jobs governor for everybody in our state.

that's exactly what happened. i have been so proud to see the work and dock mention some of the governors. you really don't know if you're talking to governor about this issue, you don't know their democrat or republican and nor should you. when you're talking about opportunity and giving more people a chance to live out the american dream, that's not a democratic issue or republican issue. it's something everyone can relate to. whether it's a democratic governor or republican governors across the country who have embraced this, it doesn't matter because i find people across the spectrum have really signed onto this as an issue. when we had the chance to work on this for a year at the national governors association it was such a fantastic learning experience because we learned from the people who know the most and were self advocates. people across every disability. many advocacy organizations but also many self advocates. to go across the country and listen to them tell their story

and from that to develop some best practices about what was really needed, some things like we really have to change the way we do workforce development. for too long the workforce development issue for people with disabilities has been somebody from the state government going to an employer and sing please do me a favor and find jobs for these people. we have to turn that on its head the fact is so many people disabilities across the country can add extraordinary value and when we focus on the ability rather than the disability it's amazing what we can accomplish together. for me it was a real eye-opener when i heard greg was the ceo of walgreens. i was invited by the hero of this field tom harkin. senator harkin invited me to a meeting at walgreens in connecticut where greg wants greg watson had invited me to listen to what walgreens was doing in the area for employment of on disability individuals. he said walgreens employees with

disabilities do it not for charity but in the best interest of our shareholders because these employees are hard-working and grateful to have their job. they are less likely to be absent, the turnover is lower and they do a phenomenal job. i knew when i heard that that was the key. the key cannot be about government officials asking an employer to do a favor. it's about employers talking to other employers about why their company is better because they provide these opportunities. i also knew we as government had to step up. we had to walk the walk. it's not enough for me to go out and talk about this as an important issue. we need to talk about the fact that we as government are providing these employment opportunities with people at disabilities and we are better off as a result. we've done that too. we've also found that one of the most important things we can do is do a better job for young

people. we have to make sure that when it comes to our young people who are still in school with disabilities prepare them for a lifetime of employment. we don't prepare them for an expectation of a lifetime on public support. we prepare them for an expectation of a lifetime of employment. when you do that it can make an extraordinary difference. i am delighted to be here. it's really nice to receive this from doc who is a great friend and literally i would truly not be governor without him. when i found out that he and jennifer were working together i was not surprised because the two extraordinary people. jennifer i do want to say i think the work you have done, you came along at the perfect time for me in the work that i was doing because with my gig up the national governors association was one year and you have sort of taken this issue and used it and frankly you created something that every governor, no one is surprised to see jennifer coming after them.

i'm sure it's true here in the house of congress as well. am thrilled to be here to thank you for all that you're doing and certainly it's nice to receive this honor but i'm very clear that accepted on behalf of millions of people throughout the country who feel passionately about this issue will benefit as we all get our act together and when we do this will be a better world. think you all very much. [applause] >> thank you governor. today i have a great honor and privilege of presenting an award i began my career also working on the hill. i had the privilege of working for a short while for a member of congress who ironically is also a board member of

respectability usa, tony kuala. besides learning about the importance of supporting people with disabilities, through that experience i learned the value of building good relationships with hill staff. good key hill staff can really make a difference in what we do. when i learned about you is that you are smart, your strategic and a straight shooter. that is something that people on my side of the fence have always greatly appreciated about folks who work on the hill. building a stronger society with more economic opportunities with people with disabilities is the work of a lifetime. david is the man who has both the congressional record, devoted himself to improving america and to advancing the causes in which he believed by working through elected officials. his decades of work in the legislative branch of government have literally touched the lives of millions of americans. if you don't know him i would

