my goals today are to help ignite your
curiosity to launch where we can go with
that curiosity and to explore what we
can do with regards to diversity
inclusion and universal design there are
pretty big concepts but we’ll get there
now I have a very good friend who uses
an aphorism that is a version of we
often do well when we come from a place
of love and beyond the human rights
imperative to do what is right because
each and every person is entitled to
basic rights
I find that when we build commonality
and community and truly love that that
often helps to motivate and activate our
lenses so that we can view things in a
more diverse way so today one of the
things that I’m going to ask you to do
is work with me to actively participate
and build a sense of community in this
room and because we’re talking about
diversity inclusion and Universal Design
I’m going to ask you to respond in a
little bit more diverse matter so when a
speaker asks you questions how do you
usually respond you clap your hands
maybe you might hoot you might alter
what I’m going to ask you to do is
respond both visually and auditorily so
in addition to that auditory peace of
clapping your hands and indicating that
you’re there if you can also respond
visually in a way that works for you
wave your hands do jazz hands or in sign
language thank you Oh clapping sorry
thank you in sign language I’m going to
ask you when I ask questions to
participate and to be active okay are
you in all right let me hear you come on
I need to hear you awesome
and let me see you can I see some hands
in the air some shaking this way when we
respond in more diverse manners what we
do is we include more people so I’m
going to ask you to do that and we’re
going to do a quick check today to see
what kind of commonality and community
we have here in this room what places of
love we come from so let’s start with a
really easy one that should get a lot of
noise and a lot of visual a lot of you
guys and I know it’s the beginning of
the afternoon so we’ll work up the
energy for our next speakers as well how
many of you care about or love and yes
you can care about and love yourself
someone who is female good start how
many of you care about our love somebody
excellent let’s try some other diversity
areas how many of you love or care about
someone who has a different place of
ancestry race or religion excellent good
diversity in this group how about
somebody who experiences marginalization
how how about somebody who experiences
marginalization because their source of
income or because they receive social
assistance okay that’s a lot of
diversity I’m hearing and I’m seeing
from some of you that there is a lot of
love and a lot of commonality in this
room now one of the challenges though is
that we’ve missed a whole area of
diversity and in a lot of diversity
training and a lot of diversity
education this area is minimum
minimalized or marginalized so let’s do
another quick participatory bit in this
room how many of you love or care about
somebody who at one point of time
permanently or temporarily has used
crutches a wheelchair or walker most of
us right someone whose brain wiring or
chemistry is such that they percieve
think or behave differently how many of
us know or are someone who sees or hears
differently we’ve got a really great
loving and diverse group in this room
and that is a great place to start
igniting our curiosity about the links
between diversity inclusion and
universal design so one of the things
that I really think is important in
addition to coming from a place of love
is that we accentuate the positive had I
been born at a different time in history
had I been born with a different
accident of birth I may have experienced
in my life a lot more marginalization if
I was born a hundred years ago as a
female I would not have been legally a
person that has changed obviously had I
been seeking work at a different time in
history
my ancestry which is partially Irish may
have led me to encounter
signs that said no Irish need apply I
haven’t encountered that at all when I
came to U of A into the Faculty of
Education in the 1980s there was to say
the very least a strong female presence
in that faculty unlike some of my
student colleagues at the time or
earlier who were in prom primarily and
predominantly male-dominated faculties I
never had to go searching for her ladies
washroom from floor to floor but that
did happen and it’s changed now because
I had no physical accessibility and
mobility issues I was able to enter and
exit all of the buildings using
whichever door I chose that meant that I
could choose my classes based upon my
field of study my preferences I didn’t
have to schedule my classes to get from
one quasi accessible door way around to
the other side to the next buildings
accessible door that has to some extent
shifted and I’m very very appreciative
of all of that privilege I think it’s
important that we acknowledge though
that we do have a society despite how
much progress we have made a long long
way to go and with that long way to go
we have learned from some other
movements me too what’s up what’s up
time’s up sorry me too
time’s up black lives matter
make it awkward all of those movements
have in common for me the lesson that a
lack of illegalities a lack of
criminality is not enough it is
absolutely not
enough and beyond that I have also
learned that legal minimums are
marginalizing if we pitch on
