Reaching the 'Disability Market:' How

US Business Leadership Network® (USBLN®)

15TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE & EXPO

Orlando, Florida

October 1 - 4, 2012

General Plenary Session

“Reaching the ‘Disability Market:’ How Companies Are Approaching This Business Opportunity”

October 2, 2012 11:45 A.M.

This transcript was created in real time by a Realtime/

Communication Access Realtime Translation-CART Provider. It has been roughly edited. It is not a certified legal transcript. It is intended for use by the recipient as notes of the proceedings.

CART PROVIDER:

SUSAN D. WASILEWSKI, RPR, CRR, CCP, CMRS, FPR

~ Realtime Systems Administrator ~

>> JILL HOUGHTON: If everybody could take their seats. Okay. We're

going to get started. Let's get this party started. Are you learning?

Are you learning how to get information and make connections. Yes? All

right. I know that you want to quit talking and eat and prepare to listen

and heed the call, because you're all looking forward to going back and

taking action, right? Because we are a room full of eels, like Randy so

eloquently pointed out.

We are thrilled that you are having such a great experience in the

breakout sessions.

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One piece of information that we've received is that in some of the

©2012 US Business Leadership Network (USBLN). All rights reserved.

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rooms it's very, very cold and, let me tell you, it's a good problem. Now,

you ask is there such a thing as a good problem. The good news is we

always look at the opportunity side of it. It is that there are a lot of you

and there are a lot of awesome sessions. So here's the other good thing.

We are going to listen to your feedback and we look forward to being

responsive to your feedback and working to alleviate those type of issues

at next year's conference, which, do you want to know where it's at?

Do you really want to know where it's at? We're going to LA, baby.

So mark your calendars for the first week of October. We will be in

Los Angeles, California at the LAX Marriott.

Okay. So we're going to get started. There are three people that I

want to introduce. This is going to be an awesome panel, because guess

what? People with disabilities, we have money to spend. Imagine that.

And these businesses are being responsive and listening. I want to

introduce three people. We have three track chairs who without them the US

Business Leadership Network could not have put this on, so Michael Shriver,

are you in the room? I know you're here somewhere because I just saw you a

minute ago. Michael Shriver, from Bank of America, our workplace track

chair. Thank you.

(Applause.)

>> JILL HOUGHTON: It's a thankless job, he worked really hard.

Richard Moore, the supplier diversity manager from Southwest Airlines?

I believe he's here but he may not be in the room at this moment. Let's

give Richard a round of applause. Last but not least, I'm going to turn it

over to Susan Mazrui who is the director of global public policy for AT&T.


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She's our track chair for marketplace. She's on our board and if you have

not met her, she's got a great sense of humor. She's an amazing leader and she's

who made this panel possible, as well as our marketplace track. Thank you.

So Susan, take it away.

>> SUSAN MAZRUI: Welcome to the "Reaching the Disability Market: How Companies are

Approaching this Business Opportunity."

Okay. So for those of you who know me, you're probably thinking why

would Susan Mazrui have anything to do with marketing. What most of you

don't know is I actually started my career in a marketing organization.

Now, a few of you know that I washed out within a year-and-a-half. And

part of it was because I lacked specific skills. It had nothing to do with

disability, but when the balloons came down in the room and the confetti

came out, I kept thinking are the people allergic to latex. That's how I

got back with public policy.

But what we know in our companies is that the disability market is

huge. There are more people with disabilities in the world than there are

people in China. The disposable income is very, very high.

So today, and I thought to myself, why am I presenting on this. I

went on a cruise with Royal Caribbean but I couldn't

come up with an answer. And then when I was shopping at Nordstrom with a

special shopping assistant who was helping me, I did buy things but I

didn't come up with an answer.

Then finally, when I started out doing a birthday dinner for myself,

going to Medieval Times, I somehow ended up in a villa in Disney World, I

finally figured out why. I somehow managed to get an iPhone 5 despite the


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fact I work for AT&T. The good news is we have experts that have been in

this field for a long time. They have tried things that succeeded and in

some cases tried things that didn't work, so can you avoid them. The

opportunities are there, they are huge, they are much more coherent in

expressing what they've done. I'm going to pass it over to our colleagues

to talk about how their businesses approach the disability market.

I'm going to ask them to introduce themselves as we move forward

because we don't have a lot of time and they have a lot of knowledge.

DAVID STORTO: My name is David Storto, I have the great honor

and privilege of being here. I'm here this morning to talk to

you about the new Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital that will be opening up

in April of 2014 at the Charles Navy yard in Boston and here to talk to you

about it because it is a model for inclusive design and sustainability.

For those of you who have any familiarity with Spaulding, it's an

organization that is less than 40 years old. It was originally built as a

nursing home. Like a lot of rehab facilities throughout the country, where

rehab isn't necessarily in the same place in the totem pole as cardiac

surgery and oncology, we have facilities that have basically been pretty

crumby, quite frankly, and the whole issue of accessibility in

rehabilitation, even with the passage of the ADA is still very much impeded

and that's just not all right.

Now, there have been places that have modernized and become more

accessible. It's really a testament to the great staff we have at

Spaulding we have in Boston that given the constraints of the current

hospital, we have been able to provide the kind of care that we have that


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has attracted people to come back again and again.

But addressing the point of the business case, you might

think well it's a rehab facility, of course you want to be a model of

accessibility. We have over the course of the years, despite our national

leadership in the field, lost people because they don't like the place

and they decide to go elsewhere, and just looking at the basics of the

business, that's not good for us. When you get back to the issue of people

with disabilities spending money, third party payers spending money, we

want to make sure that in addition to the great compassion and care we're

providing with our staff, that we also are in a position to provide a model

facility.