like to tell you a little bit about his work. he brings to his work a wealth of experience as his current role to chief of staff and speaker of the house. he has dealt with strategy at the highest level on capitol hill. he directed offices in both the house and senate and led the senate majority leaders during the clinton and bush 43 administration. in both positions he oversaw and coordinated the flow of legislation through congress and both required working with political personalities on both sides of the aisle as well as the white house to achieve passage of many important bills. in his years in washington d.c., he has worked on an incredible range of issues including welfare reform, tax policies and education reform. the laws that that he have helped developed are almost too numerous to mention. however there is one in particular that deserves our

attention today. that is the law called the individuals with disabilities education act and he worked on the ida amendments of 1997. that was 20 years ago and in a time of great gridlock and partisanship. with his help he led the fight to find common ground and to strengthen the laws that govern special education. many of us, our children and families of the beneficiary of david's work. he built consensus and worked hard because he personally understood the importance of improving educational opportunities for young people with disabilities. david's son gregory has down syndrome and the love that they share has inspired the policies that he has worked to create and continues to help benefit millions of children with disabilities to this day. encourage each and every one of you with us who watches television to google and see

from the archives of the usa today an article entitled how one boy moves congress. it's by richard wolf who spoke here earlier today. in that article he talked about washington waking up and coming home every day to see someone's life whose was deeply in acted by the choices made by congress but i'm know many of you watching today are on c-span and you can personally relate to that and know what that means to bring that passion to your work. i am also proud today that one of my fellow board members, jonathan murray has created a new television television show called born this way. how many are you familiar? everyone in this room, fantastic the show stars a cast of seven people of down syndrome. i you to watch the show every tuesday tuesday night on ae because you will see how talented and amazing these folks

are that are on the show and how incredibly talented so many people with down syndrome and many other disabilities are as well. that is because today children with disabilities have the legal right for free and appropriate education. inclusion, early intervention and high expectations are now a reality too many and to a large extent because of david. in 2003 david left the hill to work with for a public affair hill serving as president from 20,722,011. when he returned briefly to the senate. he also led the presidential campaign of jack. he has never left the critical work of being an ally and champion of the disability community. recently he served as senior advisor to the bipartisan policy center and worked on crucial

policy issues. david also serves as vice chairman of the board of easter seals of the district of columbia maryland and virginia. a group of organizations working to empower individuals with disabilities to achieve greater independence. quite a few roles to do well also working full-time and being a parent. recently david played a major role in the creation of the new naval act which, for the first time, enable children of parents with disabilities helped prepare their children financially for the future. this legislation is a game changer and we thank you all so much for all of your efforts to make able a reality. his life and leadership is a testament to how love and personal experience can shape the political process.

with humility and efforts and leadership, it's very clear. we are pleased to honor you with this award and thank you for everything you have done. we are all eager to hear your comments and i know you and the governor are willing to take a few questions. thank you so much. [applause] [applause] >> thank you very much. i appreciate it. i am profoundly honored and deeply humbled by this award and

if you're known by the company you keep, i'm truly honored to be here with you. it's truly an honor. thank you. one of the things i love about respectability, it is always true in the disability community, you are so inclusive. you want to help everybody and everybody gets ahead because of that. thank you jennifer. the leadership you have provided the disability community is able to do more things together than they ever have in this is really important. let me talk just a little bit about where we've been and where were going in disability. if you look back, i have a friend of our family whose daughter was born 33 years years go with down syndrome and significant heart defects. the doctor said you ought to think about institutionalizing her.

