WITH Foundation is pleased to present Expert Conversations, an ongoing series that features conversations with experts in the fields of healthcare, disability, digital health, and philanthropy.
Image Description: Head shot of a white woman with short red hair wearing glasses and a grey top.
Today’s Expert Conversation is with Jessie Galloway, Associate Program Officer for Ability Central Philanthropy, one of WITH’s philanthropy partners. Ability Central is California-based funder that is dedicated to the communication needs of people with disabilities.
Jessie is a published poet and educator with over 15 years of nonprofit development and program management experience. She hold a B.S in Psychology, and M.A. in English and an M.F.A. in Writing.
__
Thanks for talking with us today, Jessie! Can you tell me more about Ability Central’s funding priorities?
Ability Central Philanthropy improves communication and information access for people with disabilities through grantmaking. 2022 marks our 12th year of grantmaking. Our funding priorities in past years have included Training Assistive Technology and Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Professionals, Research and Innovation, Networking and Collaboration, Replicating Successful Models, and Capacity Building. Seeing the impact of our Grantees’ work has given me hope that the future can be accessible for all.
I believe that everyone can communicate. And, I’m constantly learning different ways to include more folks. One moment really stands out for me. I was at Ability Central for just a few months, and I was on a site visit, and the television was loud, playing baseball – it was the world series – and our Grantee was outfitting custom keyguards for the screens of speech-generating devices for folks that needed the surface area to touch the buttons to be bigger for accuracy. I watched as the Grantee outfitted his client to test out the customization. The client was a man that turned 40 years old the day before, and that’s when we all heard him speak his first sentence. He typed, “I don’t like baseball.” Can you imagine how long he’d wanted to say, turn the dang channel?
What are the most common misconceptions about the work that you do?
I feel like communication and information access might momentarily give folks pause, because that can mean many things to different people, but I often explain that yes, it is ASL, captioning, or Braille. It’s also screen readers, speech to text or text to speech which leads me into Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) as a whole topic. It can be as low-tech as a card with yes/no on it that a person could look to either side of to indicate their choice. It can be higher tech with a speech generating device.
What issue related to healthcare for people with IDD do you feel needs more attention?
I know for me, feeling like my care team is listening to me is paramount. Communication is care. I feel like more healthcare professionals should be trained in low-tech and high-tech AAC to communicate with AAC users with IDD.
How is Ability Central responding to the COVID-19 crises?
Ability Central recognizes the huge disparities to inclusion and access for folks with disabilities. Shelter in place left many folks without in-home care or put them at a greater risk of contracting the virus from caretakers. A colleague just shared an article with me that found that people with intellectual disabilities are one of the most at-risk groups of contracting and dying from coronavirus. Many of our Grantees are direct service organizations serving the IDD community, and they needed to develop online services to continue to reach clients during this time. So, during the early stages of the pandemic, Ability Central reallocated funding to offer communication access grants to help our Grantees transition to virtual platforms, and we increased the amount of General Operating Support in our regular grantmaking to 25% to help with organizational expenses. Additionally, we offered our 2020 Grantees continuation grants in 2021 to enable them to complete and build upon their projects. As the pandemic continues, we will continue to adapt to support our grantees to serve more people with disabilities.
Tell me about your work as the Associate Program Officer for Ability Central. What led you to work with and advocate for people with disabilities?
I am a person with disabilities that has a sister with disabilities, so I am passionate about working to direct funds that support access for our communities. Self-expression is vital, and I believe that my life’s work is to ensure more people have the opportunity to express themselves. I currently serve as the Associate Program Officer for Ability Central Philanthropy where I manage the grantmaking activities including reviewing grant applications, fostering and maintaining relationships with grantees, and evaluating grant projects for impact.
I came to Ability Central in 2017, following my work as a Research Grants Administrator for the Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley and as a Communications Project Manager working on video ethnographies with end-of-life patients at Kaiser Permanente. Additionally, I facilitate creative writing classes with elders to tell their own stories through Litquake Foundation, and I write grants and foster community partnerships to ensure more multi-marginalized LGBTQ+ writers are uplifted as Development Director of San Francisco’s award-winning LGBTQ+ literary press, Foglifter.
One of your goals is to educate other grantmakers about the communications access needs of people with disabilities. Are grantmakers receptive to this goal?
Together with Ryan Easterly of the WITH Foundation, and on behalf of Ability Central, I serve as co-chair of the Exponent Philanthropy Disability Funders Peer Circle where funders from across the United States that fund disability issues in some form come together to discuss inclusion practices and other pertinent issues affecting our communities. There is a lot more education needed out there, but grantmakers are coming around. As diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have gained traction in philanthropy, we feel it is our duty to make sure disability is not left out of the movement when considering the most marginalized, because one in four people have or will have a disability in their lifetime. Disability is intersectional with race, gender, sexuality, economic status, etc. Most folks think of accommodating physical disabilities, but often overlook communication or information access accommodations like captioning, ASL interpreters, or sending screen reader accessible materials ahead of time. The need for communication access accommodations increased dramatically when everything went virtual. We feel it is our mission to educate others so more people with disabilities have the opportunity to fully participate in meetings, to tell their stories, and to be heard.
Thank you Jessie!
Learn more about Ability Central by visiting their website: https://philanthropy.abilitycentral.org