So this first slide is just a representation of the communities that

we serve. The faces of the communities that we serve and obviously you

will see people here who have varying abilities and disability, but also

different ethnic groups, races, genders, et cetera, and we serve this broad

range of people and in addition to our commitment to inclusive design, we

are also committed to culturally compassionate care.

And so that is represented very much in that portfolio of faces.

For those of you that were at Lives Worth Living last night, you heard

me say this is our mission and vision statement for Spaulding and Partners

Continuing Care, and a key component of that mission statement is our

commitment to advocacy and to advancing quality of life for people with

disabilities and their families, and that's part of what motivated us to

support the completion of the film Lives Worth Living, and I think

actually the director and the producer are here with us at lunch today for


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those who may want to chat with them after lunch.

We are very much committed to this next slide here. I'm sorry, I'm

getting used to the idea of making sure that I'm telling everyone what's on

the slides, to be sensitive to the different abilities and disabilities,

but this slide talks about our commitment to driving well beyond

compliance, and we do a lot of things that we aren't required to do as a

healthcare organization or even as a rehab hospital. We have, for example,

major commitment to adaptive sports and recreation year-round, water

sports, skiing, basketball, a wide range of activity from Cape Cod through

the north shore of Boston with our various Spaulding affiliates in

locations and we're obviously committed very much to vocational rehab and

work force development, and tomorrow some of my colleagues who are here

with us today will be talking to you about a very innovative program that

we've developed between Spaulding and the state of Massachusetts rehab

commission called working partners to train people for varying positions,

and we as employers then have a commitment to hiring some of our former

patients in those positions.

So a wide variety of things that really push beyond compliance.

This next slide basically begins to show you a representation of the

new hospital. You can see a rendering on the far right of the hospital as

it's built in the Charlestown Navy yard, and I talked about making the

business case for inclusive design and I mentioned our commitment to

sustainability. This was a Navy yard and so you can imagine there was a lot

of pollution in this site. It was not used since the Navy left it years

ago, and we cleaned up the site, so we took a brown field and made a green


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field and this is the most energy efficient hospital in the region, and the

return on investment for that energy efficiency is actually quite

impressive.

And we had to do all of that in relation to various regulatory

requirements, changing our work flow, working with our staff, as we speak

here today, to begin to plan for the move to the new hospital.

The hospital -- this is a picture, a rendering of the patient room.

They will all be private rooms, fully accessible rooms, fully accessible

baths and showers, and all of the various components of the room design are

geared towards not only wheelchair users but people with other types of

disabilities and the ability for family to participate and actually stay as

appropriate with the person while they are hospitalized.

We -- one of the things that we did, this is a slide that shows some

photos of mock-ups of the rooms that we developed a couple of years ago in

one of our other hospitals so we could bring in people with disabilities,

so we could bring in staff and actually see what we were intending to build

in the new hospital to provide an opportunity to check the design of the

architects and the staff who had worked on the planning and make

modifications to that design, and we did. We got tremendous great input

from our staff and from the community of people that we serve and we made a

variety of changes relating to that.

We are building this hospital in a community -- this slide basically

shows some of the external scenes around the hospital. We are going to be

bringing the therapeutic program outside of the hospital, both to get

our patients and their families out, but also to show case who we are and


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what we do to the community and to expose the people in the community to

people with disabilities in ways that they might not otherwise have

appreciated. And we've been working with the Charlestown community now

for the past four years and it's been a great relationship and they are

looking forward to welcoming us.

This slide basically just shows a lot of the various ways in which

we're pulling nature into the outside portions and programs of the

facility. We are on the water front. We are in a historic area of Boston

and we want all of that to be represented in the facility.

Finally, this last slide is just a picture of the aquatic center, the

pool that will be available for patients and families and staff and,

finally, this last slide is just a rendering of the completed hospital,

which believe it or not, the one thing that's always amazing, you know, you

see renderings of things, you say oh, yeah, it's not going to look like

that in reality. The hospital is almost completed. We're going to take

possession at the end of the year, and it looks better than the rendering.

So when you're in Boston, give us a call, if you would like to come by

and tour the hospital. We're very proud of it and we look forward to the

opportunity to serve people in this model facility throughout the region.

Thank you.

(Applause...)

>> SUSAN MAZRUI:

Whether you are working in a retail environment or in a hospital, there

are certainly lessons that you can learn. First of all,

don't get involved in sports -- no, no, that's not the lesson.


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The lesson is make sure you're involving the people you're serving in

the design and development of what you're making. It makes common sense

but it's often not done, so one of the real models here, whether you are

developing something as outreach or product itself, whether you are

designing an environment for people to visit, is to have the community

engagement. To have the stakeholders present and providing feedback as

you're doing the development. I think that's a miracle and thank you for

that.

My name is Jenny Lay-Flurrie, I'm in a different industry,

Microsoft, and as I heard this morning, we have this great theme around

stories, so let me take a minute to tell you my story. When I joined Microsoft

eight years ago I walked into the office

in a very small town called London and I walked in wearing a suit because

that's what you do on your first day, you wear your suit, your bright shiny

shoes and for me a brand new Kate Spade bag and I walked in and found

people at Microsoft don't wear suits. Does that surprise you?

I found lots of people wearing jeans and flip-flops and shorts in the

middle of January. I couldn't work out what was going on, and it took me

about three months. After three months I realized that the reason that

people weren't wearing their suits, although they did have Kate Spade bags,

they weren't wearing suits because at Microsoft they wanted you to bring

yourself to work every single day. It's such a key thing. The

reason that eight years on I am still inspired to be in the company and I

now live and work in Seattle where it rains very much like London.

