Practising Inclusive Access

As I become more involved in Disability Studies as a discipline, I find myself increasingly invited to attend disability-themed events at both my own and other institutions. These range from academic conferences where I present my work and discuss the work of others, to talks for a general audience about issues around disability, and meetings and workshops about improving support for both disabled students and staff across the HE sector.

The organisers of such events do a great job of ensuring that they are always wheelchair accessible. But disabled access is about a lot more than wheelchairs. Recently I have found myself in the somewhat paradoxical position of discussing the importance of disability awareness-raising during a number of events which were not fully accessible to me. Powerpoints are almost always used, but I rarely encounter a speaker who takes the time to describe the images on the screen. Handouts are often circulated but unless they have been sent round in advance, I am unable to access the information they contain.

Practising inclusive access is not as onerous as it sounds. In fact many of the suggestions I list below are incredibly easy to incorporate:

• Offer large-print handouts a well as (or instead of) standard size ones.
• Circulate ALL materials (including powerpoints) in advance, electronically if possible. If you must table last-minute documents, offer to e-mail them to attendees on the spot and always circulate them after the meeting.
• Present at a comfortable pace 
• If you incorporate Powerpoint slides into your presentation / meeting: 
• use a high contrast colour scheme (i.e. white background, black font or the reverse)
• use a templated slide format
• use a sans-serif font, such as Arial, and maintain a large font size
• provide minimal text on each slide (only a few points)
• incorporate audio description of all images, graphs, charts on your slides
• Introduce yourself by name every time you speak, especially when several people are involved in a discussion. 
• Encourage others to do the same: during questions, ask audience members to introduce themselves as well; consider asking everyone in the room to say who they are at the beginning of a meeting.
• Use neutral (or positive) language rather than negative language: for example, say ‘wheelchair user’ or ‘wheelchair rider’ rather than ‘wheelchair-bound’; say ‘non-disabled’ rather than ‘normal’ or ‘able-bodied’; avoid formulations like ‘suffers from’.

These simple measures will make many events more accessible to a whole range of attendees. Practising inclusive access is easy once we know how: convincing (and then reminding) people to keep on doing it is the tricky part.

Blind Creations conference - CFP issued

I am very excited to be co-organising the Blind Creations conference with Vanessa Warne (University of Manitoba, Canada). This three-day international conference, which will take place between 28 June and 30 June 2015, seeks to explore the relationship between blind people and artistic creation. Our definition of ‘blind person’ is broad, encompassing anyone who might be defined as having ‘non-normative vision’ and / or who relates to the world using senses other than sight. It welcomes interventions from blind and non-blind academics (with or without institutional affiliation), practitioners, advocates, writers and artists (also broadly defined to include musicians, dancers and sculptors as well as visual artists). It sees blind people not only as subjects in their own right, but also as active creators; as such it rejects the ‘medical model’ of disability which posits blind people as passive objects of medical investigation and rehabilitation. In so doing it hopes to challenge and reconceptualise the myths and stereotypes of ‘blindness’ which continue to circulate by recasting ‘blindness’ as a multi-faceted and positive creative force which might be usefully explored by both non-blind and blind people.

The conference will take place at Royal Holloway’s campus in Egham, Surrey, UK, We are pleased to announce that the conference will feature two plenary speakers: Prof Georgina Kleege (UC Berkeley) and Dr Zina Weygand (Paris). During the conference, we plan to host a number of cultural events, including a Blindness in Fiction Writers’ Roundtable (featuring novelist and poet, Naomi Foyle), a tactile museum tour, and an audio-described film screening.

The conference Call for Papers can be found here and more information about the speakers is available here. 

My SDS Conference Experience

The image shows my official 'SDS Summer Camp Minneapolis 2014' 
T-shirt (by Teddy's T's) and my (stylish yet practical) 
Society of Disability Studies conference bag. 

Almost as soon as I began working in the field of Disability Studies, I started hearing amazing things about the SDS conference, an annual gathering of Disability Studies scholars, students and activists organised by the US-based Society for Disability Studies.

