vimeo.com/.../436580300

So,

My name is Michelle .....

I am a social psychologist and

teach at .......... College

in psychology and biomedical
humanities program

and I just wrote a book on Abilism
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 had 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 bifoda,

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 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 answer 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 probably wouldn't be
able to go to a private school,

not only because of the financial cost
but also 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 neigbourhood
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-- so the way 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, finds 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 'ah ha' 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.

Since the ADA passed in 1990, it wasn't
an immediate set of changes,

as, 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 basic 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 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. For years I've tried to

encourage us to consider more universally

designed approaches but also approaches

that do more 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, in 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 think 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