to the legal minimum we will marginalize
someone well despite all of that
progress that we’ve made that I talked
about and the learning that we are doing
across diversity groups and amongst and
betwixt diversity groups myself and
other persons with disabilities still
experience a great deal of
marginalization not just every day but
many times within each and every day and
that marginalization actually comes from
choices choices that we have made as a
society and choices that we make as
individuals however we really need to
look at where can we go with this how
can we build on this we’ve learned we’ve
grown I’m considered a person now
so how can we build on those positives
and use them as launch paths for action
towards the community of love and
commonality and support and diversity
that we have even in this room here well
one of the things that we can do is
acknowledge that a great deal of the
marginalization for persons with
disabilities comes from the historical
disability historically comes from a
medical model most of our legislations
and policies that are related to
accessibility and you will notice I talk
about accessibility more than I talk
about disability and I’ll get to that
come from this medical model the medical
model of disability views disability
instead of as a difference it views
disability as something that needs to be
fixed to be changed or to be cured and
within that medical model of disability
what we have is a construct where the
person who encounters barriers the
person with the disability bares the
onus of identifying and articulating
and bringing to others attention the
barriers that they face the things that
are disabling them from the outside in
now with that medical model if there is
no disclosure there is no legal duty to
accommodate and in some ways that makes
sense if we don’t know what is needed
how do we know what to do the medical
model like I said counts on that person
who is encountering the barrier to
identify the challenge what it requires
is that I out my invisible disabilities
and must be marginalized and excluded to
eventually down the line be somewhat
included now my guess is looking and
hearing all of the diversity and
commonality and love in this room that
most of us would say that’s not okay
that’s not an all right way to do things
so what can we do well to move forward
we need to look where we want to go and
where do we want to go I think if we’re
going to be inclusive then we need to
look at a social model of disability
that social model of disability turns
the historical models completely on
their heads instead of the person with
the disability who is encountering the
barrier being responsible to identify
and articulate and out their visible or
invisible disabilities the social model
of disability places the onus upon the
designers of events of programs of
Education of buildings the designers of
anything it places the responsibility
for identifying and addressing barriers
proactively on the people who are
building the barriers who are building
the programs the events the education
now as we’re looking where we want to go
to that warm
welcoming and inclusive community that
embraces the diversity that you guys
have all expressed in here we’ve talked
about what we need to do we need to
shift from a medical model over to a
social model how do we get there
there’s a wonderful tool called
universal design universal design holds
at its values that design from the very
beginning should anticipate and
proactively design away from barriers we
want to ZUP to design for the broadest
possible participatory group so that
more and more individuals with diverse
needs can show up can attend an event
can go to school can access a building
can use a computer program without
having to make modifications with that
it gives us a tool so we’ve talked about
igniting your curiosity then we talked
about accentuating the positives and
using them as a launchpad towards action
to that loving caring diverse community
that we have created in this room that I
hope will move throughout here if we do
the how the universal design piece then
we can move forward to be more actively
inclusive and if we work on universal
design from the very beginning of every
project not only is the social
imperative of inclusion and diversity
addressed it also works really well with
budgets if we design proactively rather
than reactively it is usually cheaper in
addition to being inclusive it saves
money and for those of you who are
planning and programming it also means
that you’re not having to respond and
react you’ve anticipated and with all of
that what will happen is there is more
inclusion now when I first started
learning about you
versal design I thought oh my gosh
that’s so intimidating Universal is such
a huge word my friends and colleagues
quickly taught me that individually and
collectively we have a great deal of
agency a great deal of influence and a
great deal of power in incorporating
Universal Design into each and every one
of our roles within society whether it’s
a work role a social role or a
recreational role so what I’m going to
do is give you a few quick tips on how
to get that ball rolling how to look
where you want to go to that inclusive
warm welcoming community and how to
build that ahead of time so one of the
things that you can do to move forward
to universal design is look at your
institutional and place of work policies
are their statements about Universal