that was 33 years ago. if you look at what has happened in the past two generations, the world has changed. it has to change a lot more but the world has changed for people with disabilities. early intervention, education, id ea which passed in 1975 and you've had aea, if you look at the people who work so hard for their children, for their friends, for other people in society with disabilities, we stand on the shoulders of giants. people have changed this world in profound ways i remember when our son was born, it wasn't long

before he was taking classes, physical therapy and my wife was working with him three times a week in therapy classes and every day at home. shortly after that we got him into therapeutic riding which was marvelous and i never understood it but he became a kid who couldn't climb and after about the first six months of therapeutic riding he was climbing all over. i still don't write understand it. the doctors tell me what it is and i still don't understand it. those are things that change the world, not not only for my son but for millions and millions of others. the next mountain to climb was education. ide a change that. slowly at first and then laboriously and over time we were able to make changes to improve the law for people with disabilities. it was that second mountain that

we had to change legally to provide the opportunities. ada came along shortly after that broadly making changes and forcing and inclusion of people with disabilities in a way our society had never done before. we now are looking at the third mountain. we now have kids who through early intervention have been brought up with their peers. is it little wonder they want to stay with their peers? we are seeing more and more programs throughout the country of post secondary educational for people with disabilities but the next big hurdle is independent living and jobs and housing and transportation. all the things people with disabilities need to be a part

of everyday society the way they ought to be. these are things that are going to take some time but we should never let that slow us down. we know we are going to work hard. we know we will have to move things around but as we start doing this, what you find is this is a way in this way builds and as we move toward this next mountain, there are things we have to do legally but there are also changes, some that the governor talked about, in the private sector. things are going to have to change. people in the private sector are going to have to look at people with disabilities and see not there disability but their ability. i think this is the next mountain we have to climb. if you look at, there's people doing this. for example the institute for economic empowerment is doing work in utah and northern virginia and other areas to run country where they are trying to

match up people with disabilities with the right job. they're using internship to make sure the job fits the person in the person fits the job. it will be a lifelong job. there is a lot more work being done throughout the country. what we really have to start doing, i think, as i said, we, we found ourselves measuring the wrong things. i don't think this is unlike, if you look at poverty, were sort of measuring the wrong thing. how many people are poor and how much government aid they're getting. all those are necessary but the real goal ought to be how to get them back into society so their talents are being brought and used in society like everybody else's. that's what we have to do for people with disabilities.

we have to make sure we find the place for them to use their abilities and their talents in the best way possible so we can take all those talents and build a bigger, better society for all we are losing their talents, their abilities and what they can give us as a society. for every person who is unemployed, we are losing those talents. as a country we can't afford to lose those talents. just as we have to look at welfare to make sure it is a net that allows someone to climb off and move forward, our disability programs and the private sector has to start looking at people with disabilities are providing that first step on the ladder. my son greg has a job working at marriott residence inn with a team of five kids and a job coach. there is nobody prouder to bring home a paycheck then greg hoppe. about every two weeks he gets a

paycheck and my wife and i and greg go to the cardinal bank which is where he's banked since high school and they go and take the check in. the tellers all know him and he always gets $2 out for each sunday of the month and $2 out to get a soda. come sunday, if you don't take the collection twice he chases you around the church to give the second dollar. you're going to get that second dollar. he also likes to get a drink every once in a while on the way home from church and he can pay for it with his own money. the talents and opportunity that he has are starting to multiply. that mountain we are climbing right now is the key. i just want to talk about two of the things briefly that we have to start to work on. we have so many things stove piped in the government. we have things over here for people with disability and

things over here with people with disabilities but they have to be combined. we have to find a way to do that. one of the things i want to do is to start our committee people looking at that. it's pretty hard sometimes through jurisdictional differences which is really important stuff. if you don't believe, just asked what their jurisdiction is. when you start working on that. we have to do that in the federal government as well to make sure the different departments have different pieces of the role of responsibility to start working together. one of the things i think would be helpful is to look at having. [inaudible] of disability in any administration. they are close enough to the president to have the president's ear because all the members of the cabinet have to know when this person calls, if they don't answer, the next person they are getting a call from is the president. i think this is a way we can