I share that because the key thing when I think about the opportunity


for disability is about the integration and how it's weaved into how your

business strategy works. Our vision at Microsoft is to enable people

and the key thing for me is that as a deaf girl who as my five year old

puts it, ears don't work, mommy's ears don't work, is that includes all people, all

ages, all abilities. For me that's the key, absolutely key, and that's why

a year ago I took a career change from managing technical stuff, which is

what you expect at Microsoft, to move into a role for accessibility.

I'm not just interested in complying with laws, although they are

beautiful laws and I want to comply with them, I am interested in making a

wonderful experience for everyone, regardless of age and ability and that

is my key focus, but there is a gap. I think we heard that this morning.

There is a phrase in England, you may have heard it,

am I in the gap.

I was at the Paralympics a few weeks ago, but I think this gap is

something we have to get our hands around. I'm not going to talk about

disability because I think you all in this room get that, through there are

two statistics that really fascinate me. One is a study that we did nearly

10 years ago now that showed that 57 percent of people could benefit from

accessibility, accessibility is as simple as that fruit in bloom. It's all

high contrast in sunlight, we can all benefit from accessibility. The

other one is because I just said 15 years, that's giving away my age.

I just spent a few years in support and actually just pushed out

training to all of our customer service agents around the world on

disability and communication, and those agents came back and told me 40

percent of them have been supporting people on the forums, on e-mails who


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self-identified as having a disability. That's way bigger than I thought.

I don't know what I thought it was going to be, but that number is huge

when you think about it.

So there's a gap. There is a gap between what we're currently doing

with technology and the power of technology and the capability and the

need that we know is out there that isn't yet captured. So what on earth

is Microsoft thinking about that.

Here is the trick though. It's not about our products. If it was

just about our products I would be telling you a different story, but

products are definitely a component. The gap is filled by a number of

different elements and for us that's where we think the opportunity is. So

let me just share a couple of those.

The first one, education. One of the other things I've really learned

in my role is that people don't really get what accessibility can do for

your business, it feels complicated. It feels hard to get

heads around. You want details but you want them in a way that's absorbable.

So we have a lot of guides. There is a link on this slide that gives you a

link to guides for small to medium businesses, governments and more. They

dive into different areas of disability. I would be happy to give anybody

that link. If you go to Microsoft/enabled site, you will find all of those

guides. It's information you can take home and use and take into your

business.

The other is really diving deep into some areas of industry. I've put

up a slide that shows some information we have available for education.

Love education. It's where it starts. An education means that we have


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just a huge opportunity to work with partners, like Dell, and in

partnership with Dell take our products, load it up, ready to go with tons

of information into the classroom. If you want more information, there is

a Twitter handle, and I think I'm going to hash tag here, we're going to

hash tag Microsoft NSFT enable. We have tons of information, but having

that deep core focus on industry is where our head is at.

The third, it's clearly our products. Who's heard of Windows 8. Oh,

come on? I know I'm deaf but you can be vocal. Anyone heard of Windows 8?

We're going to have to bring it into this room. Windows 8, 24 day count down,

we're very excited. It's coming out on the 26th of October. I picked

Windows as it's the new one coming out, and we continue to incorporate our

accessibility within our products.

If you want to see Windows 8. I'm not going to do a demo. I think it

will be risky and, two, I don't think there is enough time. But I want to

introduce you to the guy sitting up at the front, Dan Hubbell, feel free to

harass him at any point and we'll be happy to show you our machines,

Windows 8 and the capabilities. The big thing for me is narrator, we've

spent time with speech recognition technology, I'm going to use the wrong

word, that's never a good idea.

So there is a lot to do with technology and there is one last

component before the next speaker, and that component, really,

it's you. If we want to bring disability to market, then we really need

you and everyone else to help us to really voice that and there's two

things: One is that I've been really amazed with how people are using our

products today. I want to just share with you a couple of quick examples.


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One is Kinect. Who has heard of Kinect? Who has kids that use Kinect?

We found there is this amazing verve around Kinect. People with

visual impairments, actually take the device that helps them guide through a

room. There is another focus with autism. Anyone heard about this, Kinect

and autism, and just the power of how it can help communicate in the

classroom.

The power of technology is way beyond. What I really want to do is

hear what people want from that technology. So if you have -- I know

you're getting thrown all these surveys. I don't have a yellow piece of

paper. I work for Microsoft, it's all online. If you go to

Microsoft.com/enable. I want to hear what you think of our products, how

you want that customer experience to be, help me make these products to be

best they can be. Thank you.

(Applause.)

>> SUSAN MAZRUI: I think most people in the room have heard about

Microsoft. They've probably used the products and services. A lot don't

know some of the back story about involving people with

disabilities, and that researchers worked with people with disabilities and looked at offering the

accessibility features as more built in features. I'm excited about

Windows 8 coming out. My daughter of six is even more excited but that's

another matter.

There is a leadership role that Microsoft is taking and has taken and

I think it's something for each of us, you don't have to be at Microsoft.

You can be a smaller business. You can be an individual and you can work

to make these changes in your own company.


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So we'll move on to our next speaker. Thank you, Jenny.

>> CARRIE MATSON: Good afternoon, every one, I'm Carrie Matson, I'm

the director of marketing strategy just down the street at Walt Disney

World. It's truly a pleasure to speak with you all today about the many

services that we offer for our guests with disabilities and how we try to

bring those to our consumers and share them through our integrated

marketing approach.

Today I'm going to share some of the key services that we offer and

I'll just hit the highlights and I'll talk you through a couple of our key

tools that we use from a marketing standpoint, not only when we're

specifically targeting guests with disabilities, but when we're actually

talking to any vacation planner as they are thinking about their upcoming

Walt Disney World or Disney parks vacation.

