vimeo.com/.../436631998

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I'm Dr Karen Sacs, I'm a professor

and Chair of the Department
of Administration, Rehabilitation

and Post Secondary Education
at San Diego State University.

I've been here for almost 30 years
now, but I started my career

as Special Education Teacher.

And, the first year that I taught,

was the first year that my students
were ever allowed

into public school,

because of the severity of
their disabilities.

A law was passed in 1975, that
allowed students

with very significant disabilities,
for everybody to be able

to come to public school.

And that was the first year
that I started teaching.

And we were in a small building,
with about 40 students,

and a bunch of us, new teachers

trying to figure out what to do
with all these kids

from ages 5 to 22, who first
stepped foot into public school.

So when I was teaching, this was
far before the ADA was passed,

I learned a lot about
the lack of accessiblity.

In fact, with the students
I was teaching,

I started teaching the older
students, the teenagers,

and I didn't have a whole lot
of time with them in school

because they've just started.

And I realized that they needed

to learn how to access their
community,

They needed to learn how to
get jobs,

they needed to learn all
those life skills

because you had so short time
with them.

And in my school district

they had people whose job was
to look for jobs for students,

so they were 'job developers'
of sorts, and when I asked

for a job developer for our school,

I was told that we wouldn't
be getting one,

because our students
couldn't work.

And, as you can imagine,

that just motivated me to
figure it out.

Because I knew that my students
could work.

And so I started going out
and meeting

some of the business people
in the neighborhood,

and they introduced me
to other business people,

I started learning how to talk
to employers,

which was nice, something
I learned

in my Special Education Program,
learning to be a teacher.

And I found that,
my students of course, could work.

and I appealed directly to
employers,

and they helped me learn
the ropes of how to do all of this

and I started teaching my students

how to ride the bus,

and how to figure out some kinds
of accommodations for them

to do jobs, and it was so exciting

when a student got a job

and found something that
they liked to do

and that they were good at.

And we had parents who never
in a million years had thought

that their sons and daughters
could work, and yet

they saw them being successful

and parents who were very
nervous about

having them involved in the community

were so excited, they became
of course our biggest advocates

for expanding this
educational program.

And so I found that no matter
where I went

I was trying to raise awareness
and more importantly,

raise expectations

about the students I was
working for

and well, working with.

When I came to San Diego State,

it was to really look at how we
could use assisted technology

to connect people with disabilities

whether they were going to school,
getting jobs,

accessing their community in
any way.

So assisted technology really
became an area I was focused on

and we had a couple of
federal grants

that funded me, funded me and
other colleagues

to develop some community
partnerships

to support the development
of assisted technology

so this was in the earlier days,
I think the ADA had just passed,

the communities were opening up,

employers were becoming
more aware,

and we started getting people from
the community

really interested in helping us
to make modifications,

to help individual access the work
that they wanted to access.

And so I started teaching a course
around the applications

of assisted technology,

I co-taught it with an engineering
faculty member

and we had students from Special
Education, from Rehabilitation,

from Englineering...

we also had people from
the community,

we had occupational and physical
therapists, speech therapists,

we had people who sold equipment,

we had different kinds of engineers
who took the class,

and we all sort of long together

what the possibilities were when
we made a good match

with people with disabilities

and an assisted technology that
connected them

to the activities that they
wanted to do.

And we found out that made
such a huge difference

and it gave people control over
their lives.

And one of the activities we did
in the class

was to do the ADA Accessibility Survey

and this was so eye opening for
me and for my students

and for people who were in
our community,

who were working with us.

So we would have students
go out and conduct the survey

and find out how accessible
-or not-

their local neighborhoods were.

They went to retail places,

they went to restaurants,

and hotels, and any kind of places

that they might want to access
in their neighborhoods

and what we found is, for all of us,

we just never looked at a place
the same way.

And having that ADA Accessibility
Survey as a context,

and as a guide to help us look at
where we could make changes

because part of the assignment

was not only taking the survey and
finding out what was good

and where people could make
improvements,

but also to do the advocacy,

to bring that awareness, and to
make sure that people realize

that they have a whole market
out there

that they hadn't thought about.

And in order for that market to
access their businesses,

they needed to make it more accessible.

So it was a really exciting and,
to this day, I still teach the class,

and I still do the ADA Accessibility
Survey, and luckily

things have gotten better and
we've seen a lot of improvements,

but we always find things that
can be improved.

So I have seen many
positive changes,

both in physical access
to buildings,

but also access to electronic
and digital communication

and that's a big one that has made
a huge difference.

I think that what happens often is,

we don't think about these
considerations up front.

That all too often is after
the fact.

even at the university, whenever

they're introducing new software,
new technologies, new platforms,

that we're using,

I always ask upfront

what about the accessibility?

and it used to be that the answer
was always, inevitably...

"we'll get to that."

"We'll get to that later"

I've seen that change and people
are really looking

at the accessibility issues upfront.

But I think that really happens...
needs to happen more.

And the idea of universal design
has to be thought of upfront,

And it's much more inclusive

it's also much more cost effective.

And so I think getting into
the mindset of people upfront

and I've had the chance to work

with architecture students,
for example, and being able to

introduce them to individuals
with disabilities has given them

insight that it's not about
compliance

it's not just about compliance
and going with the codes.

But once they've met people

who were accessing the
community in different ways,

it helped them think about
design in a new way.

And it encouraged them to
consider their creativity

in how to make their designs,

whether these were buildings, or
outside landscapes,

whatever it was, that they
should make those

more accessible
for a wider range of people.

What I'd like to see, is
disability

firmly planted in the diversity
discussions.

I think, all too often

the diversity discussions,

particularly that are happening
now, often leave disability

out of the equation.

And disability crossings over
intersects with every other identity

whether it's gender, age,
ethnicity....every aspect

you'll find people with disabilities.

And in fact, any of us can join

the disable group, at any time
and most of us will at some point

in our lives. So I think

being able to think proactively and
holistically about disability...

is really critical and it has to be
forming part of those conversations

that we're having about diversity.