Jourdan Saunders was a practicing Speech Language Pathologist for over 10 years, she listened to children and adults with different disabilities sharing how they did not feel included in the community.  As Jourdan did more therapy in the community, it allowed her to see the need for disability inclusion beyond, just the lens of her therapy room.

Jourdan has developed inclusive gymnastics programs, reading literacy programs, and is the author of Our Reading Literacy Kitchen: Fresh Approaches to Target Reading Literacy Skills. She is an advisor to companies and organizations ranging from digital speech therapy, gymnastics, international reading literacy initiatives, culinary industry technology platform, and many more.

Jourdan was awarded LinkedIn Top Voices 2020: Equity in the Workplace. She is the creator of one of the first resource websites for students in Speech Language Pathology, owner of one of the largest SLP resources groups on LinkedIn with over 20,000 members, and selected as top 100 Speech Language Pathologists impacting the field.

Jourdan Saunders

Building for the future requires us to take different pieces and combine them with others pieces.

KEY 7. Integration

The Resource Key Joins The Valuable Directory for Disability Inclusion

The Restaurant Redefining How to Build Community

  321 Coffee is a “coffee shop and roaster providing meaningful work opportunities to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.”

Equipping youth to process and tell their stories through photography.

A United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) funded program that provides support, education, and assistance to ranchers and farmers with disabilities.

Providing career skills training and employment services to individuals with disabilities to assist them in developing the skills they will need to secure a career within the entertainment industry earning a competitive wage.

Yes I Can Unity Through Music and Education

Technology-centered inclusion solution and employment platform for job seekers with disabilities, mental health conditions, and chronic illnesses. 

Photography and video exhibit – both online and in-studio – that showcases the food-related stories of eight disabled Canadians, eight Canadians from culturally diverse backgrounds, and eight Cowichan Valley food and beverage producers.

Cowichan Valley Disability, Culture and Food Through Art Exhibit

Input from the disabled community is a critical part of any company’s inclusivity efforts. Here’s how to seek out their perspectives.

How to include workers with disabilities in your DEI initiatives

THE Project Why is what comes to mind when starting, agreeing or pursuing any project.

Events have the capacity to bring about change, to create spaces to develop relationships to bring about change, and gather new information to use to bring about change.

Authentic Representation is so important.  Authentic is key because you can have representation without it being authentic. 

Music can be such a powerful tool for activism in the community, leadership through lyrics, and communicating authentic messages. 

Who are we designing for? What are we considering when we are designing? So many more questions that come to mind when designing and more importantly inclusive and accessible design. 

Stay Connected takes on a whole new meaning depending on the person, context, and environment.

Improve your social media presence with The Resource Key's free webinar replay on 4 Ways to Make Your Social Media Inclusive and Accessible. Learn about using alt text, image descriptions, color contrast, and hashtags, as well as best practices for accessible content creation and strategies for creating an inclusive online community. Receive a webinar replay, transcript, PowerPoint, and reference outline with resources for free. Start creating a more diverse and equitable online community today.

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Inclusive Starter Keys:  Inclusive and Accessible Social Media.

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Interconnected will be an important word as we continue to look towards the future in building inclusion and accessibility.  Taking new information, unrelated concepts, different perspectives and interconnecting them to build out the future will be a skillset to continue to develop to continue moving forward.

New Disability Culture Coordinator advocates for disabled community by Juliana Vandermark from The Bowdoin Orient 

Link to Article:  https://bowdoinorient.com/2023/02/03/new-disability-culture-coordinator-advocates-for-disabled-community/

This article discusses how for the first time Bowdoin, the College hired a Disability Culture Coordinator.  When reviewing this article here are some of the components that were interconnected:

Conversations between Disabled Student Association and different administrators.

Listening to students and realizing more support was needed surrounding ableism, accessibility, and disability. 

Position created based off of listening and conversations discussed.

Bringing disabled community to the table surrounding different important conversations.

Quote from article:  "We want to be a community that is centered around universal design and being inclusive of all people regardless of ability. That means that we have to continue to learn about accessibility and disability, and celebrate the many contributions and gifts our disabled students bring to our campus.” -Eduardo Pazos, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs for Inclusion and Diversity

How will interconnected help you build a more inclusive and accessible future?

Does your company need a speaker to discuss how to build out a more inclusive and accessible future?

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Who are we designing for? What are we considering when we are designing? So many more questions that come to mind when designing and more importantly inclusive and accessible design.  Honestly, we wouldn’t have to say “inclusive and accessible design” if inclusion and accessibility was a part of our design process from the start. The design process is constantly changing, evolving, open to change.  Nothing about design feels static or not changing.  Change and impact are important words when we talk about inclusion, accessibility and design. We are always evolving, changes occur, and we have to be able to shift, whether it is opening ourselves up to a new perspective or having a conversation about design that once worked previously, no longer works because users' needs have changed.

1. The tyranny of chairs: why we need better design by Sara Hendren from The Guardian

Quote from the article: “It wasn’t Papanek who offered universal design to the world; it was disabled people whose long-held insights generated what became a set of principles that designers could follow. Ronald Mace, a wheelchair user and architect, is credited with introducing the term “universal design” to the public in 1985. In part, the coinage was strategic, recasting features of design that had been considered “special” as simply good design, resulting in products and buildings that were straightforwardly “usable by all people”.

2. This new disability-friendly menstrual cup has a pull-tab so it can be removed like a tampon by Andrea Michelson from Business Insider

Adamé has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome which is a connective tissue disorder characterized by joint instability. After her previous experiences with other menstrual cups, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She reached out to her friend who is a medical device inventor, and together they designed a cup they hoped would be easier to remove for users of all ability levels.

