University News
Disability Awareness Day Oct. 27; New Vision for the Event
October 21, 2010
MACOMB, IL – "Transforming Perspectives" is the theme for the 2010 Disability Awareness Day at Western Illinois University, which will be held Wednesday, Oct. 27.
Displays, a resource fair and four presentations are scheduled between 10 a.m.-3 p.m. in the University Union Grand Ballroom. All events are open free to the public.
Co-sponsored by Western's Disability Support Services (DSS, to be named Disability Resource Center in Spring 2011), students in RPTA 251 "Introduction to Therapeutic Recreation" class and Students for Disability Awareness, the daylong event will include campus and community resource tables, project displays and discussions.
"This is an exciting year as the collaborators are embarking on new territory in disability awareness. This year, students, faculty and staff with disabilities or disability advocates have been invited to give a voice to the disabled community by taking photographs or creating artworks and developing short narratives to go with their displays. The displays are intended to give insight into how people with disabilities conceptualize their circumstances and to change the way dominant groups have historically imagined the disability experience," said Gretchen Steil Weiss, a learning specialist at Disability Support Services and co-organizer of Disability Awareness Day.
At its inception, Disability Awareness Day was designed to illustrate, for the participant, what it must be like to have a disability. Games and activities were set up in a way that led the participant to believe he or she understood the disability experience after a few minutes at a table which featured activities such as putting together a puzzle while wearing a blindfold, solving a maze while looking in a mirror or listening to a list of words read aloud while wearing earmuffs. The goal was to illustrate barriers experienced by people with disabilities, but the approach was insensitive and perpetuated the stereotypes Disability Support Services was trying to avoid, Steil Weiss added.
"What we heard from people was the alarming attitude that it must be terrible to have a disability," said Tara Miller, director of the DSS. "When really, the disability itself is neutral. It is only when the disability intersects with an inaccessible environment that a problem arises. We realized that in order to communicate a different message, we needed to change our own attitudes and the way we do things around our office."
Miller's participation in a grant-funded program reinforced the need for change. The program, called Project Shift, has a twofold goal: to transition from a medical model of service to a social justice model of service, and to be an example of such for the campus community.
The social justice model of service delivery is one that reinforces that the disability is neutral, and that accommodations are a retroactive solution. The emphasis for intervention is on Universal Design, the inclusive design of the physical setting and learning environment, as well as policies and procedures, Miller said.
Rachel Smith, a recreation, park and tourism instructor, co-organizer of Disability Awareness Day and a Shift participant, has begun to implement principles of Universal Design in all of her classes.
"Good design is usable design. As I have begun this journey into universal course design, I have been continually surprised by what works and what doesn't. Quite often, the small things that require little effort on my part can make a huge difference in all students being able to access materials for a course," Smith said.
"Because real and lasting change occurs through a combination of efforts, we are starting slowly, first by examining our own attitudes about disability and the campus environment, and looking at what kind of message we were sending," Steil Weiss said. "We changed our literature to reflect our new commitment, and then developed our new approach to Disability Awareness Day. We recognize that this is a process, and we can't expect everything to change at once; but we are working to ensure that we model the kind of progress we want to see all over campus."
The objective of the 10 a.m.-3 p.m. display and resource fair this year is to challenge traditional thinking on the meaning of disability by browsing the display fair and viewing the disability experience through the eyes of people with disabilities and advocates.
Presentations will be as follows:
11 a.m. – Disability and Social Justice, presented by Gretchen Steil Weiss and Tara Miller of Western's Disability Support Services
12:00 p.m. – Adventures in Universal Design, discussion facilitated by Rachel Smith, Recreation, Parks and Tourism Administration Instructor
1 p.m. – We Are Not Alone, presented by Eric Mansfield, a professor in educational and interdisciplinary studies, about his personal journey as an individual with a disability.
2:30 p.m. – Creating Accessible Word™ Documents: An Intro, presented by Western's Web Accessibility Committee members Richard Chamberlin and Jeremy Merritt. Microsoft Word is currently the most common word processor on the market. Because it is so common, it has become the de facto format for text documents. Word is often used to create files that end up in PDF and HTML. This presentation will cover several things that can be done to make Word documents more accessible.
Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
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