start breaking this down. we have to look at it. as the bible tells us, it's our talents that we have to use which are important. making use of the talents of every person in this society is our goal. our work here and i just want to thank all the people have gone before us who have raised us up to the level where we can start doing things, taking a path to climb this third mountain because climbing this third mountain will truly bring people with disabilities who need full level throughout our society and provide the opportunities and the talent our society needs that we are now being kept from because they don't have the opportunity. this will take everyone working together, government, private sector, nonprofit organizations, churches, all those places. those intermediate organizations , all of those are going to have to be part of this process. thanks to groups like

respectability and thanks to leadership we are well on our way there. thank you very much. [applause] >> wow. what amazing leaders. we have an opportunity for questions from the audience and so don't be shy, please just come up to the microphone and introduce yourself and ask your question. we have leaders from the democratic party and from the republican party each of whom have made a massive difference on behalf of the 56 million americans with disabilities. please come up. >> good evening and congratulation on your awards, well-deserved.

my name is susan and i'm a paralyzed veteran of america. to governor markel, i would be interested to know what has happened to your initiative in the aftermath of your year what's been ongoing for that. for mr. hoppe, i'd be interested to know in an era of fiscal quest dairy and constraints and budget tightness, how do do you see working through some of the advances that you talked about in your remarks? the question for each. >> thank you. i'm actually going to say in response to your second question, one of of the great things about this issue, it should not define what happens here. they embrace this issue and that

doesn't always take a lot of money. it's really about a change in mindset within the government and within the private sector and it's certainly a change in mindset between, in terms of how the government interacts with the private sector. i got up this a little bit earlier but i think it's important to really emphasize and i think he started to talk about this a little bit in his own remarks. what has encourage me the most is to see people starting to think differently about how to address this issue from a governmental perspective. instead of just saying okay, my job is to work with these employers to find jobs for people with disabilities, more and more we are seeing the state department of labor saying our responsibility is to help the employers in our state fine people of talent.

when you approach it that way, when you say my job in the department of labor is to really understand at a granular level what are the needs of your particular business, what other talents you are looking for, and then i can say in response, that's great because i have a a lot of people who are looking for work and they have all kinds of abilities. you don't have to focus on the disability. different people bring different things to the table. that is a big change in mindset. i have been really encouraged and jennifer will send to me, fairly often, an update an update from one state to the next. i'm a democrat but scott walker talked about this in two consecutive state of the state speeches in wisconsin. governor of south dakota has really embraced it. terry branstad in iowa has embraced it as have many democratic governors. i think this is just an issue. it's been really exciting to see

different folks who have taken it in slightly different directions but all with the same goal. : let me use as an example area my son greg is a great reader

. and he likes doing puzzles and he likes playing games and he loves this warning. it strikes me there is retirement homes that right now we have trained nurses doing all those things which is great because they're wonderful people but you don't need a trained nurse to read to someone. you don't need a trained nurse to listen to somebody to tell you a story. as my mother aged she use to tell stories maybe more than one climate day. i guarantee you a copy doesn't care if he needs a story more than one time a day and will be interested in it no matter how the times, he will love to read the people and if a house on ., there's nobody is going to be louder than great. there areopportunities out there which we haven't thought of yet, let's examine. let's pull this apart . the governor talk about, let's figure out where they are and where these opportunities exist for it that's why i think we really

are looking. yes, it is an area where you have to watch deficits but the question is how well you spend your money. not how much you spend because if you spend it right, you're going to get more back because these people are going to become workers in society and contributing only to society and the way they want to and we all need to. >> if people on c-span want to ask the question they should do so with the hashtag dw the boat and we will look for your twitter on questions, we had a question here? >> good afternoon and good afternoon governor jack markel, name my name is holly and i am a respectability so to the governor i am wondering if you could our c-span audience about the work you've done on ft. sill sauna and ethernet and the

high eight jobs that people with disabilities have been getting through that partnership but i want to shift and actually directed question to you mister hoppe, part of my responsibility at respect ability is under seeing our fellas, i work with fellows who join us to work on policy projects, communications projects and i see these young people both with and without disabilities so mister hoppe, you are obviously one of the policy on dream jobs, you are right in the guts of the leviathan moving legislation and really impacting our nation so i'm wondering what advice would you give to say a young person with a disability is interested in politics or interested in policy, how can they get involved, how can they get a job and how can they go on a career trajectory to follow your way , thank you. >> you want to go first? >> the advice is the same whether they have a disability or no disability, if you care about politics, look to where you can get involved .

