vimeo.com/.../436580300

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 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 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