Disability Rights Advocate, The Ability Center of Greater Toledo

Hello, my name is Jimmy Russell and I'm a disability rights advocate for the Ability Center of Greater Toledo. Well, as a disability rights advocate, I do a lot of research. That research is then compiled into one pages and things like that that we can distribute to state legislators, business owners, developers and the regents that we can then work with them to make sure that they come into compliance with accessibility rights, and make sure that all of those companies are completely compliant with all the regulations that the government puts forth. And even beyond that to make sure they're as accessible as possible for people with disabilities. So one of recent projects that we worked on was with the Toledo Zoo. They asked us to actually come in and basically do a survey of their accessibility. What we do is we come in, we take a bunch of measurements, and we compare them to our notes and what the requirements are, and then we write up a report and give it back to them stating you're not compliant here, you're doing above and beyond, a great job over here, and make sure that they do everything that they need to do to be within the rights of the law. So I actually have a pretty flexible schedule. I do a lot of time in the office because all of that fun stuff of meeting with legislators, meeting with community leaders and groups like that, only comes after hours upon hours of research. So a large chunk of my job is sitting at my desk and reading up on reports, reading up on court cases that are coming down to make sure that we are as up to date as possible on the compliancy rules. After that happens, we then schedule large meetings with community members and community groups to try and get some grassroots advocacy going together, depending on the size of the project, or maybe we'll just go straight ahead and meet with the business leaders and just have a conversation with them to make sure that they become compliant. Right now I think I'm working on about six different projects all at the same time. It is kind of cool because we have a lot of freedom to kind of discover our own projects, so if there's something you're really, really passionate about within the region or the area, then you can kind of focus in on that project for a little bit. But, disability covers a large span of area.