sometimes it's a campaign, sometimes it's just back-and-forth into the office, making sure you look for opportunities, it's also willing to take on as you start a job any job in the office. we all would like to come in and rewrite the constitution, we all know we could do it but that's usually not the first job you get. the first job you get is doing anything they need area and the people who do that smile with positive attitude as well as they can, always asking for other things they can do are the people, others in the office notice and say this is somebody who cares about the work area i will also say you've got to have good political common sense. if you're working these jobs that have to be a part of it and part of that is do you enjoy it? do you like politics? do you like working with people? do you like solving a problem

that's a political problem? sometimes it can be a partisan problem, more often than not it's a substantive problem. research, those talents are the ones , the basic balance a person has to have but just being, having a positive attitude, digging in, doing every job, doing it happily and doing well is the start to every good career i know on capitol hill and just like everyplace else, jobs are hard to find up here so be there, be available. let them know you're ready, you can start tomorrow if that's your situation, whatever it may be. those are the type of things you have to be available, present, letting them know how much you can do and how soon you can start, those things are the same for everybody and i think that's where the opportunities lie, just getting the first and second step on the ladder. working in jobs of here, my first job i came out of graduate school to a grand area of $12,000 a year. and like most other kids who

started on the hill, i tried to find whatever free reception was you could get enough food to eat that night for dinner. don't start high on the scale but you can have a great opportunity to work, provide and help people and we are pretty darn good jobs.i've enjoyed more than 30 years of working for these jobs and they have their rewards. a friend of mine said when you work in capitol hill or you working the government, when you go to your car at night you think what you've done or your country. you can do that with probably a person would be a pretty good saffron the hill. >> so answer the question for me. six years ago i was reading a blog entry, i think in the new york times about a man in denmark was working in the it industry, he was on the fast track doing very well and his son who was two years oldat the time was diagnosed with autism . the more this man learned about autism the more conservative was about his son's future and he ended up

deciding to leave his job in the fast track of the it industry to start an organization to help people with autism work in the information technology industry. many people, not all that many people in the autism spectrum and do good work when it comes to software testing, data analysis and the life so i read an article about him and to make a long story short i called him and i said we need you and we must have come to delaware so he with his family to delaware because he wanted to break into the overall market and this is about five years later and he's trained more than 50 people in delaware, people with autism who are now working in the information technology industry but he has started a movement, it is a national movement. his name is thornhill, so and na and his organization is called special eastern, danish word need meeting specialist with arnie at the end.

and now what you found is companies like sat, massive credibly great companies has committed that over the next couple of years one percent of their consultants will be people with autism. cai, regional technology, three percent of their employees will be people with autism. companies like microsoft and j.p. morgan chase and bank of america are embracing this and there is nothing more meaningful than to go to the office , see the young people they trained can relate with such pride the fact that they now got a job and are considering. these are quotes with incredible talent and ability but who have difficulty perhaps in the interview or indicating their passion for the business and now they are employed though i think this can take place across a range of disabilities and this is why i say once again and david said as well when you

focus on the ability rather than the disability it's amazing what we can all accomplish together. >> i'm going to take moderators privilege and ask a question which is that people with disabilities really want to be seen as equal and really want to gain political power. each of you really understand what political power takes on advice you have to the disabilitycommunity writ large, no matter what the disability is, physical, mental, health , any other disability for our community to be taken seriously as a constituency group in the united states? >> i will take the first crap but i'm going to refer that something david said which is one of the things he's really seen on respectability, it's the disability community working together and i think this is very important . because although the issues may very somewhat , from one group to the next, the truth is everybody really wants nothing morethan to share in the american dream . people in various disability

