Advocacy Plan
For advocacy, it is important that I educate myself on disability issues so that, when appropriate, I can support the community’s causes. I need to increase my awareness of what makes a place accessible, and choose not to patronize places that are not welcoming to people with physical disabilities and mobility needs. I should also do whatever I can to turn attention to people with disabilities who speak out about the unique needs of their community. Writing to lawmakers and supporting politicians who explicitly support people with disabilities is another step that I, and other people who want to be advocates can do. It is important that throughout this, I continue to listen to people in the community so that my voice never overshadows theirs, and I always defer to their superior understanding of their experiences and needs so that we can build a community to which everyone has access.
Reference:
Coelho, T. (Photographer). (2017, April 11). The Disability Rights Movement Needs Our Activism Now [digital image]. Retrieved from http://nosmag.org/the-disability-rights-movement-needs-our-activism-now/
Servant Leadership
“My physical impairments are not what disables me; what disables me is a world that is not universally accessible.”
–Robyn Lambird
Throughout the process of researching for this project, I’ve come across blogs, vlogs, and Youtube channels dedicated to discussing disability issues. These all come from creators with disabilities who want to spread awareness. Many, if not all of them, touch on the fact that there is a lot of incorrect assumption about their lives. Able-bodied people have not asked people with disabilities for their stories, and have not cared to correct the misinformation they’ve accumulated. As a part of my advocacy, I’d like to compile a list of these, so that abled people can have access to perspectives that will help them be better informed. The most important aspect of the list is that it is ever growing as more people are empowered to share their stories. I would also like to try to encourage other people with disabilities to use the many new platforms that the internet offers to share their stories.
Strengths-Based Needs
In an experiment, Strenta and Kleck (1984) examined the way able bodied people perceive people with disabilities. They found that, though in their experiment no one with a disability was visible, students perceived interactions differently if they believed they were interacting with someone with a disability. This, I think, is representative of the need for education about disability issues, as few abled people are aware of the differing needs that people with disabilities have. People with disabilities need to be given a voice in order for their needs to be better understood. Abled people have a duty to ensure that these voices are heard. The above picture is representative of this need because it shows an able bodied person listening to a person with a disability. Abled people need to be able to do this in order to advocate with people with disabilities.
Reference:
Piro, V. (Photographer). (April, 2017). University students walking in campus [Digital Image]. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2017/04/06/challenges-wheelchair-users-face-when-visiting-colleges-essay
Systemic Challenges
Barnes and Mercer (2005) noted that while the policies put into place to help and support people with disabilities, they can also increase the segregation between people with disabilities and those without. This information struck me as interesting and necessary to understand, and it reminded me of some personal accounts I’ve read on blogs written by people with disabilities. On one such blog, written by a man with Cerebral Palsy, points out that while many public spaces are technically accessible, it’s at a great inconvenience to the person who needs those accommodations (The Urban Cripple, 2017), and that isn’t the same thing as equality. This post inspired my image, where I selected four common signs to demonstrate the ways that accessibility is treated as abnormal, or merely a standard that must be met in order to open a restaurant or store, rather than a necessary part of including as wide a variety of people as possible. The center image shows a person in a wheelchair in front of a set of stairs. This project helped me become much more aware of the accessibility, or lack thereof, in the spaces that I frequent. Previously, I hadn’t paid much attention to the signs which denote accessibility, now I find myself noticing how often they point somewhere other than the “main” entrance, which would be a marginalizing experience, especially when it occurs frequently.
References:
Barnes, C., & Mercer, G. (2005). Disability, work, and welfare: Challenging the social exclusion of disabled people. Work, Employment and Society, 19(3), 527–545. https://doi- org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1177/0950017005055669
The Urban Cripple. 2017, May 7). If You’re Gonna Make Something Wheelchair Accessible, Don’t Make it a Thing [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://urbancripple.tumblr.com/post/160431414062
Thomson Dorfman Sweatman (Photographer). (2018, September 10). Wheelchair-Bound Woman Faces Inaccessible Stairs [digital image]. Retrieved from www.tdslaw.com-wheelchair-bound-woman-faces-inaccessible-stairs.jpg
Annotated Bibliography
Barnes, C., & Mercer, G. (2005). Disability, work, and welfare: Challenging the social exclusion of disabled people. Work, Employment and Society, 19(3), 527–545. https://doi- org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1177/0950017005055669
The purpose of this article is to address and challenge the many social and environmental barriers that exist between people with disabilities and the work that they want to be doing. This position paper argues that many of the unemployment analyses that have been done for populations with physical disabilities have ignored these societal factors, which need to be addressed in order for researchers and advocates to understand the full scope of the problem. Though this article is one of the newer that I found, it is from 2005. Much of the literature it cites is old, however, some of it can provide important background for academic attitudes toward people with disabilities. The article argues that many of the policies that are intended to help those with disabilities actually further their segregation, and that in order to change this, and uses social theory to posit some ways that these policies might be changed to increase inclusion. The authors suggest that political policies regarding people with disabilities create a narrative that reinforces the idea of people with disabilities as a problem, the solution for which abled people are responsible. This leads to great societal exclusion of people with disabilities, which is especially notable in the workplace. The article suggests that adopting the social model of disability, rather than the impairment-focused medical model, would create a better environment for people with disabilities. This article helps my research because it offers a perspective on some of the social and societal barriers that exist and affect the culture of people with disabilities, something I need to understand in order to immerse myself. My main critique of the article is that I believe it was written by an abled person, and sometimes I feel that his position does not ask people with disabilities what they think or what they want. In fact, he reports that reception by people with disabilities of the social model was only ‘mixed’. This offers an interesting perspective and a lot of good facts and statistics, but maybe doesn’t provide insight into what people with disabilities want and are advocating for.
