At a meeting at the district office a couple of weeks ago, one of our district directors presented this cartoon by Michael F. Giangreco and Kevin Ruelle:
I did a Google search for the cartoon, and found it also cited in this post by Amy Delgado on Ability Hacker. I wanted to blog about this post because I found it very thought-provoking and relevant to my classroom practice.
Delgado points out that the idea of the cartoon “illustrates that the majority of time, if you make a space more accessible for people with disabilities, it also makes it more accessible to people with typical function.”
This is certainly true of education—good instruction is beneficial for students with specific needs (English learners and students with disabilities) as well as students whose needs are more “mainstream.”
(At first, I wrote “typical,” along the lines of the word “neurotypical,” but learning is such a personal endeavor, so informed by the diversity of experience and strengths that our students bring, that I changed the word to “mainstream.”)
An approach like Universal Design for Learning (the focus of the presentation at the district office) that takes into account this diversity of learners will benefit all of the students, just as shoveling the ramp allows the students who walk and the student in the wheelchair to get inside the room.
The post goes on to describe the moving short film The Commute:
“In this short 3 minute film, you see hours pass in the [disabled] man’s life as he desperately tries to make it home in time for his daughter’s 8th birthday. … His journey looked like it started early in the day. However, it took him so long to get home that he missed his daughter blowing out her candles. He missed her opening her presents. He even missed saying goodnight to her.”
Delgado notes that
“Everyday situations = Huge challenges for some people”
and then discusses “everyday design challenges” for accessibility “identified as part of a research project completed by students at University of Cincinnati College of Design Architecture Art & Planning.”
I especially like the ideas in this passage:
“If you are in charge of or on a committee to design anything (a building, a playground, a parking lot, decorating the dining room at your place of work, etc.), ask someone with a disability to review your plans/be on your committee. If you don’t know someone with a disability, go meet someone!”
This is something for me to think about as I design activities in my classroom. I think it is useful to think about the range of obstacles that students might face – in addition to issues with physical mobility, students enter my classroom with learning differences and with mental health challenges.
How can I make all of our work together more accessible and inclusive for all learners?
This is a question that I try to keep at the forefront of all of my instructional decisions. Amy Delgado’s ideas are helpful in terms of giving me a new lens through which to ask this question. I also like the idea of an accessibility checklist that can be collaboratively developed as a guide for educators. I’m going to think about how I can adapt the ideas in this blog post for my classroom.
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