Ava Advocacy is a new free service offered by Ava to make it easier, faster and better for you to obtain communication access in your everyday life.
Think of it as your personal team of vigilantes advocating for your accessibility needs.
Like Lauren Riddoff's Deaf character in Eternals, our team of accessibility superheroes will fight for you.
Anyone who is d/Deaf / hard-of-hearing. Especially if you're experiencing lack of access to communications at work, at school or in your daily life, and you're not sure exactly how to approach these situations.
We've been there before: You know you need accommodations to be successful at work or school, but the conversation is daunting or there's the anxiety about losing your job. Sometimes because you've tried everything already without success and you don't know what to do next.
We get it — it's not easy to advocate for yourself!
After seeing thousands of cases of people with inadequate access all across the US and Europe, and after providing help to improve the situation, we wanted to help anyone who needs access to get expert help — fast, easily and free of charge. We're a team of experienced accessibility experts and technologists who are Deaf, CODAs, deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing folks ourselves.
To help combat lack of access, our Advocacy experts will work with you (as well as other grassroots organizations that we're in touch with), and members (like your managers, professors, administrators, etc) of your organizations to:
For example, we might be able to work with your company to provide you with professional interpretation or transcriptions to meetings your manager uses for feedback or 1:1s.
As a social enterprise, Ava's mission is to build the foundations for a totally accessible world for all d/Deaf/hard-of-hearing people. We believe that you deserve professional accessibility at work, at school, at the hospital and other crucial situations... plus have readily available access for all of your communications. But we don't think you should bear the cost of the more expensive solutions, and that this cost should be shouldered in part by the organizations you're a member of, similar to how insurance models work.
When your organization agrees to make it happen, we benefit from them using Ava's professional solutions or one of our partner solutions. When it's not possible for them to participate financially to the accessibility costs, we partner with non-profits and governmental organizations and can also propose free alternatives. This model helps us cover the costs of experts working with you, aand propose an advocacy service absolutely free of charge for everyone.