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 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 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, 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 availible 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 so

much that we can do to leverage more of

these ways of monitoring and implementing

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 make 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 kind sorts of other

basic human rights but this being an election

year there is 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

interphase with the electronic equipement

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 fro 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 of

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 also

I am aware that not many people know about

the number, the sheer number of people

with disabilities visible and a lot of

invisible who are incarcerated and who are

caught up in that system of jailing and

aren't getting what they need inside or

should have never been incarcerated to

begin with bacause mayve they experience

a condition that was misunderstood from

the outset and so instead of deescalating

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

about defunding police or the incarcerating

institutions but recognizing how many

people of color have disabilities, how many

women are 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

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 araise awareness about

how they can do better in terms of

their work force and retaining and

retaining and recruiting actively

professionals who, you know, they may not

consider as a valuable resource but gosh

people with disabilities are so of the

most creative folks because they have to

figure out how navigate and they do have

persepctives that are normally based on

maybe their particular
impairment experinces

but having to navigate the world that

isn't accessible, how to find the backdoor

how to find the policies and so there is a

lot of resilience to be found 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 Kenids book how to be an

anit-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 abilism but I really think the moment

is now to consider some of the things at

the same time because I think we may loose

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

(...) discriminatory

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

because they come 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, do

folks know how to find information and how

to request a 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 a accommodations, 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 curious

about that 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 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 abled

bodied would before dinner, you know, 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't 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 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 then

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

accessilble and that are. She is working

in the education as a preschool teacher

herself. But now 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 gravited

toward her because 
she has this visible signs

of her disability, her wheelchair and if

you can educate the youngs,
the preschoolers and show them

people of all abilities can be teachers

and parents and ongoing learners, you know

they tend to even those kids with behavior

problems com to her. They see as this

beacon of hope, I think, that is a real

cue for employers who ever gets my

daughter as a teacher is going to be lucky.