At Disney parks we pride ourselves as being inclusive. It's in our

DNA. I think this next photo and what I've got on the screen is a photo of

Walt Disney himself back in the 1950s signing an autograph at Disneyland

park and talking with a girl in a wheelchair. It goes back to our

foundation, being as inclusive as possible and welcoming guests of all

different abilities and disabilities.

Our systems and culture have really been enhanced over time to make

Disney parks one of the most inclusive and popular destinations in the

entire world for our guests, and our guests with disabilities.

This next slide really highlights our target. And when we think about

it, one of the key statistics that we reference is that one in four

families in the US have at least one family member with a disability, but


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when we're thinking about travel and travel parties, we really think that's

a conservative number, because so often families are traveling with

multi-family households, increasingly families and kids are traveling with grandma

and grandpa, so really this goes much beyond just one in four families.

We've also seen statistics specific to the travel industry, that

Americans with disabilities spend over 13 billion in annual travel, and we

think again that's a conservative number. So it's very clear that this is

an important audience to us, and it's very important for us as we think

about it from a marketing standpoint that were inclusive, that we're

sharing all the information, with those vacation planners.

When we think about it more specifically at Walt Disney World, we

estimate that thousands of guests with disabilities attend our parks every

single day. For many of these guests a Walt Disney World vacation means an

experience that they are going to remember forever. We want them to

cherish that memory forever and come back again and again.

When we think about it from a marketing standpoint, it's very

important that we look at key consumer insights. That's what I'm going to

highlight on this next page. It's essential that we know our guests as we

develop our marketing strategies, so some of the key things that we keep in

mind as we're thinking about marketing to guests with disabilities is first

and foremost that they are eager to travel. We are looking for a vacation

that is hassle free and we at Walt Disney World want to minimize those

hassles for all of our guests.

We know guests are brand loyal, oftentimes coming back to the same

city, coming back again and again to Walt Disney World. We know that


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oftentimes planning starts online and that pre-arrival planning is so

important and this has become very much so an increased focus for us at

Walt Disney World.

And then we also have seen that guests with disabilities have

strong social networks, so social marketing is very critical, whether

it's from the company itself, or through other online channels.

So on this next screen, I just have a sample of some of the

accessibility services in four key categories, mobility, hearing, visual

and the -- for mobility, our adaptive golf cart. It goes beyond our

hotels, even on our golf courses as well.

I'm going to touch on some of the key services. From a mobility

standpoint, we have special parade viewing locations, we have practice

vehicles at some of our attractions, so guests can practice getting on and

off and loading and unloading before they even are in line, or right at the

loading area.

For guests with hearing disabilities, we offer services like sign

language interpretation, and a unique hand held device that helps assistive

listening, captioning. This device is so wonderful and has been just a

great improvement to the experience at Walt Disney World.

The same hand held devices can assist guests with visual disabilities,

so through audio descriptions that describe some of the attractions and

shows, bringing that to life through audio.

We also offer services for guests that have -- autism, or a heart

condition for example, you can request and get a guest assistance card

and that card is actually customized by guests, so cast members will


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understand how they can help with that specific guest. So for example, a

guest assistant card can alert a Disney cast member that the guest requires

access to a quiet waiting area, or that a cast member should allow that

guest and their travel party to use an alternate attraction entrance.

So this next slide describes our marketing approach at Walt Disney

World. From a marketing standpoint, we want to ensure that people planning

a Disney vacation are aware of and understand the array of services that

Walt Disney World offers. Our target really is that vacation planner, so

oftentimes it's the mom who is doing the heavily lifting and work and

planning for her immediate household or that extended family and looking at

all the ways that can make that vacation the best it possibly can be.

The key message that we want to communicate is that with the variety

of products and services we offer, combined with our legendary guest

service, Disney makes it possible for everyone in the family to enjoy a

hassle free vacation. This is what we are striving for. We are

continuously making updates to our key vacation planning tools, like our

website and our vacation planning DVD. So on this next slide, I just

grabbed a screen capture from our website, at disneyworld.com. This is

definitely a work in progress. We're continuously making improvements.

Over the past couple of years we've made some great improvements in

updating the content, images, the details on our websites, so that we can

better provide the details on the services we offer for guests with

disabilities.

In the lower left hand corner of this slide, the screen shot shows

how a vacation planner can click to view special services by specific need,


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so mobility, visual, hearing, traveling with service animals.

This next slide shows another screen capture from our website where

the vacation planner can filter. So if they are looking for any of the

attractions at Disneyland's Hollywood studios that allow service animals,

they can sort, they can see each of those, again trying to make it more

customizable and easy to use. This is work in progress and we're

continuously making improvements and changing our infrastructures.

The next thing I want to show you is another tool, and that's our

vacation planning DVD. We've made big changes over the years and now have

a dedicated section for guests with disabilities. The video I'm going to

play is a segment of that. You will see footage that's included here that

shows guests in our parks, our hotels and across Disney property using the

products and services. Can we play that video.

So that was just a segment of it. We've also introduced some new

planning tools and on this next slide I've got a screen grab from our Moms

Panel. So social and online tactics are important to us as we try and

increase our reach and get more awareness through the social community.

One of the things is our Moms Panel, this is new in the last couple years.

The screen that I've grabbed here shows a parent asking about what kind of

services we have for children with special needs, and one of our Moms Panel

lists this last year one of the 12, is an expert, wanted a personal

experience. These are real moms and real dads who have been to our parks

and share tips and individual answers on how to maximize the Disney World

experience.