groups, that's what we all want, that's why were here is because we are focused on employment opportunities and one is very positive to come out of our work at the national governors association was to see people all around the same table coming from many different backgrounds all working together and i do think this is really important that we, that if this community is fractured, i think it makes it less likely are going to be able to make progress that we all want to make so i think it's probably true of every group idea with on this issue or others that when you are willing to check your egos at the door, and not worry about who gets the credit, it's amazing what we can get done and i think that is true here as well. >> one of my incarnations on capitol hill, i worked for jack kemp and jack used to say that the great thing about the american, about america is built an ideal and

that ideal is no person is restricted. every person has the opportunity to be everything they can be and that's the great thing about america . and that sense has to be the sense that everybody has and i think one of the things the governor said earlier is we've got to overcome a bias that people have in their mind about what limitations people withdisabilities have . the attitude has to change. people have to look and think and people don't do this because they have some dark heart in their soul, theyjust don't think . they don't think broadly enough. they don't open up their horizon widely enough. that's what we have to do is make sure everybody thinks, looks at this as a field of opportunity.

jack kemp played professional football, he was pretty good at it. i barely played high school football and i was pretty bad. all of us have things we do better and all of us have things we do worse. let's find them out and those things we you better, let's find opportunities. and that attitude has to, is really the big thing i think that needs to be changed and it is starting to change and it's one of these mountains we have to climb but it is starting by saying i will not let my focus be narrowed to only one thing. let's run it out, see where the opportunities are read. >> we have respectability, as a questionnaire which we given to each of the presidential candidates so now we're doing it with governors and senators and hoping people who are watching are going to encourage their governors and senators and the candidates for those jobs to fill out

the candidate questionnaire and i just wondered particularly governor markel, can you talk about the process of the candidate questionnaire because there's a lot of candidate questionnaire but this is the first one on disability issues at a national scale. how important are they, how does a campaign approach them and dave, you work on the presidential, what are the kinds of ways that people can engage in policy conversations with candidates ? >> that's a great question. i think candidates approach them carefully, sometimes their design with sort of gotcha questions and sometimes people reframe from answering them and i think the deeper the dialogue between the community and any state or any district that cares about these issues and candidates, the better so i remember, i think it was the first time i ran for governor in 2008, there was a forum on disability issues and i think that was pretty powerful.

both candidates agreed to present and it got everybody's attention and we actually got fairly deep into the issues in a very constructive, frankly apolitical way because as you can tell i don't think you can tell who the democrat is or the republican is because that's not how these issues work though i think it's probably not sufficientjust to send in blindly . a candidate survey to the campaign because there are so many and it's hard to judge which ones are legitimate, which ones are not legitimate. i tried to develop a deeper relationship with the campaign to let them know there are a lot of people who are really interested in the answers to questions again, as opposed to sending it in blindly. >> i just emphasized what the governor said which is reaching out on a personal basis and it may take some time to establish a relationship and it's not

going to be with the candidate first in all likelihood, it's going to be with people in the campaign but most campaigns haveenough people you can figure out a way to get them , somebody who was doing the press stop . we grew to people not only in the press side of the campaign but some of the policy people in thecampaign, those are the people to establish a relationship with . >> is there an individual with a disability that comes to mind for each of you a case study of someone came to you with an issue and they open up your mind to something and how did they go about that and how can somebody else sort of all in their footsteps? >> let me just tell you how i got involved . it was, it was the summer of 1996 and it had gone through the house and passed with a fairly large margin but a group of women who were, been working on the house came to see me and i remember one of them telling me she could set

