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GRANT

Community Access Improvement Plan

By the community, for the community

Many businesses and public spaces are not accessible or fully welcoming to people with disabilities. To address this barrier, Lifeworks is embarking on a long-term project to create a disability-friendly assessment that would help people identify and connect with disability-friendly places in our communities.

Goals and Motivation of Project

This work is supported by the State of Minnesota Department of Human Services – Disability Services Division.

The disability-friendly assessment would go above and beyond the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), coaching businesses on how they can meet the criteria, while helping Minnesotans connect to these committed businesses.

To ensure this project is created by and for people with disabilities, we are creating a to help develop the criteria and give feedback on the process over the next 18 months.

Our aim is to significantly enhance the quality of life for people with disabilities in Minnesota by creating a robust, user-friendly tool to help identify and connect with disability-friendly businesses. Why?

  • Over half of us working at Lifeworks have a disability.
  • Throughout our 60 years of providing service, we have seen some improvements in accessibility, but not enough.
  • 2/3 of unemployed and underemployed Minnesotans want a job! We simply need accessible ones.
  • Those of us with disabilities have higher rates of social isolation and mental health diagnosis – we want every Minnesotan to be able to participate in our communities.

Interested in joining the Community of Practice? Fill out the interest form and we will be in touch!

Click Here

What We Are Assessing

We plan to create a disability-friendly assessment criteria by and for the disability community. Using this, we’ll create a coaching and training program to support any interested Minnesota businesses and organizations in becoming disability-friendly. From there, we plan to design a technology tool that helps connect Minnesotans with the businesses committed to going above and beyond the ADA.

Areas of accessibility that the assessment will focus on:

Project Plan and Timeline

We plan to create a community of practice as our main partners, and also host ongoing listening sessions through June 2026 and beyond to gather broader community feedback.

  • March 2025: Finalize Community of Practice members
  • April 2025: Convene Community of Practice
  • October 2025:
    • Criteria & framework developed for disability-friendly assessment (DFA)
    • Framework for coaching and training to improve DFA scoress
    • Pilot coaching and training with MN businesses & organizations
  • March 2026: Finish pilot of DFA and coaching
  • June 2026: Proposal for timeline, process, technology map, and budget
  • Ongoing:
    • online surveys
    • online written updates about the project (via this webpage)
    • Open office hours (2 times per month)
    • Community Conversations (every 3 months)

Give Input and Get Involved

We want this project to be a representation of Minnesotans. We are looking for Minnesotans in all areas of the state to participate in whatever way is accessible and meaningful to them. There are 5 ways to be a part of this work:

  1. Community of Practice (opens new window)
    • 4 stakeholder groups
      • people with disabilities/disabled people
      • for-profit businesses
      • non-profit organizations
      • disability service & support organizations
    • Meet April 2025 through June 2026
    • Contribute feedback and ideas to the project process – expertise in disability is not required!
  2. Open Office Hours (opens new window)
    • Hosted 2 times per month virtually.
    • We’ll give updates on the process and give quick talks on topic requests.
  3. Community Conversations
    • Longer sessions that will happen once every three months either online or in person
    • More structured topics related to disability, with an opportunity to connect with Lifeworks Navigators.
  4. Online Surveys
    • We’ll be posting surveys to our website according to each phase of the project. We’d love your input!
  5. Stay updated
    • The webpage you’re on is dedicated to this project. All updated information will be posted here!

Have questions or want to get involved? Contact us to learn more.