Quote from the article:  “There’s a difference, I think, when you involve somebody with that primary experience at every step with equal weight in the process,” Miller said. “What that process manifests is inclusivity and advocacy.”

3. New All-Inclusive Playground In Bonner Springs Provides Valuable Space For Kids With, And Without, Disabilities by Laura Ziegler from KCUR 89.3

The inclusive playground allows all children to be included and play together. The playground includes adaptive equipment and technology for children. 

Quote from the article: “Marissa Graczyk’s family is from the tiny town of Centerview in Johnson County, Missouri, where there are no parks or playgrounds for kids with disabilities. She and her brother have an illness that requires them to use wheelchairs. The first all-inclusive playground in Wyandotte County allows all six siblings to play together.”

4.  9 Ways UX/UI Design Can Improve Digital Health Adoption for Seniors by Amy Oughton from HIT Consultant Media

Different ways to improve engagement when seniors are accessing telehealth tools. User Experience/User Interface tips to help improve digital health so that telehealth products are not a barrier for seniors.

Quote from the article: “But, to make sure we are designing telehealth products with all users in mind, we’ll need to gain additional perspective on why seniors aren’t accessing telehealth resources at the same rate as other age groups and how to reduce their barrier to entry. Many providers will continue to use telehealth once the pandemic has passed, so understanding the current barriers to use for seniors, is important.”

5. Bigger Than Her Body: How Annie Boivin Conquered the World of Architecture While Living with a Disability by Rachel Rose from Canadian Architect

Quote from the article: “It’s a matter of changing people’s mindsets, which have been ingrained for a lifetime—and that’s not easy to do,” Greene says. “Built environments must be safe and accessible for anyone from 8 years old to 80 years old. But it’s hard to have a clear understanding of what that means. And this has resulted in an epidemic of slapdash developments that have no consideration for universal design.”

How can we shift our mindset to design with impact to ensure that we are designing an inclusive and accessible society?

Stay Connected takes on a whole new meaning depending on the person, context, and environment.  Sometimes it can be difficult to find ways to stay connected when there does not feel like enough time for everything.  

1.  ‘I choose to thrive’: the man fighting motor neurone disease with cyborg technology by Michael Segalov from The Guardian

Peter was diagnosed with diagnosed with a motor neurone disease (MND). He is helping to create groundbreaking technology, that in turn could help someone else too.

 Quote from the article: “If we can improve things for Peter,” says Francis, “we can improve it for everyone with a disability, whether it’s MND, a stroke or old age.”

2. With Braille on Its Label, This Ohio Brewery’s New Beer Supports the Visually Impaired by Courtney Roberson from The Vine Pair

A brewery collaborated with a local organization to release a beer called Braille Ale which has braille on the beer packaging. 

Quote from the article:  “People need to be able to get information, and we need to be able to get them that information any way that we can.” Putting it on a can of beer is just the start, she says.”

3. Teacher with Tourette’s who shouts ‘Billy ball bag’ at pupils stars in new documentary by Katie Begley from Daily Mirror

A teacher with Tourette’s shared her story on a new documentary, Teacher With Tourette’s which airs in the UK on Thursday at 10pm on Channel 5.

Quote from the article: “They see I am capable – they don’t see a disability. My Tourette’s makes me a better teacher.”

4.  Visions of Post Pandemic Home by Helen Barrett from Financial Times

Designers are creating innovative solutions from touching a rock that illuminates to let your loved ones know you are thinking of them to sitting inside of a protective dining bubble. The pandemic has shifted society and everyone is rethinking, adapting, adjusting, shifting, and looking at things from a different lens.

Quote from the article: “Design is suffering. It is a collective. We can’t do it digitally, it is not a singular endeavour,” he says. “We are more effective as a group than spread out across the world. You can’t design without experiencing a place, or seeing people use your product in real life.”

5. Claudia Walder is Tackling Shame Around Chronic Illness And Building Her Own Disability Community by Naomi Pike from British Vogue

Claudia is the founder and editor of Ablezine.  Ablezine seeks to change the image of disability and is committed to ensuring that as many disabled people are working behind the scenes as are featured on the page.

Quote from the article: “For Walder, greater understanding and inclusion for the disabled community looks as simple as able-bodied people being reminded that disabled people simply even “exist.” “We are the largest minority group in the world, and the only one that anyone can become a part of at any moment, so we need to be asking ourselves: Why we are always left out? Too many people have gotten away with [not] addressing disability as a social issue, because they can. You could say that about other [forms of] discrimination – people ignore it because they can. That does not mean they should.”

How will you stay connected or help someone else stay connected?

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 Get started today with The Resource Key Inclusive Package services

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Webinar Social Media Keys Reference Outline with Resources-11 pages+ with different resources and reference keys to further advance your Inclusive and Accessible Social Media foundation.

Who is this Mentor Course For?  Businesses (i.e. Marketing Teams, HR Teams who use Social Media),  Individuals (i.e. Business Owners, Digital Creators, Influencers who use Social Media).


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One Live Customized Inclusive and Accessible  Webinar.

Customized Handout with resources and reference keys for your industry.

One 30 minute Office Hours with Session Lead from The Resource Key.

Who is this Mentor Course For?  Businesses (i.e. Marketing Teams, HR Teams who use Social Media),
  Individuals (i.e. Business Owners, Digital Creators, Influencers who use Social Media).

Jourdan Saunders

KEY 7. Interconnected

KEY 2. Design Impact

KEY 1. Stay Connected

Free Inclusive and Accessible Social Media