Design are their procedures for
Universal Design in those policies and
procedures if there’s not ask why speak
up in town halls post on a forum ask
questions on a blog get the conversation
started even smaller what we can do is
use accessibility checkers how many of
you knew that accessibility checkers are
built into basic Word and PowerPoint and
Excel documents anybody oh I’m hearing a
lot of silence they are built in all you
have to do is go to the help button and
find them run the accessibility checkers
every time your documents will be
clearer they will be more consistent and
they will be screen reader friendly
which will include more people if you
are building a website build that
website using the highest level of
accessibility standards and if you’re a
website builder and you don’t know what
accessibility standards are they’re easy
to find they really and truly are use
them right from the beginning if you’re
a user of a website who wants to in
influence the inclusion and diversity in
a group grano website accessibility
checker on that site the report will
tell you what the issues are why they
are issues how they can impact people
and give you some tips to address at
least one of the accessibility issues in
that website are you making videos if
you’re making videos for heaven sakes
caption them not only is captioning
great for people who have hearing loss
it’s also wonderful for those of us who
like multimodal learning seeing and
hearing at the same time it’s also great
for language learners
these are little tips they are small
things but the idea of today is to
ignite your curiosity about the link
between diversity inclusion and
Universal Design to talk about some of
the positives in social progress we’ve
made that we can use as launch paths to
move forward and proactively one of the
lovely things that I use as an example
is the fact that we now know when we are
in traditional indigenous lands that it
is appropriate and respectful to
acknowledge those indigenous lands now
we don’t ask is there anybody in the
audience who is indigenous heritage we
do that as a universal step because it
is the right thing to do we can build on
that inclusion betwixt and across and
amongst diversity groups so today I
leave you with three key messages come
from a place of love use that to ignite
your curiosity and open your eyes to
different areas of diversity accentuate
the positive find great things and good
things to build upon and explore explore
how you in each and every one of your
roles can include Universal Design in
one part of your life
if you do that you will help to create
more commonality more diversity and more
inclusion for all people including
persons with disabilities thank you [Applause]
curiosity to launch where we can go with
that curiosity and to explore what we
can do with regards to diversity
inclusion and universal design there are
pretty big concepts but we’ll get there
now I have a very good friend who uses
an aphorism that is a version of we
often do well when we come from a place
of love and beyond the human rights
imperative to do what is right because
each and every person is entitled to
basic rights
I find that when we build commonality
and community and truly love that that
often helps to motivate and activate our
lenses so that we can view things in a
more diverse way so today one of the
things that I’m going to ask you to do
is work with me to actively participate
and build a sense of community in this
room and because we’re talking about
diversity inclusion and Universal Design
I’m going to ask you to respond in a
little bit more diverse matter so when a
speaker asks you questions how do you
usually respond you clap your hands
maybe you might hoot you might alter
what I’m going to ask you to do is
respond both visually and auditorily so
in addition to that auditory peace of
clapping your hands and indicating that
you’re there if you can also respond
visually in a way that works for you
wave your hands do jazz hands or in sign
language thank you Oh clapping sorry
thank you in sign language I’m going to
ask you when I ask questions to
participate and to be active okay are
you in all right let me hear you come on
I need to hear you awesome
and let me see you can I see some hands
in the air some shaking this way when we
respond in more diverse manners what we
do is we include more people so I’m
going to ask you to do that and we’re
going to do a quick check today to see
what kind of commonality and community
we have here in this room what places of
love we come from so let’s start with a
really easy one that should get a lot of
noise and a lot of visual a lot of you
guys and I know it’s the beginning of
the afternoon so we’ll work up the
energy for our next speakers as well how
many of you care about or love and yes
you can care about and love yourself
someone who is female good start how
many of you care about our love somebody
excellent let’s try some other diversity
areas how many of you love or care about
someone who has a different place of
ancestry race or religion excellent good
diversity in this group how about
somebody who experiences marginalization
how how about somebody who experiences
marginalization because their source of
income or because they receive social
assistance okay that’s a lot of
diversity I’m hearing and I’m seeing
from some of you that there is a lot of
love and a lot of commonality in this
room now one of the challenges though is