Strenta, A. C., & Kleck, R. E. (1984). Physical disability and the perception of social interaction: It’s not what you look at but how you look at it. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 10(2), 279–288. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1177/0146167284102014
This article is a peer reviewed research paper about people with disabilities’ perceptions of social interactions. The article (and the experiment it discusses) is old, however it offers some insight into people process interactions with people with disabilities, and thus is relevant, as it may help me to be aware of my own thought process and interactions. The authors used 48 college students to study the way people interacted with those they believed to have a disability. The participants watched a video, and were told that one of the people in the video, who remained off-camera, was either abled, taking medication for an allergy, taking medication for epilepsy, or facially scarred. The results indicate that people who believed they were watching an interaction with a ‘more disabled’ person—the person with scarring or the person with epilepsy—were more likely to believe that disability had a high impact on the person’s behavior. People also tended to be more aware of the person with disabilities’ behavior, which is interesting because this experiment was done with a video that did not show anyone with an actual disability, the people watching the video only believed they were. This article is interesting, as it helped me get a better understanding of some of the biases I might not be aware of, however I believe it focuses too much on scarring as a visible disability. There are a number of factors that contribute to a person’s reaction to a person with severe scarring, which I’m not sure would also contribute to a person’s reaction to a different physical disability. Because epilepsy—the other disability used in the experiment—is largely invisible, I’m not sure the results of this experiment fully apply to what I’m researching.
Thomson, R. G. (2017). Extraordinary bodies: Figuring physical disability in American culture and literature. New York: Columbia University Press.
This is a book I found that analyzes the intersection of feminism, American culture, and disability, especially as it is portrayed in film. Media has a vast impact on our perceptions of populations, which means that analyzing the way abled people have portrayed people with disabilities is extremely important to understand the way we as a culture perceive people with disabilities. The book’s introduction provides a detailed outline of the history of disability studies, and of the cultural impact disability representation—or lack thereof— has had. The author points out that while people with disabilities have greatly impact culture— artists, activists, lawyers, and a wide variety of other professionals are and have been people with disabilities— there is an almost total lack of understanding of their culture by abled people. She discusses the negative stigma surrounding disability, and the way that, in turn, affects everyone. I think this book offers and important perspective that I need to gain a better understanding of people with disabilities, especially considering it was written by a woman with disabilities, which means it offers an honest and accurate perspective of someone within the community.
Moscoso-Porras, M. G., & Alvarado, G. F. (2018). Association between perceived discrimination and healthcare–seeking behavior in people with a disability. Disability and Health Journal, 11(1), 93–98. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1016/j.dhjo.2017.04.002
This research article measured perceived discrimination against people with disabilities to determine whether or not it impacted their willingness to seek healthcare. The article cited studies done that showed that many vulnerable or minority groups are more likely to avoid healthcare because of perceived discrimination, which is relevant to the study because the authors noted that no such study had been done for people with disabilities, the information cited is not relevant to this project, but is good to know as I continue my studies and try to gain a multicultural perspective. The study used data from the national disability survey of Peru to determine whether people with disabilities were experiencing discrimination when receiving healthcare, and whether this affected their willingness to pursue healthcare in the future. The researchers found that people who had experienced discrimination due to their disability were less likely to pursue healthcare, and that this was especially true for those with physical and communication disabilities. There also seemed to be a link between experiencing discrimination and overall health, which the researchers suggest might be due to stress. This article outlines an issue that I may not have considered before reading it. Often people’s understanding of the needs of people with disabilities begin and end with wheelchair accessibility, such as ramps and automatic doors, rather than attempting to gain a fuller understanding of the needs of people with disabilities. The article uses data from a Peruvian national survey, and it’s possible that the researchers’ results wouldn’t be reflected in an American population, but I believe that they would, at least to some extent, and therefore this article is relevant to my research, as well as offering an interesting intersectional perspective. The article offers little in the way of suggestions, but it makes a point to mention that this research is critical when considering the needs of people with disabilities, as access to healthcare is a vital part of equality. They consider having to face discrimination to receive healthcare as a lack of action, which I think is wise, but it does raise questions about the American healthcare system and how accessible it really is to all groups.
Conover, K. J., Israel, T., & Nylund-Gibson, K. (2017). Development and validation of the Ableist Microaggressions Scale. The Counseling Psychologist, 45(4), 570–599. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1177/0011000017715317
This article discusses the development and effectiveness of the Abelist Microaggressions Scale, which sought to provide a resource for gaining insight into the day to day discrimination that people with disabilities face. They cited one article that is of particular interest to me, that of Gayman, Brown, and Ciu (2011) which found that people with disabilities that faced stress related to discrimination were in worse health and experiencing greater depression and physical pain than those who did not. There was also an article by Keller and Galgay (2010) which expanded upon what people with disabilities perceive microaggressions to be. I have yet to find either of these articles, but I will continue looking. Their research is likely more relevant to what I want to learn, but as those articles are currently unavailable, I have to use the citations in this one. The scale was developed to provide a tool for researchers so that it would be easier to study the experiences of people with disabilities, which they hope will increase the amount of studies done on discrimination against people with disabilities. The authors mention that the scale is not perfect, and it would have been better to have a broader and more cognitive focus, but it provides an additional research tool that is needed. This article was good for me to read as it provided some, though not many, examples of what ableist microagressions look like, which gives me insight on what kinds of language to avoid during interviews and on my webpage.