This year was the first that I managed to find the time and the money to make the trip across the Atlantic to the conference which took place between 11th and 14th June in sunny Minneapolis. Aside from presenting the work that I have been doing at the Valentin Hauy archive in my paper 'Sustaining Blindness in Literature; Lessons from French History', I was looking forward to using the conference to make contacts across the sector as well as getting a real sense of current trends and tendencies in Disability Studies.

The first thing that struck me as I perused the programme was that SDS is so much more than an academic conference. As well as the scholarly sessions I was expecting - where 3 or 4 academics present a 20-minute paper and then take questions - there was a huge variety of other kinds of sessions offered, including workshops, meetings, performances and even yoga! I attended a very thought-provoking workshop on 'Disability Culture Pedagogy' in which five teachers shared ideas for bringing disability-centred practice into the classroom. In another session on universal design, we heard about how five 'disability objects' have the power to change the ways in which the non-disabled relate to their everyday environment. I was particularly excited to attend a lunchtime meeting on 'Blogging in the Disability Community' where I learnt more about some great blogs (including That Crazy Crippled Chick, Autistichoya, Words I Wheel By, Bad Cripple, Lead On Network, CP Shoes and Claiming Crip) and shared advice, stories and more. I'm hoping that this will lead to an improved blog presence on the SDS website as well as the establishment of an SDS Bloggers special interest group.

Much more than the content of the panels and sessions themselves, it was the atmosphere of the conference which I found most refreshing and rewarding. It was such a treat to be in a place with 400 like-minded people who understand why disability needs to be talked about. When explaining my work to my non-disabled friends and colleagues, I frequently find myself needing to use all my energy merely to justify the importance and relevance of Disability Studies before I can even get on to the actual work I do. Everyone at SDS is already committed to furthering work in this crucial field of study: it was such a pleasure to share my thoughts and findings with a supportive and encouraging community of scholars and students.

Travelling alone to a huge conference can feel isolating and lonely and I was fully prepared to spend my evenings and lunch hours on my own with my kindle. But it turns out that Disability Studies folk love to party! I made my first new friends in the taxi ride from the airport and within minutes of picking up my registration pack I felt bathed in the warm glow of friendship. I spent more time eating and drinking with friends than I would have thought possible and even ended up sharing my room with a conference delegate and her dog one night. As well as catching up with some of the friends I made at last year's History of Blindness conference in Paris, I made some great new friends whom I'm already looking forward to seeing again as we work together on future projects.

Unsurprisingly, this was without doubt the most accessible conference I have ever been to. There was lots of space for wheelchair riders and service dogs and presenters were issued with comprehensive guidelines about how to make their papers accessible to all. All sessions had live captioning and ASL signing, braille, and large-print programmes were available on request. When I arrived I was given a free and extremely helpful 'orientation tour' of all the conference venues and I was sent a detailed description of the layout of my room (including the whereabouts of crucial items like light switches and plugs), in advance of my arrival. But there were times when blind and partially blind delegates did not have access to as much information as their sighted peers. Neither of the plenary sessions were audio-described and as one involved a certain amount of visual comedy, and the other an extensive and detailed powerpoint presentation, I didn't get as much out of either as I would have liked. The Society's 'silent auction' which raises money for scholarships, was very sight-reliant. Even though the organiser was happy to make time to describe some of the items to me, I found it hard to get excited about bid details that I could not see. There was also an extensive book display which was hard for me to properly appreciate. A digital list of auction items and books on display would have been enormously helpful (and presumably very easy to produce.) These are minor quibbles which did not spoil my overall conference experience. (And next year I'll know to specify these needs clearly on the registration form.) But they did make me think about the differences and divisions which exist even within the disability community.

These worries notwithstanding, I had a hugely positive and life-enhancing experience at SDS and I really hope to be able to attend again in Atlanta next year. It truly is a conference like no other and I'd urge anyone working on - or interested in - the field of Disability Studies to try and get there at least once.