We also leverage a lot of unofficial social media and have so many


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times where guests with disabilities have shared their own personal story,

where it's on YouTube or through Facebook and what I have on the next slide

is a screen grab of a video that a mom posted at a magic kingdom parade.

The son was moved by the parade that he couldn't stop waving. The mom

was so moved and noticed how the characters took time to interact with him.

In her words it was the highlight of the vacation that year.

So really, there are so many examples of that. Another example of

where we wanted to increase awareness is through news media. I pulled some

head lines on this next slide, such as best vacation spot for families with

special needs, Walt Disney World, helping people with disabilities by increasing the

services and products we have to offer, we've been able to successfully

create a host of advocates off line and online.

So in conclusion, from a marketing perspective, we really want to

increase the communication of all these wonderful services. In fact, we

now have more than 500 videos and images that feature guests with

disabilities that we use on those web pages, but also in our just regular

general market advertising, being very inclusive, and showcasing just all

the guests that come to our parks. We work really hard to be well equipped

to handle a variety of guests with disabilities. We strive to continuously

make improvements and not only the services we provide, but how we

communicate those services, and again, we consider it a work in progress,

the one that is so important to the overall success of Disney World.

So lastly, I just want to say thank you so much for your time and

attention today.

(Applause.)


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>> SUSAN MAZRUI: I think Walt Disney World is a good example of

looking at full inclusion from end to end, from products and services that

you provide, to the customer support, which I have to say my personal

experience has been seamless, and you go as a person with a disability, you

say I can't see, my husband can't see, and I can't take the heat, which is

no small thing in Florida. And while they can't control the weather, they

make it sound as though that's just the way it is, this is normal, this is

the way it should be, we have this and we have that. Consider these

options. And it is probably the most inclusive travel experience that I've

had even though I haven't actually taken a trip yet, but from the planning stages

where all my questions were answered and answered in a way that you would

have your neighbor or your friend answer them. I can't tell you how

welcoming it was for me and how much money I spent as a result.

Don't tell my husband that part.

But how much that full inclusion has really affected me, my family and

I'm sure we'll be coming back.

We'll go to our next speaker. Thank you very much for that

presentation.

>> RON PETTIT: How is everybody? Great. Thank you for the

opportunity to be here today.

My name is Ron Pettit and I'm senior specialist at Royal Caribbean

Cruises limited. -- Just before joining Royal

Caribbean about six years ago, I spent 17 years at Northwest Airlines.

I've spent over the last 15 years managing accessibility programs with

customers with disabilities, I'm excited and delighted to have the


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opportunity to tell you how Royal Caribbean has reached the disability

market.

This is a slide that was taken one of our cruise ships, flow riding

surfing simulator. It shows a beginning surfer learning how to surf with

the hand of an expert surfer. So today I'd like to take you on board our

surfing simulator, so let's learn how to catch the wave to the disability

market.

First of all, what I want to talk about is the disability market. We

all know the statistics, as Carrie mentioned, there are 57 million Americans

with disabilities and over 200 billion dollars in disposable income.

That's a lot of money. But for a travel company, we need to know how many

of those people with disabilities actually travel and how many, importantly

for a cruise line, how many actually take a cruise.

So we know that there are 21 million people with disabilities

traveling every year and they spend about 13 billion dollars on travel.

And more importantly for a company like mine, Royal Caribbean, we like to

know how many of them actually take a cruise. So one statistic that I

like to point out is that 12 percent of people with disabilities have taken

a cruise compared to 10 percent of people without disabilities, so what

does that number mean? It's two percent, and that's all we really need,

but that number also represents that people with disabilities know that

cruising is an accessible travel option.

And one of the reasons why people with disabilities have learned that

cruising is accessible, we've worked hard to make our ships accessible.

Even though there are no regulations for passenger vessels, cruise lines


21

have voluntarily gone out and built ships because there is a market out

there. One of the key accessible products we offer

is our accessible state rooms. This is one of the state rooms featuring

things like wider doors, grab bars, lower sink and raised toilet seats and

a whole bunch of other features.

One thing I like to tell people is the great story that I have many

guests and travel agents tell me that your accessible guest rooms are

better than the hotel room we stayed in before we got on the cruise, and

not only accessible state rooms, we have a whole host of features on our

ships as well. We have pool lifts, lower blackjack tables for those who

like to gamble and give us a donation in the casino, lower counters, all of

that makes the ship more accessible for people with disabilities at all

times.

Now that we've focused on the hardware, we focus on the software. At

Royal Caribbean we put together an access department that's dedicated to

servicing the unique market segment. There are full service conference

centers and they respond to guests on how to plan an accessible cruise

vacation. They do it through phone calls, e-mails and faxes.

So I've covered a bit about hardware, a little about software, I'm

going to talk about how we reach this market and one of the ways we do that

is through education. Many people with disability don't realize how

accessible cruising can be. Many of them don't think it's a possibility and

what we want to do is make them understand that it is possible and that

your vacation can be as effortless and easy as possible. One of the ways,

I have a screen shot from a website and we have a whole host of information


22

to answer people's questions about what do you offer for people with

mobility, hearing, vision, other needs. It's a very robust extensive

website and has all the information that anybody could need.

Here's another slide from our website and it shows a chart of our

state rooms. We've added information and details on how people can pick

the state room that's most accessible for them. We include information for

actual doorways, the toilet height. Those are questions that get asked

all the time. What better way to make this information available to our

guests.

Also online we also have information in a brochure, the accessible

cruise brochure. We've had this since 1999 but earlier this year we

launched a new larger format, and it has even more information about

accessible cruising.

It includes information about children with disabilities, how we

accommodate them, information about people with short stature, people of

size, we have a two page -- we made this brochure bigger and fuller for our

guests and travel partners. It's available on our website in electronic

format and even text version for screen readers.