up the appointment in my office, i was working for senator lott at the time was majority leader and she looked at my computer and at that time i had pictures of my kids that would rotate, i still don't understand how that works, i realize that basic but she said she saw this face, he said i've got to be seeing things. a child with down syndrome. and basically they tricked me. they said we got this one issue, i realized it passed in the house but there's this one issue we had worked out yet and we have to get worked out. and basically what they wanted to do is make sure that records followed the student, the student moved from one district to another, the records follow them whether they had a disability or not, it seemed to make the perfect sense. is not good for the student, the school system to have the records follow so i said okay, that sounds good to me so i got two people together, democrats after the republican staffer when you

were smart people and i said can you guys talk about this? i sat down, talk about it and figured it out and wrote something out today. what do you only is it was like the ice for. i was seeing percent of what the problem was and the other 90 percent was below the water that talking to them and working through that problem, starting out as i said, before me and got me what you did that was what got me involved other than being a dad but when you are a dad working, mom tends to do most of the work. and i tried to help but that's the real policy work started for me in doing ita. >> governor? >> i think it's very much about the personal relationships and the stories and dock when he introduced me earlier i told you about the 25-year-old man with down syndrome on that years ago. share his story with me, that was before he got the job he sat home for six years watching tv with his parents . the statistics are important. but it's really just as

important to make sure that candidates know about the people behind the statistics. the same is true of the able act and i think it's fantastic what you did at the national level and i think it translated at the local level and the young girl, she's probably about 10 that. her name is kayla. she has down syndrome, i've gotten to know her really from my first moment as governor and she comes to see every year with her parents and she's in school and tells me every year about how things are going in school, comes a couple times a year but she came in with many of her friends to talk about the importance of the able act and how the able act as law in delaware so i think it's always about combining again, statistics are important but you don't going's office for statistics, we going tooffice because we want to help everybody go as far as their potential will take them . >> you are amazing leaders and we are deeply honored

that you are with us today and on behalf of respectability i want to thank you for a lifetime of achievements, each of you is still young so it's not like the academy awards where it's a lifetime achievement and we expect the next thing to be in a bad for each of you, we expect many great things to come and only building from here to the better future. i want to say something personal from my heart to each of you, one is that when we startedrespectability and you met a couple of our board members and using some of our fellows , that i myself wanted to do it and that i wanted a really solid business plan, a really solid business plan and i wanted to build on what other people have done and i sent the draft to both the copy and governor jack markel who are to unbelievably busy people and each of them took the time, line by line to go

through the business plan and give us feedback and advice and at multiple times where we come to a junction in the road, it really literally on a night or weekend i can email one of these individuals and say listen, i'm having a problem with this, what is your advice or can you help or can you introduce me to somebody and that they will take my email, on nights and weekends asking for help and they are pointing me and our team in the right direction and they understand that it's not about the government alone, that the nonprofit and the faith-based community and the businesses and so many other stakeholders have so much at stake that each of them have really been the rising tide that lifts all ships so on the half of our organization

i want to thank governor jack markel and dave copy for your amazing leadership that we think is only just starting, thank you. [applause] were going to take for those of you who work for, if you are a fellow of respectability or on the staff if you can come up front quickly, were going to take a picture if that's okay. >>. [inaudible conversation]

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>> >> the platform allows greater impact in that part of the world with. >> as far as i know it has always been the governing rule early lot of this organization good news or bad news to be fair and honest incredible. that has not been changed. all that has not changed one. so there is no freedom or access to information and that has not changed to an

three started improving relations. "washington journal" continues. jennifer clark is counsel at brennan

>> serving as counsel talking about the latest development in never by some ath states for voter id rules at the ballot box but first how many states are trying to room pose more stringent rules this cycle?re twerking voters see this?in >> there are 15 states in which when they go to thee polls this november they will see new restrictions for the first time in a presidential election. those 15 states are part of a larger trend started in 2010 where 21 states are half the country face those new restrictions. >> are they all the same kind or is there some that our more stringent they andt: others. >> there is a range of those types of restrictions that we are seeing in some of