Sacha Dekker

The unemployment rate for people with a disability is almost 2.3 times the rate compared to those without a disability. On top of that, only 10% of people with an invisible (hidden) disability feel safe enough to disclose this to their employer. That means that 90% of those with a disability hide part of themselves every day when they come to work. After being diagnosed with epilepsy in 2009, the first person I told at work asked me if I was a retard now. Since becoming hemiplegic I’ve been called “the pity hire”, “the quota filler” and told ‘people like me’ should not be in front of stakeholders because it looks weak.

In this talk you’ll learn about:

• General disability awareness (language, what do we mean when we say ‘disabilities’)
• How to create a safe environment for employees with disabilities
• The real cost of hiring, and not hiring, people with disabilities

Everyone talks about resilience and especially since the Covid19 pandemic it’s a hot topic. So what exactly is resilience and how do you build it? Waking up without the ability to walk, stand or even sit up straight without help, and doctors telling me I was going to spend my life in a wheelchair in a nursing home, resilience was all I had to draw on to keep me going.

In this talk you’ll learn about:

• What resilience is and isn’t
• The concept of toxic positivity and how to avoid it
• How you can choose to be resilient