Another way we provide education is through our travel agents. You may

not know that cruises are still sold by travel agents, that 68 percent of our cruises are

sold by travel agents, so making it a very important distribution tool for

us. Earlier this year we hosted a webinar for over 500 travel agents to

learn about the services we offer. There is our travel partner website, so that our

travel agents can go and look at a later time.

Another way we provide education is through social media. It's very


23

new, everybody is doing it these days, so this is an audience for our guest

as well as travel agents. Earlier this year I was invited to do a guest

blog for Adam Goldstein and I wrote a blog article about how we make

cruising accessible, it was highlighted on Facebook and Twitter and it was

one of the most successful campaigns that we've done.

We've covered education and educating people with disability about

travel. Another way we reach the market is through partnerships. We do

this in a couple of different ways, one is through the Cruise Lines

International Association. This happen to be a trade association for the

cruise industry, but what you may not know is that their primary purpose is

to promote cruising, and on their website they have a unique online tool

called the cruise ship features and amenities finder. What you do is go in

there, check off the options you need, mobility, hearing or visually

impaired, and you check what products and services you are looking for, you

pick a cruise line, in this case Royal Caribbean, and then you get a list of

ships and what services are offered. So that is the partnership we have,

Cruise Lines International Association.

We also partner with an organization called SATH. This is a society for

accessible travel and hospitality. The majority of their members are

travel agents. We take a great opportunity to educate travel agents and we

provide presentations and ship tours. One of our ship tours is on Navigator

of the Seas.

We also partner with the Open Doors Organization. Many of you know them.

They are based in Chicago, and they helped us develop a training video

last year on how to assist guests with disabilities on and off our cruise


24

ships. We used people with disabilities in creating

the video and we're excited to say that is being rolled off with great

reception.

The last partnership I'm going to talk a little bit about, most of us

talk about foundation and community relationship organizations that we work

with. One that we work with is the Ocean Fund. Its primary

mission is marine conservation. It's a unique way to tie in and share the

program and it just so happens the Ocean Fund supports the Shake-a-Leg Miami

organization. It's a great organization that provides opportunity

for people with disabilities, adults and children, to go on accessible

learning trips as well as learning about marine conservation. There are after

school and summer programs. They have great opportunities for people with

disabilities.

So next I'm going to talk a little bit about taking advantage of the

unique opportunities. One of them is to include such advertising.

I love the campaigns that our cruise line has done over the years. Our

current campaign is called the sea is calling, and the last one before that

was why not. A lot of campaigns are really inspirational because not only

do they resonate for all people, they are particularly applicable to people

with disabilities, about the message of getting out there. That's a lot

that people remember us for. That was about 10 years ago, when we were

trying to get people excited about cruising, trying to educate that we had

ice skating rinks and the slide shows a wheelchair user racing around the

ship. This is an example of inclusive advertising.

Another unique business opportunity for a cruise line is what's called


25

Godmothers. Every time a new ship is built, we name it and we have it

christened by a Godmother. We wanted to highlight the accessibility

program, so we named Jean Driscoll to be the Godmother of a ship. That

was a great opportunity to reach the disability market by naming a ship

after a respected and well known Paralympian.

And the last example I'm going to show you is the deaf freedom cruise.

This is one of the biggest accomplishments at Royal Caribbean to date. In

2007 we happened to host the largest all deaf cruise on Freedom of the

Seas. Think about it. 3,800 deaf and hard of hearing guests on a cruise

ship, and that is an environment where deaf people were the majority and not the

minority. So it was great experience for Royal Caribbean and for the deaf

and disability community because it shows an example of a totally inclusive

vacation experience.

So this slide, you are now all expert surfers. You all know how to

catch the wave now? So I've done that for you today by showing you a

little what we have at Royal Caribbean. We talked about having strong

hardware and software, but we also reach the disability market by going through

and talking about education, various examples of that, as well as

partnerships and taking advantage of unique business opportunities.

So the next time you're thinking about reaching the accessibility

market, bring your surf board and catch the wave. Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

>> SUSAN MAZRUI: I think Ron is quite humble as many people on the

panel today. He's been a leader in the travel industry for a number of

years. He shows great example of both target marketing and full inclusion


26

in marketing and taking, again, from end to end when looking at

accessibility, communicating the message, how you serve people in general

better, including people with disabilities and how you reach out to the

community to demonstrate all the good things that you've done.

We're going to move on to Avalyn, who is our last speaker today.

>> AVALYN JACKSON: Hi, my name is Avalyn Jackson and I work for AT&T

in Atlanta. I will try not to put you to sleep.

I am lucky enough to work for and with Susan Mazrui and lucky enough

to consider her one of my mentors within the disability communities. What

do I do at AT&T? I focus on products and services in the mature segment.

When I say the mature segment, I'm talk about folks that are 65 years or

older. Susan gave me learning objectives, give you guys statistics out

there, which is why I'm going to go with some of the population dynamics. I

want to talk about things that are buzzing around our country, which is

called the net promotor score and I want to talk about marketing

opportunities that AT&T does.

So the two learning objectives that Susan asked for me to present

today was to give you guys an understanding of the spending power and the

growth potential of the disability community. So that's number one.

Number two was how companies approach serving both the disability

community through both targeted efforts and broader outreach. Those are

two things that these numbers are going to tie in for you guys today.

