Episode 53- Accessibility Trickle Down
0-0:12 Orthotonics Accessible as Gravity plays and fades out
0:13 Hello and welcome to Accessagogy a podcast about accessibility and pedagogy. I’m your host Ann Gagné and this podcast is recorded on land covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and within land protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Agreement, which is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples.
0:33 Welcome to episode fifty-three. In today’s episode, I am going to discuss something that I have mentioned a few times in the podcast and also in my written work, which is the idea that there is a trickle-down attached to accessibility. What I mean by this is that choices that are made at various levels, and decisions that are made without consultation have a way of trickling down inaccessibility in many other places. As well I want to frame this trickle down in a disability justice interdependence sort of way, by recognizing that the systemic “solutions” which I put in scare quotes have a way of directly impacting disabled folk in harmful and different ways.
1:19 I am sitting here thinking about this because every day I see how choices are made without consultation and they have real impact on accessibility and disabled folk. This can be at the federal, provincial or municipal government level, and it can also be done in very micro impact ways as well. But I’m also sitting here thinking about this after a week (and the week isn’t over yet) of what I can only describe as sensory overwhelm. So I’m basically living in the outcome of trickle down as I talk and think about trickle down. So let’s focus on three ways that this trickle down demonstrates itself, things that we can do to maybe reduce harm attached to decisions that are done without involving others and those that are the most impacted.
2:12 So One and the first point that I want to make and an example that I want to give, is how co-opting ideas or language from disabled lived experience or information that was shared in different second-hand ways has a way of doing two kinds of harm. I’m flagging this as something that is infinitely actionable, in a please do not do this thing, or in a please reflect before doing this sort of way. Sometimes disabled folk or multi-marginalized folk are asked to participate in research or be in spaces in informal ways. Sometimes the information that is shared in those spaces, then gains traction and becomes origins for new research for people who do not have that lived experience, and often without the citational justice of acknowledging the origin of that idea or experience. The decontextualization of those ideas and experience can make its way to publications where it becomes the guidance on how to do a thing to support humans with specific types of disabilities.
3:13 This “for all” guidance can create harms for those who may share some diagnostical impact but their lived experience is contextually very different. This is how we end up with so many articles for example, that talk about how writing notes by hand is the best thing in eduspace while ignoring other lived experiences that don’t allow for that to happen. The other kind of harm this co-opting of ideas does, especially in academic space, is that it creates erasure of the lineage of ideas, that citational justice of possible next generation of researchers. And this is why so few disabled academics are in academic spaces statistically. When their thoughts and ideas get attributed to others, the possibility of supportive space for disabled research community is foreclosed.
4:02 The second point I want to make has to do with technology which is something I’ve mentioned before in regards to different educational technologies. Decisions that are made about using a particular type of technology are often done without a holistic understanding of the intersections of assistive technology, for example, and particular user context. Thus, some educational spaces may end up advocating for technology that in fact creates barriers for disabled students, staff, and teaching teams. And it’s important to realize that decisions made now about tech, may have a way of really impacting the kind of tech is in place going forward in different institutions many years down the line.
4:45 Finally point three, comes back to what I was mentioning before about the possible sort of sensory impact on people in spaces and the way that that to trickle down in other areas. So I’m someone who masks I use an N-95. And I would be lying if I said that this is something that’s easy for me for long periods of time, but I do it, because I care about my safety and the safety of others. And I model the kind of work that I do in terms of caring about accessibility and disabled folk. Some spaces are made so that masking seems supportive so they have filters, open windows, things like this. Other spaces are made to be the least welcoming and it adds another mental layer to the physical layer of masking. It also happens that this week has been a heavily peopling week for me. And so the last four days have been either days on campus or days on campus then followed by evening events in public.
5:46 And as I sit here trying to figure out why I didn’t have energy to cook anything for dinner, and why my brain is going a mile a minute and so I’m working on this podcast on a Thursday night instead to try to temper it, I realized that part of this was because of the sensory overload of masking for 4 days straight and 10 plus hours each day.
6:06 These spatial realities have had a trickle down to my well-being, and I know that this situation does not just happen for me. I mean don’t get me wrong it was great to see folk and I’m not gonna start not masking because of it. I want to be in the spaces that I was in, and I loved the conversations that I had. But there’s a real bodymind impact that is actively is ignored. And as we enter final exam season in some places, it’s really nice to keep that in mind. That something like a 3-hour exam in certain locations, for certain students, and teaching team members, means that there’s gonna be a whole day or more of time that needs to be taken out and scheduled to fill up those energy and sensory tanks. Design decisions have impact, they trickle down in ways that may not be readily apparent, but we nevertheless should keep those ideas in mind and be open to the possibility of impact in the way that we design or the asks that we’re putting out there.
7:04 So that’s it, that’s episode 53 of Accessagogy, with a discussion of how concepts, decisions, and ideas have a way of trickling down to other areas in a systemic and even some times non-intentional way that creates barriers to disabled learners, staff, and teaching teams. So having a holistic awareness of how decisions are made and their impact, can be a way to make educational spaces more inclusive.
7:28 Remember as well that I want this to be a space where you can ask questions and share concepts that you’d like me to discuss. So, if there’s anything that I mentioned here, about how many of these discussions and situations have a way of trickling down and creating barriers for disabled folk, please ask.
7:43 As always if you have any ideas or aspects of your pedagogy that you’d like me to address in this podcast, please feel free to send me an email at Accessagogy that’s acc e ss a gogy at gmail dot com. I’ll try to include as many of these suggestions as possible in the podcast because ultimately, this podcast is for you. So that’s it, that’s episode 53 of Accessagogy, thanks so much for following along and asking how can I make my space more accessible today? Have a good week.