So,
My name is Michelle Nario - Redmond
I am a social psychologist and
I teach at Hiram College
in psychology and biomedical humanities program
and I just wrote a book on ableism 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 Linton 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 neighbourhood
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, and
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 realized 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. You know, the ADA is going to
be 30 here in July. We're celebrating around
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 sort of
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, an officer on campus or ADA - coordinator
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 activists
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 necessarily
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 on 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 those questions, so that
they can mindfully recruit people with
disabilities to join their ranks, their
staffing, but sometimes I think what
prevents people from using that
information to disqualify candidates
so there has to be checks and balances
and accountabilities when it comes to
making sure your civil rights legislation
doesn't put all of the owners on the
group itself to file and follow through
and figure out which parts of the ADA are
being violated. You know that can be
really discouraging when all you want to
do is go out, and you know, go to the beach
and find out which beaches are accessible
or whether there is, you know, a mobility
devices that are available via the sand or
you just want to go camping or you just
want to go frequent people who are
minorities on businesses or disabilities
on businesses and some of this is out
there and I tried to promote it through
books and activists pages, but there is just so
much that we can do to leverage more of
these ways of monitoring and implementing
and taking access to the next level whether
for the disabled community pro forma or
proper or for anyone who uses strollers
who might carry a lot of materials in
their hands could benefit from a push
button. I think we need all to do a better
job at making the business and the
other benefit cases for improving our ADA
access. Where my passions lie of late is
in getting out the votes because we know
that disabled people have been
disenfranchised from the vote and from
parenting and from all kinds of other
basic human rights but this being an election
year there are all kinds of folks working
to crip the vote, #cripthevote Alice Wong
and others who have been trying to make
sure that candidates for president and for
congressional offices and even local
campaigns are expressing what their stance
is on the ADA and on disability rights and
human rights and hold, for the first
time we've seen some traction on that.
But what people don't realize is how many
places are not accessible to voters with
disabilities either because they use
assisted technologies that don't
inter-phase with the electronic equipment
or they can't get accessible transportation
or the place itself is simply inaccessible
or they are institutionalized and barred
from voting because of that and so the
center for American progress has been
publishing some of the numbers, like over
60% of polling places are considered
inaccessible. That's a problem. So voting
by mail may benefit a lot of groups if
you think of some of that in the future.
And then the second big issue we should
follow up on that not many people know
about and that I am not even so clear as
how is the ADA serves the population of
people who are incarcerated in jails and
in prisons and in institutions. I know the
ADA amendments have been 2009 done a
better job of successfully helping folks
litigate when they are isolated and there
for not included because of their
institutionalized placements, but I also
I am aware that not many people know about
the number, the sheer numbers of people
with disabilities visible and a lot of
invisible who are incarcerated and who have been
caught up in that system of jailing and
aren't getting what they need inside or
should have never been incarcerated to
begin with because maybe they experience
a condition that was misunderstood from
the outset and so instead of de-escalating
a situation. Police need more training, we
need to make the public more aware of how
many people are languishing in the
institutions where they are not, only not
productive, but you know, what a waste of
human capital. So, as we think about
the Black Lives Matter movement and the
opportunities for intersectionality, I
think the opportunities for allies of all
kinds of civil rights groups need to come
together and really leverage their powers
to begin to think about not necessarily
just defunding police or the decarcerating
institutions but recognizing how many
people of colour have disabilities, how many
women, and how many are incarcerated with
disabilities that may not even belong there
so there is so much to be done on those
two funds alone. And, clearly employment, you know that
people are still way under employed, but I
know there are folks working to improve
that and I am trying to work with those
organizations to arise awareness about
how they can do better in terms of
their work force and retaining and recruiting actively
professionals who, you know, they may not
consider as a valuable resource, but gosh
people with disabilities are some of the
most creative folks because they had to
figure out how to navigate and they do have
persepctives that are normally based on
maybe their particular impairment experiences
but having to navigate a world that
isn't accessible, how to find the backdoor,
how to find the policies and so there is a
lot of resilience to find there, too.
We need to be asking community members to
confront ableism when they see it and part
of that is educating people on the various
forms that disability prejudice and discrimination can take.