So this is a really busy slide but I'm just going to -- I can only

have seven minutes, so I'm going to give you the highlights here for the

changing thought that AT&T is doing for today's population dynamics. Because of time


27

we will focus on one segment, so you're looking at disability community with 58

million people, then you look at the mature segment, which is about 40

million people and then you have some who are kind of in between-- we've talked

about it before, when the topic of one in four families who travel have a

child or somebody in the family with a disability, which Disney and the

cruise lines are looking at, and so we're actually calling them the unpaid

caregiver group. When I said unpaid caregiver, these are folks that have a

child that they need to take care of and they're not getting paid. And if you

are like me, who is 44 and having to now start looking at taking care

of my mom and my dad. These are the unpaid caregivers that I'm speaking

of.

Over the next five years the US population is going to change

drastically, for those that are 65 years or older, that population is going

to grow by 17 percent. Then you have the disability segment, which

includes 47 percent of the mature segment. So as the baby boomers are

aging, so is the disability community going to grow.

As I've said, we've got the unpaid caregiver, so all in all, we're

looking at 43 percent of the population or 132 million people are going to

fall within these three buckets.

So for us at AT&T, we delve a little deeper

into some of these populations and some of the statistics that I wanted to

bring out to you. If you are looking at disability you have 42 percent that use

broad band at home. You have 65 percent of the mature market that are using

wireless and about 45 percent of the unpaid caregivers, when I say unpaid

caregivers, this can be 18 years and older, who use technology in some way.


28

Of the disability community, when we say disability, a lot of times

when I'm talking to folks that aren't familiar with the market, they just

kind of think a person with one disability, but you're really looking at 30

million have one disability, 16 million have two, and five million have

more, so you're looking at 21 million folks that have more than one

disability.

As I had mentioned before, the growth rate of the mature market is

going to grow by 17 percent because of the baby boomers, and then with the

caregiver group, these caregivers, the unpaid caregivers are spending over

20 hours a week in this position. And the thing that I thought was -- the

statistic that was interesting to me was that 21 percent are going to fall

within the 18 and over age, but only three percent are age 65 or plus, only

8.5 million folks, I think some of the statistics that were brought up was

the 220 dollar billion spending income. I won't harp on that one since it

was talked about.

So why should you target these companies, especially from a technology

standpoint? Within the disability community, the assistive technology has

actually gone mainstream. Many years ago people had to buy

thousands and thousands of dollars of pieces of equipment or

accessible equipment, such as $8,000 or $9,000 for an accessible piece of equipment, but since 2010,

you've got phones and tablets that are coming out that all have you to do

is buy a certain option and load it up with a couple of apps and you have

all of the accessible technology that ten years ago spent an extra $8,000


29

for, where today you only have to spend $1,000 or less.

Within the mature population, you have retirees, and

these are folks whether it be because of a financial standpoint, they have

to stay in the workplace. Obviously we're living longer, taking better

care of ourselves, or just because they want to, are going back to work.

So the retirees are not the retirees that we thought of 10 years ago, so

we're including those.

Then we have the unpaid caregiver population. These are the folks

that are actually looking after their loved ones and they are looking for

solutions on how to help them. Whether it be for greater

access to transportation, devices, you name it, they are trying to look for

it and find it.

So I want to change gears from these statistics and can you guess what

is the one question that can predict the future of your company? And I'm

going to give you a hint. It was in INC magazine June 24th of 2011.

Anybody have an idea? I kind of gave you the answer in the agenda, so I

will skip to that. It's called the net promoter score or NPS for short.

All this is basically is how likely are you as a consumer to recommend XYZ

company.

What AT&T is doing, we're not focusing on measuring our churn, or

measuring customer growth or subscriber growth or how many roll over

customers do we have. The one thing we're focusing on is customer

experience, so that's where the net promoter score is going to come in.

How are you going to get the net promoter score. It's very easy, it's very

simple. Have you the promotors which are the people that are going to


30

promote you, say go with your company, you have passives, that say they are

not so great, they are in between, and then you have detractors, these are

the folks that aren't happy with you.

Promoters rank you from nine to 10, your passives are seven to eights,

and the detractors go from zero to six. So you are going to drop your

passives, have your percentage of promoters that say yeah, go with this

company, they are great, we need them. Then you are going to subtract your

detractors and you are going to get your net promotor score. It's easier

than figuring out what your churn is per quarter over all these other

organizations.

So let me give you a really easy example that I think everybody can

relate to and -- well maybe not everybody, but if you are like me, it's a

fast food example, which I hope everybody can relate to. So what I wanted

to show in this slide is the correlation between your net promotor score

and the average rate of sales per store.

So if you look at the slide, I tried to pick -- we have a certain fast

foods, I'm from Atlanta, we have Chick Fil-A, but we don't have Whattaburger

so I tried to go on a nationwide scale. So if you look at one of

the best examples of a good net promoter score, is Chick Fil-A, they

have one of the highest for one of the averages per store. That's one of

the new matrixes that AT&T looks at from a marketing stand point for

customer experience and satisfaction.

On a marketing level, how is AT&T looking for increase our NPS, or net

promotor score? I think there is a theme going on up here, when I heard

several folks mentioning social media. AT&T is reaching out to social


31

media as well. Whether it be bloggers, or tweeters, or our own AT&T

Facebook page. We've also get our own YouTube channel. We're doing

YouTube videos or short stories or serial shows, if you will.

We've got our online banner ads where we can actually track clicks to

see who is purchasing on these sites, and we're also -- this is another

theme I've noticed, is everybody's website, is a user friendly and

accessible website, making sure it's updated with your latest products and

services and how we can assist in accessibility and mature markets.

I want to talk about outreach. We're doing outreach at specific

events. One of the things we're doing is we're calling it a tech rally and

we've partnered with a hand set manufacturer. So we're going on a

nationwide road show bringing 400 individual pieces of equipment, whether

it be a tablet, or an E reader or a mobile hand set, anything that is

mobile that might make life easier and we're going out to these communities and giving hands on individual

training at independent living centers, senior centers, assisted living

centers. We're also doing specific sponsorships. Some that we did this

year, I bring these specific up because the Olympics just ended, so this

is by no means an exhaustive list, is obviously the Paralympics and

the Olympics and we're going to disability specific

conventions.

