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The Inclusion Event
For 100 years disAbility Connections has supported those with disabilities and worked to raise disability awareness. As the capstone of our centennial celebration, The Inclusion Event (TIE) was held on October 11, 2025. Our focus for this event was awareness of disability issues and included everyone with or without a disability living together successfully in our community.
A taste of TIE 2025 with Gaelynn Lea
The Inclusion Event 2025
with Gaelynn Lea Tressler
Gaelynn Lea Tressler, best known professionally as Gaelynn Lea, as our guest and keynote speaker and performer at the Music on Tap series of the Jackson Symphony Orchestra. Lea is an American folk singer, violinist, public speaker and disability advocate from Duluth, Minnesota who won NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2016 and made her Broadway debut in 2022.
Lea is a sought-after public speaker about accessibility in the arts. She has been featured on PBS NewsHour, On Being with Krista Tippett, The Moth Radio Hour, The Science of Happiness Podcast, and via two widely-viewed TEDx Talks.
Gaelynn Lea is a talented musician who happens to have a disability. She has a form of dwarfism called osteogenesis imperfecta, otherwise known as brittle bone disease. She is also an amazing violinist. Both are part of her identity. Her disability made it necessary for her to reinvent the ordinary — and, in this case, a way to play the violin.