So,
My name is Michelle Nario - Redmond
I am a social psychologist and
teach at Hiram College
in psychology and biomedical humanities program
and I just wrote a book on Abilism the causes and consequences
of disability prejudice. My first memory
and I'll just back up and say in 1990,
when the ADA passed I was in graduate school,
in Kansas, and disability prejudice, the ADA or anything
related to disability issues were completely off my radar,
and I worked at a place where one of the pioneers
of disability studies worked, Beatrice Wright,
and I hadn't yet to have a class with her.
It really wasn't until 1995, which was five years later,
when my daughter was born, Sierra, with spina bifida,
that I became aware of disability and found the work
of Carol Gill and Simi Litton and began to educate myself
on disability studies and its scope, and the first memory I have of
confronting inaccessible spaces was a few years later, when we enrolled
my daughter Sierra in a preschool, at a catholic preschool,
right down the road; and it just didn't even dawn on me that we would have to
work so hard for her to be accommodated as a preschooler,
and it was really a function of the fact that the building was older,
there were steps, and they really didn't know, nor did they need to legally know,
about reasonable accommodations and civil rights of their students,
because they were a private facility and weren't subject to the ADA's rules.
So... it became clear to me that we needed to find a new preschool,
and luckily we found a private, another private place. It wasn't
a public school, but it was a music school settlement
and they had resources and they were already operating
under a sort of set of presumptions about the value of diversity
and diverse perspectives, and we didn't really have to ask for much,
because they bent over backwards to include my daughter
in a typical classroom, with her peers, her preschool peers, music classes,
there were so many eclectic movement classes,
and they even purchased equipment for their exercise room
and movement room that would be useful to her among others,
and she has since grown up to become this teacher and has applied
to work there as a preschool teacher. So, I think it would be really
amazing, if she came full circle. But, I guess, to stance the broader
question about being frustrated and aware of inaccessibility and lack of inclusion,
we were in a district that, when she then, was about to move to preschool, I
knew that she wouldn't probably be able to go to a private school, not only because
of the financial cost, but because they would not have to think about
best practices and the law when it came to accommodating
their students with disabilities, and so I knew we would be
looking at the public school,and the public school in our neighborhood
was not accessible. We went to visit it, the playground had a little house
that she wouldn't have been able to get into,
and it was really disheartening and so it came at a time
when we were already looking for other opportunities,
and my husband got an opportunity to move us as a family
to the West Coast of Portland of Oregon,
so the way I...we had to navigate her early educational experiences
was to only look at spaces and schools that were in districts that were new,
so that had buildings and had training in terms of
accommodating their diverse students and their disabled students,
because just having the brief experiences that I did with the preschool
and IEP meetings that were going to require me to fight at every juncture
for her basic rights to show what she knows
and participate and recognize herself as a valuable contributor
to the school community. We're not going to be forthcoming
without a fight, and so we narrowed our search
to a district, and thank God we had the opportunity
and the resources to do this, that was pretty known for their
inclusivity.
We did that also when we came back to the Cleveland, Ohio area.
We were able to avoid all districts that weren't at the cutting edge
of full inclusion and proof of excellence and had newer buildings
that could accommodate those with disabilities,
but I guess that that was my earliest memory of how, 'Oh, we have a road
ahead of us and we have to take it upon ourselves to either continue to fight
battles that had already been won, legislatively or find spaces, places
and organizations that were ahead of the curve
in terms of implementing, monitoring and just execute the basic civil rights
of their various constituents
The impact that all of that has had on me is to just be able to communicate
with other parents and students with disabilities
about not only knowing their rights but knowing how to get those rights
how to advocate for ensuring that those rights are addressed, are met.
I think the ADA has made a huge difference
and the aha moment was even when I was collating information for this book
on disability prejudice. I realised that when I was a kid,
when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, people with disabilities weren't able to
do any of the things that we took for granted as kids: go to the movies
go to restaurants, go to visit a friend, at a friend's house, or invite
others to your birthday parties.