One thing I think is unique that we do at AT&T is we have an AT&T

advisory panel on access and aging. I'm blessed to say I'm the actual

chair person of this committee, so let me brag about that one. The AT&T

panel on access and aging is a panel of 15 expert external folks

that are members of this panel and we meet about two to three times a year


32

and what we do is we just had this meeting two weeks ago in Austin, Texas,

is we bring these 15 outside experts in and then I coordinate and bring all

of the internal AT&T folks together that are working on products and

services that can service these three markets, and I have our internal

folks present to our external folks and so these external folks, we get --

I've actually called them my own focus group for AT&T. They give us

ideas on how we can improve products, how to improve grass roots marketing,

how to reach out better to the community.

Second to that is we have what we call our internal expert team. We

have these calls once every month and these are just the internal folks.

So we can break down the individual silos that we all work in. You have

have me in wireless who works only on hand sets,

you've got human resources that obviously is mainly working on human

resources, this breaks down the silos across the entire company to where we

can coordinate and see, hey, I'm working on this, what you're working on,

we may be able to partner with, we can share marketing dollars. I work

with this other great external firm, let's go to them and let's see what

grass roots marketing we can do to get the word out.

So that's a way to break down the internal silos and get the word out

on that.

So I think my time is up and I'm going to hand this back to Susan.

Thank you all very much.

(Applause.)

>> SUSAN MAZRUI: We're a little short of time but I am going to ask

one question that I think has been a burning question in the marketing


33

areas for people who are within their own businesses, working within a

large corporation. What was the motivator? You all have successful

programs. What motivated your companies to reach out to the disability and

aging markets? What made them -- what made them support the efforts that

you were doing? You all have expertise you need -- you know what needs to

be done. How did you get that Internet support. Why don't we just move

down the line from the far ends.

>> CARRIE MATSON: I think the biggest thing that we looked at at Walt Disney World, it

comes down to two things, we want to know our consumers, our guests,

whether they are existing guests or potential guests as best as possible

and it's clear that this is a major part of our consumer base and our

consumer audience, and then we look at it from a business standpoint. And

again, it's almost like a no brainer that when the consumer is there and

there is a business opportunity, there is almost no major case for a

business need if it's just addressing the consumer's needs.

>> RON PETTIT: At Royal Caribbean, I think it's come down to a few

basic things, that one is it's the right thing to do. We obviously know

that what we're required to do, so we have regulations, but is it the right

thing to do? We've known for a long time it makes good business sense.

The fact that we have ships that we need to build and one of the things is

we can look into the disability market and get brand royal guests when they

appreciate our accessible product and services. I think the big motivator

is we get commitment from the top down. We are all very interested about

what we're doing in accessibility and how we're making effort to improve

products and services for people with disabilities, so the motivator for us


34

is the commitment from the top.

>> JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: Ditto. I was at Gallaudet last week on

a recruitment trip and the student in the audience said why on earth would

you want deaf people at Microsoft. My flippant answer is we want cool

people at Microsoft. But the more business is we're in a technology

company, we speak to customers, we have 3 billion different transactions

with customer service every single year. If we don't have people of all

types of diversity, how are you going to be able to listen, understand,

empathize and just answer.

More is the bigger picture, the biggest move forward and

what we can do come from diverse minds and we want innovation and we are a

technology company. We desperately need it. For us it's a no brainer. We

desperately need and want and our job is to make it the right environment.

David Storto - Our situation is a little different. We're mission based. We do

reside within this broader healthcare system called partners that includes

major economic medical centers and community hospitals and physician

network, and I think the mission of the whole organization and the

commitment from the top, you know, was absolutely essential to build this

new hospital and based, you know, on the mission of the larger

organization, I think to the extent people have personal experiences, it

certainly helps drive the understanding of the need to make these kinds of

commitments as my mentor and boss back in Chicago used to say, we're all

temporarily able bodied, and I would remind boards of directors and others

who are looking at the margin as well as the mission of that fact as we

guilted them into things as times, and then I asked finally, in a broader


35

healthcare context, If we aren't rehabbing people well, if we weren't

taking good care of them, there is just the business issue that is becoming

more and more readily apparent, which is people are going to wind up

spending more money in the healthcare system elsewhere, in acute care

hospitals and emergency departments and places they shouldn't be. To the

extent we rehab people well, it's going to serve the entire health care

system and they will stay healthier.

Avalyn Jackson - I heard just kind of summing up what everybody was saying, it's not

because it's the right thing to do. AT&T for many years has a philosophy

or has had a philosophy of universal design. But if you're looking at the

population as a whole, I think the statistics basically speak for

themselves. If you are looking at 43 percent of the population may fall

into this or know somebody that falls into these categories, you would be

crazy not to market to these folks. 220 billion spending that's larger

than the youth population and half of the Hispanic population that we

target. For 220 billion dollars of disposable income, you have to be able

to take notice of that.

>> SUSAN MAZRUI: I want to thank all the panelists today for

joining us. You do remarkable work on a daily basis and I invite you all

to take advantage of their presence and meet with them afterwards. We are

running out of time but I do thank you all very much for all your hard

work.

(Applause...)

>> JILL HOUGHTON: Let's give it up for Susan Mazrui.

(Applause.)


36

>> JILL HOUGHTON: Enjoy the breakout sessions and we look

forward to seeing you tonight at the opening expo reception. Thank you.

37


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