that we’ve missed a whole area of
diversity and in a lot of diversity
training and a lot of diversity
education this area is minimum
minimalized or marginalized so let’s do
another quick participatory bit in this
room how many of you love or care about
somebody who at one point of time
permanently or temporarily has used
crutches a wheelchair or walker most of
us right someone whose brain wiring or
chemistry is such that they percieve
think or behave differently how many of
us know or are someone who sees or hears
differently we’ve got a really great
loving and diverse group in this room
and that is a great place to start
igniting our curiosity about the links
between diversity inclusion and
universal design so one of the things
that I really think is important in
addition to coming from a place of love
is that we accentuate the positive had I
been born at a different time in history
had I been born with a different
accident of birth I may have experienced
in my life a lot more marginalization if
I was born a hundred years ago as a
female I would not have been legally a
person that has changed obviously had I
been seeking work at a different time in
history
my ancestry which is partially Irish may
have led me to encounter
signs that said no Irish need apply I
haven’t encountered that at all when I
came to U of A into the Faculty of
Education in the 1980s there was to say
the very least a strong female presence
in that faculty unlike some of my
student colleagues at the time or
earlier who were in prom primarily and
predominantly male-dominated faculties I
never had to go searching for her ladies
washroom from floor to floor but that
did happen and it’s changed now because
I had no physical accessibility and
mobility issues I was able to enter and
exit all of the buildings using
whichever door I chose that meant that I
could choose my classes based upon my
field of study my preferences I didn’t
have to schedule my classes to get from
one quasi accessible door way around to
the other side to the next buildings
accessible door that has to some extent
shifted and I’m very very appreciative
of all of that privilege I think it’s
important that we acknowledge though
that we do have a society despite how
much progress we have made a long long
way to go and with that long way to go
we have learned from some other
movements me too what’s up what’s up
time’s up sorry me too
time’s up black lives matter
make it awkward all of those movements
have in common for me the lesson that a
lack of illegalities a lack of
criminality is not enough it is
absolutely not
enough and beyond that I have also
learned that legal minimums are
marginalizing if we pitch on
to the legal minimum we will marginalize
someone well despite all of that
progress that we’ve made that I talked
about and the learning that we are doing
across diversity groups and amongst and
betwixt diversity groups myself and
other persons with disabilities still
experience a great deal of
marginalization not just every day but
many times within each and every day and
that marginalization actually comes from
choices choices that we have made as a
society and choices that we make as
individuals however we really need to
look at where can we go with this how
can we build on this we’ve learned we’ve
grown I’m considered a person now
so how can we build on those positives
and use them as launch paths for action
towards the community of love and
commonality and support and diversity
that we have even in this room here well
one of the things that we can do is
acknowledge that a great deal of the
marginalization for persons with
disabilities comes from the historical
disability historically comes from a
medical model most of our legislations
and policies that are related to
accessibility and you will notice I talk
about accessibility more than I talk
about disability and I’ll get to that
come from this medical model the medical
model of disability views disability
instead of as a difference it views
disability as something that needs to be
fixed to be changed or to be cured and
within that medical model of disability
what we have is a construct where the
person who encounters barriers the
person with the disability bares the
onus of identifying and articulating
and bringing to others attention the
barriers that they face the things that
are disabling them from the outside in
now with that medical model if there is
no disclosure there is no legal duty to
accommodate and in some ways that makes
sense if we don’t know what is needed
how do we know what to do the medical
model like I said counts on that person
who is encountering the barrier to
identify the challenge what it requires
is that I out my invisible disabilities
and must be marginalized and excluded to
eventually down the line be somewhat
included now my guess is looking and
hearing all of the diversity and
commonality and love in this room that
most of us would say that’s not okay
that’s not an all right way to do things
so what can we do well to move forward
we need to look where we want to go and
where do we want to go I think if we’re
going to be inclusive then we need to
look at a social model of disability
that social model of disability turns
the historical models completely on
their heads instead of the person with
the disability who is encountering the
barrier being responsible to identify
and articulate and out their visible or
invisible disabilities the social model
