Summit will be June 3-4
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Developmental Disabilities Administration announced that the Community Summit will return to Wenatchee in 2025. Join us for two days of informative and engaging sessions on expanding the capacity of our communities to support all individuals.
When: June 3- 4, 2025
Where: Wenatchee Convention Center
Visit our Facebook page for more information
The Community Summit website will launch soon. If you have questions about Community Summit 2025 or want to know how you can be involved, please contact Community Summit steering committee coordinator Ron Bryan at Ronald.Bryan@dshs.wa.gov.
Our plan to improve accessibility
The Developmental Disabilities Administration (DDA) heard your feedback about accessibility problems and barriers to full participation at the 2024 Community Summit. The DDA is committed to hosting a conference that is safe, accessible, and equitable for all attendees. We explored nine alternative sites across Washington for improved access, including venue accessibility, availability of accessible lodging options near the venues, travel distance to get to the venue, and cost to rent the venue.
We discussed this effort with interested participants at a meeting facilitated by the Developmental Disabilities Council (DDC). We polled participants on the Zoom meeting and distributed a survey broadly to ensure all stakeholders had an opportunity to share their preferences. There was no clear “winner” in the polling and survey results.
All venues face similar accessibility concerns; some have no connected lodging, and would require many attendees to travel even greater distances if the event were held on one side of the state or the other. What we did hear was considerable support from self-advocates and from our partners in favor of keeping the Community Summit in Wenatchee and addressing the accessibility concerns in a place that we are familiar with, instead of facing similar or worse concerns in a new location.
DDA leadership decided to return the Community Summit to Wenatchee in 2025, and to develop a plan for considerable changes in 2026 and going forward. With considerable support for the Wenatchee venue, we are proceeding with planning a reduced agenda in 2025 – a two-day conference instead of three.
Our planning agenda for 2025 includes:
- Using suggestions from the Developmental Disabilities Ombuds to guide the planning
- Creating an accessible, inclusive event, and be a model for bringing everyone together
- Changing attitudes toward accessibility
- Ensuring that Individuals with disabilities with accessibility directly included in any physical review of convention sites
- Adding ramps for all stages
- Orienting people with a pre-event
- Adding a transportation coordinator to assist with event transportation before, after and during the summit
The DD Ombuds has resources that the DDA could access to get training/consultation on creating a fully inclusive summit. Planning for Community Summit 2025 will begin soon.
To stay up to date with Community Summit news and announcements, visit the Community Summit website or our Facebook page.
If you have any questions about how you can be involved in Community Summit 2025, please contact Community Summit Steering Committee coordinator Ron Bryan at Ronald.Bryan@dshs.wa.gov.
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