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I'm Dr Karen Sacs, I'm a professor
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and Chair of the Department
of Administration, Rehabilitation
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and Post Secondary Education
at San Diego State University.
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I've been here for almost 30 years
now, but I started my career
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as Special Education Teacher.
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And, the first year that I taught,
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was the first year that my students
were ever allowed
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into public school,
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because of the severity of
their disabilities.
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A law was passed in 1975
that allowed students
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with very significant disabilities
-for everybody- to be able
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to come to public school.
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And that was the first year
that I started teaching.
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And we were in a small building,
with about 40 students,
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and a bunch of us, new teachers
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trying to figure out
what to do with all these kids
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from five to 22, who'd first
stepped foot into public school.
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So when I was teaching, this was
far before the ADA was passed,
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I learned a lot about
the lack of accessibility.
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In fact, with the students
I was teaching,
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I started teaching the older
students, the teenagers,
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and I didn't have a
lot of time with them in school
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because they'd just started.
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And I realised that they needed
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to learn how to access their community.
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They needed to learn how to get jobs,
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they needed to learn all those life skills
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because we had such short time with them.
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And in my school district
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they had people whose job was
to look for jobs for students,
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so they were 'job developers'
of sorts, and when I asked
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for a job developer for our school,
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I was told we wouldn't be getting one,
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because our students couldn't work.
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And, as you can imagine,
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that just motivated me to work it out.
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Because I knew my students could work.
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And so I started going out and meeting
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some of the business people
in the neighbourhood,
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and they introduced me
to other business people,
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I started learning how to talk
to employers,
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which was not something I learned
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in my Special Education Programme,
learning to be a teacher.
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And I found that,
my students, of course, could work.
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And I appealed directly to employers,
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and they helped me learn
the ropes of how to do all of this
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and I started teaching my students
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how to ride the bus,
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and how to figure out some kinds
of accommodations for them
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to do jobs.
It was so exciting
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when a student got a job
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and found something that they liked to do
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and that they were good at.
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And we had parents who never
in a million years had thought
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that their sons and daughters could work,
and yet
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they saw them being successful
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and parents who were very
nervous about
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having them go in the community
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were so excited, they became
of course our biggest advocates
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for expanding this
vocational programme.
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And so I found that no matter where I went
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I was trying to raise awareness
and more importantly,
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raise expectations
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about the students I was
working for,
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well, working for, and working with.
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When I came to San Diego State,
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it was to really look at how we
could use assisted technology
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to connect people with disabilities,
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whether they were going to school,
getting jobs,
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accessing their community in
any way.
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So assisted technology really
became an area I was focused on
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and we had a couple of federal grants
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that funded me and other colleagues
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to develop some community partnerships
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to support the development
of assisted technology
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so this was in the earlier days,
when the ADA had just passed,
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the communities were opening up,
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employers were becoming more aware,
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and we started getting people from
the community
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really interested in helping us
to make modifications,
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to help individual access the work
that they wanted to access.
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And so I started teaching a course
around the applications
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of assisted technology,
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I co-taught it with an engineering
faculty member,
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and we had students from Special
Education, from Rehabilitation,
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from Englineering...
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We also had people from the community.
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We had occupational and physical
therapists, speech therapists,
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we had people who sold equipment,
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we had different kinds of engineers
who took the class,
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and we all sort of learned together
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what the possibilities were when
we made a good match
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with people with disabilities
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and an assisted technology that
connected them
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to the activities that they
wanted to do.
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And we found out that it made
such a huge difference
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and it gave people
control over their lives.
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And one of the activities we did
in the class
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was to do the ADA Accessibility Survey
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and this was so eye-opening for
me and for my students
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and for people who were in our community,
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who were working with us.
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So we would have students
go out and conduct the survey
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and find out how accessible -or not-
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their local neighbourhoods were.
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They went to retail places,
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they went to restaurants,
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and hotels, and any kind of places
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that they might want to access
in their neighbourhoods
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and what we found is, for all of us,
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we just never looked at a place
the same way.
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And having that ADA Accessibility
Survey as a context,
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and as a guide to help us look at
where we could make changes
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because part of the assignment
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was not only taking the survey and
finding out what was good
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and where people could make improvements,
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but also to do the advocacy,
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to bring that awareness, and to
make sure that people realised
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that they had a whole market out there
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that they hadn't thought about.
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And in order for that market to
access their business,
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they needed to make it more accessible.
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So it was a really exciting and,
to this day, I still teach the class,
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and I still do the ADA Accessibility
Survey, and luckily
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things have got better and
we've seen a lot of improvements,
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but we always find things that
can be improved.
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So I have seen many
positive changes,
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both in physical access to buildings,
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but also access to electronic
and digital communication
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and that's a big one that has made
a huge difference.
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I think that what happens often is,
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we don't think about these
considerations up front.
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That all too often it's after the fact.
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Even at the university, whenever
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they're introducing new software,
new technologies, new platforms,
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that we're using,
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I always ask upfront
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"what about the accessibility?"
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And the answer was always, inevitably,
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"we'll get to that".
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"We'll get to that later".
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I've seen that change
and people are really looking
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at the accessibility issues upfront.
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But I think that really happens...
needs to happen more.
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And the idea of universal design
has to be thought of upfront,
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and it's much more inclusive,
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it's also more cost effective.
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And so I think getting into
the mindset of people upfront
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and I've had the chance to work
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with architecture students,
for example, and being able to
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introduce them to individuals
with disabilities has given them
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insight that it's not about compliance,
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it's not just about compliance
and going with the codes.
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But once they met people
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who were accessing the
community in different ways,
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it helped them think about
design in a new way.
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And it encouraged them to
consider their creativity
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in how to make their designs,
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whether these were buildings, or
outside landscapes,
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whatever it was, that they
should make those
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more accessible
for a wider range of people.
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What I'd like to see, is disability
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firmly planted in
the diversity discussions.
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I think, all too often,
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the diversity discussions,
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particularly that are happening
now, often leave disability
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out of the equation.
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And disability crosses over,
intersects, with every other identity
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whether it's gender, age,
ethnicity....every aspect,
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you'll find people with disabilities.
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And in fact, any of us can join
the disabled group
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at any time, and most of us will
at some point in our lives.
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So I think
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being able to think proactively and
holistically about disability
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is really critical and it has to be
forming part of those conversations
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that we're having about diversity.