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So, my name is
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Michelle Nario Redmond.
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I am a social psychologist
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and I teach at (Hiram?) College.
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in the psychology
and biomedical humanities program,
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and I just wrote a book on ableism,
the causes and consequences
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of disability prejudice.
My first memory,
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and I'll just back up and say 1990,
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when the ADA passed
I was in graduate school,
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in Kansas, and disability prejudice,
the ADA or anything
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related to disability issues
was completely off my radar,
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and I worked at a place
where one of the pioneers
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of disability studies worked,
Beatrice Wright,
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and I had yet to have a class with her.
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It really wasn't until 1995,
which was five years later,
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when my daughter was born,
Sierra was spina bifoda,
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that I became aware
of disability and found the work
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of Carol Gill and (Simi Litton?)
and began to educate myself
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on disability studies and its scope,
and the first memory I have of
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confronting inaccessible spaces
was a few years later, when we enrolled
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my daughter Sierra in a preschool,
at a Catholic preschool,
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right down the road; and it just didn't
even dawn on me that we would have to
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work so hard for her to be accommodated
as a preschooler,
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and it was really a function of
the fact that the building was older,
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there were steps, and they really didn't
know, nor did they need to legally know,
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about reasonable accommodations
and civil rights of their students,
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because they were a private facility and
weren't subject to the ADA's rules.
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So it became clear to me that we needed
to find a new preschool, and luckily
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we found another private place -
it wasn't a public school -
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but it was a music school settlement
and they had resources
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and they were already operating
under a sort of set of presumptions
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about the value of diversity
and diverse perspectives,
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and we didn't really have to ask for much,
because they bent over backwards
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to include my daughter
in a typical classroom, with her peers,
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her preschool peers, music classes,
there were so many eclectic--
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movement classes, and they even
purchased equipment
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for their exercise room and movement room
that would be useful to her among others,
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and she has since grown up to become this teacher
and has applied to work there
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as a preschool teacher, so I think
it would be really amazing
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if she came full circle, but I guess
to answer the broader question
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about being frustrated and aware of
inaccessibility and lack of inclusion,
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we were in a district that, when she then
was about to move to preschool,
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I knew that she probably wouldn't be
able to go to a private school,
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not only because of the financial cost
but also because they would not have to
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think about best practices
and the law when it came to
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accommodating their
students with disabilities,
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and so I knew we would be
looking at the public school,
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and the public school in our neigbourhood
was not accessible.
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We went to visit it,
the playground had a little house
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that she wouldn't have been
able to get into,
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and it was really disheartening
and so it came at a time
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when we were already
looking for other opportunities,
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and my husband got an opportunity
to move us as a family
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to the West Coast
in Portland of Oregon,
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so the way I-- so the way we had to
navigate her early educational experiences
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was to only look at spaces and schools
that were in districts that were new,
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so that had buildings
and had training in terms of
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accommodating their diverse students
and their disabled students,
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because just having the brief experiences
that I did with the preschool
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and IEP meetings that were going to
require me to fight at every juncture
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for her basic rights
to show what she knows
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and participate and recognise herself
as a valuable contributor
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to the school community.
We're not going to be forthcoming
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without a fight,
and so we narrowed our search
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to a district,
and thank God we had the opportunity
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and the resources to do this,
that was pretty known for their
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inclusivity.
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We did that also when we came back
to the Cleveland, Ohio area.
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We were able to avoid all districts
that weren't at the cutting edge
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of full inclusion and proof of excellence
and had newer buildings
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that could accommodate those
with disabilities,
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but I guess that that was my earliest
memory of how, 'Oh, we have a road
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ahead of us and we have to take it upon
ourselves to either continue to fight
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battles that had already been won,
legislatively, or, finds spaces, places
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and organisations that were ahead
of the curve
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in terms of implementing, monitoring and
just execute the basic civil rights
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of their various constituents'
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The impact that all of that has had on me
is to just be able to communicate
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with other parents and students
with disabilities
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about not only knowing their rights but
knowing how to get those rights
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how to advocate for ensuring that those
rights are addressed, are met.
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I think the ATA has made
a huge difference
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and the 'ah ha' moment was even when I was
collating information for this book
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on disability prejudice, I realised that
when I was a kid,
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when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s,
people with disabilities weren't able to
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do any of the things that we took for
granted as kids- go to the movies
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go to restaurants, go to visit a friend,
at a friend's house, or invite
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others to your birthday parties.
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Since the ATA passed in 1990, it wasn't
an immediate set of changes,
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as, there has been significant progress
made, particularly in public spaces
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and in employment settings, where there
are even employers
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who are part of an organisation
of inclusive excellence, who
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recognise that disabled employees are
actually more reliable and
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have less turnover and are worth
investing in and promoting.
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But, there are still so many places,
small businesses, educational institutions
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that are not carrying out basic games and
practices that the ADA has made possible
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there's just way too much variation,
and I think part of that