of disability places the onus upon the
designers of events of programs of
Education of buildings the designers of
anything it places the responsibility
for identifying and addressing barriers
proactively on the people who are
building the barriers who are building
the programs the events the education
now as we’re looking where we want to go
to that warm
welcoming and inclusive community that
embraces the diversity that you guys
have all expressed in here we’ve talked
about what we need to do we need to
shift from a medical model over to a
social model how do we get there
there’s a wonderful tool called
universal design universal design holds
at its values that design from the very
beginning should anticipate and
proactively design away from barriers we
want to ZUP to design for the broadest
possible participatory group so that
more and more individuals with diverse
needs can show up can attend an event
can go to school can access a building
can use a computer program without
having to make modifications with that
it gives us a tool so we’ve talked about
igniting your curiosity then we talked
about accentuating the positives and
using them as a launchpad towards action
to that loving caring diverse community
that we have created in this room that I
hope will move throughout here if we do
the how the universal design piece then
we can move forward to be more actively
inclusive and if we work on universal
design from the very beginning of every
project not only is the social
imperative of inclusion and diversity
addressed it also works really well with
budgets if we design proactively rather
than reactively it is usually cheaper in
addition to being inclusive it saves
money and for those of you who are
planning and programming it also means
that you’re not having to respond and
react you’ve anticipated and with all of
that what will happen is there is more
inclusion now when I first started
learning about you
versal design I thought oh my gosh
that’s so intimidating Universal is such
a huge word my friends and colleagues
quickly taught me that individually and
collectively we have a great deal of
agency a great deal of influence and a
great deal of power in incorporating
Universal Design into each and every one
of our roles within society whether it’s
a work role a social role or a
recreational role so what I’m going to
do is give you a few quick tips on how
to get that ball rolling how to look
where you want to go to that inclusive
warm welcoming community and how to
build that ahead of time so one of the
things that you can do to move forward
to universal design is look at your
institutional and place of work policies
are their statements about Universal
Design are their procedures for
Universal Design in those policies and
procedures if there’s not ask why speak
up in town halls post on a forum ask
questions on a blog get the conversation
started even smaller what we can do is
use accessibility checkers how many of
you knew that accessibility checkers are
built into basic Word and PowerPoint and
Excel documents anybody oh I’m hearing a
lot of silence they are built in all you
have to do is go to the help button and
find them run the accessibility checkers
every time your documents will be
clearer they will be more consistent and
they will be screen reader friendly
which will include more people if you
are building a website build that
website using the highest level of
accessibility standards and if you’re a
website builder and you don’t know what
accessibility standards are they’re easy
to find they really and truly are use
them right from the beginning if you’re
a user of a website who wants to in
influence the inclusion and diversity in
a group grano website accessibility
checker on that site the report will
tell you what the issues are why they
are issues how they can impact people
and give you some tips to address at
least one of the accessibility issues in
that website are you making videos if
you’re making videos for heaven sakes
caption them not only is captioning
great for people who have hearing loss
it’s also wonderful for those of us who
like multimodal learning seeing and
hearing at the same time it’s also great
for language learners
these are little tips they are small
things but the idea of today is to
ignite your curiosity about the link
between diversity inclusion and
Universal Design to talk about some of
the positives in social progress we’ve
made that we can use as launch paths to
move forward and proactively one of the
lovely things that I use as an example
is the fact that we now know when we are
in traditional indigenous lands that it
is appropriate and respectful to
acknowledge those indigenous lands now
we don’t ask is there anybody in the
audience who is indigenous heritage we
do that as a universal step because it
is the right thing to do we can build on
that inclusion betwixt and across and
amongst diversity groups so today I
leave you with three key messages come
from a place of love use that to ignite
your curiosity and open your eyes to
different areas of diversity accentuate
the positive find great things and good
things to build upon and explore explore
how you in each and every one of your
roles can include Universal Design in
one part of your life
if you do that you will help to create
more commonality more diversity and more
inclusion for all people including
persons with disabilities thank you [Applause]
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