And, since the ADA passed in 1990, it wasn't an immediate set of changes,
as, you know, there has been significant progress made, particularly in public
spaces and in employment settings, where there are even employers
who are part of an organization of inclusive excellence, who
recognize that disabled employees are actually more reliable and
have less turnover and are worth investing in and promoting.
But, there are still so many places, small businesses, educational institutions
that are not carrying out the basic, sort of gains and practices that the ADA
has made possible .There's just way too much variation, and I think part of that
is just a lack of education in terms of what
is reasonable and what is necessary
in terms of accommodating your citizenry
and lack of resources in some cases but
also a lot of misinformation about whether
or not it's worth it. The ADA is going to
be 30 here in July. We're celebrating all
over the country and we are still fighting
for businesses to do what they should have
done 30 years ago, those that have been
around this long. They have not, they have
have waited for complaints or they have
failed to do but the bare minimum in
terms of recruiting the largest minority
I work in the education sphere and to me,
we could be doing so much more with
advertising and recruiting for those kinds
of students that we tend to really, at
least my institution, do well to retain
because we're a small, intimate college,
Hiram College. And, and for years I've tried to
encourage us to consider more universally
designed approaches, but also approaches
that do more than the bare minimum when it comes to housing and
extracurricular accommodations for
students to who use mobility devices. For
example, my daughter ended up having to be
carried in her chair, to various club
meetings while she was on the Hiram
College campus. She was told that, during the
winter, when the ice storms came, that
they couldn't transport her up the long
hill, while they were telling everyone
else to walk like a penguin, and we had
vans to do this. We had to file with the
Ohio Disability Rights Commission and
request that the school thinks about other
ways of accommodating her, should there
be a storm, an ice storm, and she can't
get up to campus. And the solution
was to have her move to a new dorm.
You can't just do that over night.
You can't just move all your bedding
and all your bathroom supplies
and your whole... you know at the moment's
notice, when the weather changes
and so it has been my experience that
still a lot of places have done the bare minimum approach
and think that that's all they need to do
when instead, they could be following more
of the latest practices and implementation's science
and making it easier for people to
register concerns or complaints. And
they often don't even need to file a
formal complaint issue, if you approach a business or
your educational institution with an issue.
Often times, progressive thinkers that recognize the value of
customers with disabilities frequenting their businesses or
diversifying their faculty or their student body
will simply not be aware that they have failed to accommodate or
make accessible various programs and spaces.
And that can be as simple as asking. But a lot of times a lot more
has to be done, you have to document you have
to make sure your emails go to multiple people
and make the business case of why surveying your policies
to see whether they are biases or whether
there is discrimination in filing of
complaints or even you have a title
of, you know, a (...) officer on campus or (...) cooridnator
so that you can let students with disabilities know
who may have not proper documentation
how they can go about making sure that
they get what they need to show
what they know, before they fail classes
because they haven't knocked at the door
of disability services and provided proof
that they have a particular condition
So I know, I am sort of rambling a bit,
but I just, just wasn't aware of how much
further we need to go when it comes to
surveying and making sure that the ADA
is being implemented and just because
a law passes doesn't mean again
that it is just going to happen
you have to have allies and acitivists
and insiders working very hard
to make sure that people are recognizing
the value of legislation
which I think, still people are under
the assumption that it applies to
people who identify with disabilities but
I don't think that was even neccesserely
even the intent of the ADA
I think it recognizes that people flow
in and out of abilities and the extent to
which they are excluded or discriminated
against, because of their abilities is
really what this legislation was about
even having a record of having a
condition that maybe you no longer have
or you had it temporarily can mean that
you might be excluded. If you applied for
jobs recently, you know, many places
require a statement. You have to indicate
based of strict definitions whether you
have limitations in these major life
activities that will qualify you as a
disabled person and I want to believe that
they are asking these questions, so that
they can mindfully recruit people with
disabilities joining their ranks