There is an interesting moment right now
with regard to anti-racism frameworks
that are getting a lot of traction and
people are beginning to, at least educational institutions,
start teaching circles where many of us
are reading Ibram Kendi's book how to be an
anti-racist, how to first recognize when
prejudice and discrimination exist on the
bases of race, that we could also be doing
with books related to disability prejudice
and ableism but I really think the moment
is now to consider some of the things at
the same time because I think we may lose
nuances of people who are confronting
multiple oppressions. Though, I am just
bringing that up because I know there is a
lot of folks at my school now thinking
about that, we review policies to find out
whether our syllabi are discriminatory,
whether our policies for recruitment may have
things embedded or cooked into the
algorithms that are unintentionally
excluding or failing to retain or promote
those with disabilities at our institutions
and so, when I think about the next steps
what people can do I come back to, you know
when people say something and they may
just not know, they are not familiar
perhaps with folks with various disabilities
and we know that contact with people who
experienced disabilities and differences
is what makes people less prejudice
they become much more aware of the
whole person and our stereotypes are not
generalize-able and how if they listened
to the voices of disabled people, they can
hear first hand what is problematic and
we need to be doing by allowing folks with
disabilities to speak, to be heard and
then to support their agendas and not
necessarily just take over. So, the confrontation
literature is all about not necessarily
saying: "Hey, you are a jerk. You just said
something racist or ableist" and putting
people on their defensive heels. That we
can do this in ways that actually open up
dialogues and that we should be
encouraging difficult dialogues and brave
conversations around what we can do
locally in our houses, in our communities
in our schools and organizations to make
one change, to make one difference: to ask
what is our policy, do we know whether all
of our employees know what their rights
are, should we be scheduling regular
meetings with the ADA coordinator, so that
folks know how to find information and how
to request accommodation. Would it be
great if parents went into an IEP Meeting
at their schools, knowing what their kids
got as accommodations. I think people are
so non-forthcoming at organizations with
the things that they view as special privileges that are
only for those who, quote on quote, need
it or deserve it. And when we look at
disability rights as special privileges,
we don't see them as civil rights that are
required to be met and so we could be much
more transparent about making sure our
websites are not only accessible to navigate
if you have a sensory or other impairments
but to make explicit what the policy is
for requesting an accommodation, how you
not be fired for disclosing for example
how we can confront things in non-aggressive way.
To ask people when they say something
pejorative or maybe just outdated, you
know, the word "handicap" is still out
there i call it "handicrap", the word
"special"' and we can just ask: "what do
you mean by that, what do you mean that
they can't do that or that you are curious
about how they have sex, can you tell me
more about why you think that and it can
start a dialogue and that is something we
can all do. I am still working hard to
make my own home accessible to my 24 year
old. We did construction to modify the
house when we first bought it is a single
level so that she feel like she was a part
of the family and be able to get to all
parts of the kitchen and her bathroom but
there you know the laundry room has one
step that we are still negotiating how to
make sure that she can get into the garage but
things like where we put things in the
refrigerator. You know if you have a
wheelchair user in your family or someone
who is a little person who may have a
congenital or an otherwise amputated limb
and we put things on shelves without even
thinking about who can access the shelf
and my other child who happens to be able-
bodied would, you know, before dinner try
to get a snack and before we could even
say "no" he was out the door with the
snack. My daughter would have to come in
and say "Can I, can you get something of
the top shelf from me and then we would
say, you know, why don't you wait until
dinner time and we have to be mindful
about which drawers we want to put her
things into. She can not feel like a second
class citizen in her own family space and
those are some things that we can remind
our peers who have kids with disabilities
as we try to go on and educated another
parents in our parenting roles and our
roles as educators and who are diversity
committees. Our diversity committee now is
taking on accessibility as part of our
mental and trying to convince others that we
need to be doing ongoing data collection
to benchmark, I think a lot of people are
afraid of data that might say "your campus
climate isn't the most accessible", but
unless you name the thing, unless you document the thing
that is perhaps of concern of a less than
fully inclusive or accessible, you can't
make progress. And, I think people
appreciate, you know, the one in four
or five people with disabilities and
their families appreciate when people say
"we are not there yet, but this is what we
are doing and in a short term we will have
reviewed our handbooks so that at least
this is done by this year and next year we
are going to advertise for positions in
places to increase the number of disabled
people on our staff, because students need
mentors. They need to see people that look
like them and then have similar challenges
so that they know what is possible, so I
just sort of conclude by saying my daughter,
you know, made it through preschool and
has been in several different kinds of
spaces on college campuses that aren't so
accessible and that are. She is working
in the education as a preschool teacher
herself. But since the COVID-19 outbreak
she was laid off, she was furloughed from
her brand-new job. And, of late she is
putting resumes back out and there must be
something about the pandemic now, where not
many people are wanting to go back to work
in close encounters with kids. She is
getting one interview after another and so
she may end up with multiple offers now
and I remind her to tell the folks that
preschools when they get someone like her
on their staff, so many students gravitate
towards her because she has these visible signs
of her disability, her wheelchair and if
you can educate the young preschoolers and show them
that people of all abilities can be teachers
and parents and ongoing learners and you know
they tend to even those kids with behavior
problems, they want to come to her. They see as this
beacon of hope, I think, that is a real
cue for these employers, who ever gets my
daughter as a teacher is going to be lucky.