KC Spotlight - Disability

The Disability Knowledge Community is NASPA’s member driven resource for information about disability issues in higher education and student affairs. The Knowledge Community works to combine knowledge generated by its members with outside resources. As a source of information and advocacy for disability issues, the Disability Knowledge Community is able to provide professionals and institutions with the resources needed to meet these unique needs.

I have been proud to serve as the Disability Knowledge Committee representative for Region VI-West for the past six years.  As both a professional and a person who is hard-of-hearing, I feel I have assisted in opening the door to the world of accommodations, and the eyes of my colleagues from Region IV-West, since I require the use of CART (Computer-assisted Real Time) for our board meetings.  Possibly as a result of this exposure I was recently approached by one of our board members to help chair an ad hoc committee to adopt language to strive for universal design in our regional work.  I am embarrassed to say that the idea was not thought up by me as both a person with a disability and a professional, but I was more impressed that someone without a disability could see the need to introduce universal design into all areas of NASPA.

Our work in NASPA has been slow but in Region IV-West we have built into the regional budget a line item for accommodations.  My colleagues have seen how CART works, and more members are seeing the need to add additional accommodations to our regional conference.   While there may be a cost associated to it, why not close/open caption all speeches from the keynote speeches to acceptance speeches?  People who are visual learners can read the speeches and feel more involved with the proceedings.  People who are auditory learners can easily multitask between listening to the speeches and reading their smart phones.  Alas, since my own hearing is compromised in such settings, I cannot do both.  This brings on a sense of marginalization I feel when I attend conferences knowing that I am limited in sharing the same experience as others.

Coincidently there is a national movement to bring universal design to the national conference so that all people can benefit from equal access to the programming.  I have had the opportunity to reach out to the co-chairs of the Disability Knowledge Committee, Chuck Eade and Tom Thomson.  I hope to continue to reach out to them and work with them to bring more disability awareness and accessibility to the national and regional conferences.  In turn they are asking the chair elect of the Disability KC at the national level, Cindy Poore-Pariseau, to shadow them to aide in a seamless continuity of leadership on these issues.

In closing, I am honored to be a part of Region IV-West, and while I feel I did not do enough to bring disability issues to the front, our region experienced disability through my participation.

Dr. Joie B. Williams is the Chair for the Disability Knowledge Community for NASPA IV-W. For more information about this KC please contact Joie at [email protected]