>>RACHEL: 
Hello everyone, thank you for coming. We
are Initiative for Inclusive Design and
our goal is to create an ongoing
conversation around inclusive spaces,
which has gotten us heavily involved
with disability rights and activism this
past semester. However, we are interested
in all areas of discrimination that a
space can control, which has opened many
doors for this group on campus. Some of
the things we are involved with are
evaluating the campus for accessibility,
where it's lacking and where it's done
well; we help local businesses create
architectural drawings that go beyond
A.D.A. code (which you'll learn about in a
minute if you aren't familiar with the
term). We have worked with the Michigan
Daily newspaper and we spent hours with
them in their writing rooms talking
about the issues here in Ann Arbor
as well as around the world. We've met with
a broad range of University committees
to help make dorms and classrooms more
accessible, and we are currently
competing any new much campus-wide
competition called Campus of the Future,
and are currently recruiting new members
so if you're interested there will be a
sign-up sheet by the door where you can
leave us your contact info, or you can
find one of this and talk at the end of
the lecture. We also hold Lunch and
Learns to share what we've researched
and today we hope that you'll leave with
a better understanding of how spatial
qualities affect a diverse group of
people. Today we will be hearing from
disability rights activist Celeste Adams,
a freshman in Stamps School of Art and Design,
and Mieko Preston, a third year
grad student in Taubman College of
Architecture and Urban Planning. They
will be giving a talk about disability
history and culture, along with some
current facts around the subject, and
then we all leave some time for
questions and conversation at the end.
Also, this next Thursday, March 30th, i(ID)
will be having a more conversational
event where we will present research
that the group has done on campus,
as well as have further conversation with
anyone who is interested in the topics
of disability and design. We will send
another email for that, so please RSVP if
you're interested. Thank you, and enjoy.
[applause]
>>CELESTE:
Okay, thank you Rachel for the
introduction, that was really great.
So basically, how we're going to do this, is
we're going to run through a bit of the
history. Mieko and I are kind of going
to
back and forth, we both have slides
throughout the whole thing that we're
going to talk about, and then we're going
to get into some more contemporary
issues, and then we're going to get into
the whole design aspect. So, are you ready? [laughs]
So we're going to start with Plato and
Aristotle who are most well known as
being famous Greek philosophers who
essentially taught some of the most
important things and some of the most
valued things that we know in Western
culture today, but what's not very well
known about them is that they
essentially enforced what is called
eugenics, and are with saying:
"Let there be a law that no deformed child
shall live," that's Aristotle, and then
Plato said, "the offspring of the inferior
or for the better when they chance to be
deformed shall be put away." So this
essentially set the stage for how people
with disabilities were to be treated, so
there was actually a law because of
their teachings that was put in place,
and if at Birth it was noticed that a
child was disabled they would be
immediately killed. And, uh, throughout
mainly in the 20th century but even
still today people are actually
discovering mass graves of bodies of
disabled children that were killed
because of the teachings of Aristotle
and Plato (and that's all throughout
Europe). So then we get Jesus, who comes
into religion as as sort of like a
really prominent, really important figure
throughout multiple different types of
religions, and in terms of disability one
thing that we sort of that sort of comes
up most commonly is that he was seen as
someone who could perform miracles and
could essentially cure sick and disabled
people. And during this time period a
little bit, you know, after Aristotle and
Plato and the law of immediately killing
disabled children was,
it wasn't as popular, so we were still
allowed to live in some cases, but what
would happen is that instead of being
able to live within the city within
public spaces,
we would be exiled into into the country,
into essentially farmland where we would
form our own colonies. And there's a
really good sort of example of this in
this painting so you see in the
background the sort of main city, but
then you see this colony of disabled
people and then Jesus is sort of coming
to them as the Savior figure who's
going to cure them essentially of their
identities. [pause] 
Then we get the Salem witch
trials which not only spread throughout
the United States but we're also very
prominent in Europe, and again one thing
that a lot of people don't know about
the witch trials was that the main
groups of people who were targeted for
this were disabled women, and the reason
for this is that their, especially if it
was a physical disability that you can
see, and that was noticeable, it would
that would come off as being something
that's very negative, that's considered
impure. And if it's negative and if it's impure
how can you be essentially like
a child of God?
you can't, so therefore
you're in cahoots with the devil, you are
a product of the devil, and that resulted
in the deaths, and murders, and burnings of
thousands of disabled women. But then
also, if you were a mother and you were
not disabled, and you gave birth to a
child who who was disabled, you were also
targeted for this because that was
how could you, uh, how could you be pure if your body can then produce something
that is so impure?
[pause]
>>Mieko: Here we begin to introduce the
intersectionality of marginalized
communities. Intersectionality is a
systemic oppression overlapping, each
marginalized community is kept from
civilization standard whether it be due
to economics, politics, or social aspects. The more layers of intersectionality
the more complex the opportunity for a
stable quality of life, and the wider the
divide is from inclusion and
accessibility to assistance and
acceptance.
The most common socio-economic
assumption of black disability is
homelessness, impoverishment, drug
dependence, alcoholism, or any condition
resulting from a presumed, from presumed
poor choices in her essay on black
feminism Caitlin Stewart suggests the
disabled black women are next to invisible
in the discourse of disability studies
saying, "disability studies often forces
women of color to deny that disability,
or neither ethnicity if they wish to be
a part of the disabled community." Here we
see a Sojourner Truth, abolitionist and
women's rights activist, although well
known for her outspoken support of human
rights for the Black community and women
she did under emphasize her disability
of a deformity in her right hand too due
to an improperly healed injury, often in
photographs as seen when she's sitting
here with Lincoln, her, excuse me,
her hand is usually hidden from view or
as seen on the right it fits benignly in
her lap. Thus the practicality behind her
famously strong arm was actually just
compensation strength. With Harriet
Tubman she's also a renowned
abolitionist; an army spy during the
Civil War,
she actually received a head injury at a
young age and throughout her life she
regularly experienced dizziness and
seizures. Like Truth, the fact that her
disability were downplayed as she
focused on redefining the role of strong
black female. Stewart wisely asks, "if
black women are supposed to be
superhumanly strong what about women who
cannot perform up to that standard, or
just needs help, or simply have a disability?"
[pause]
>>CELESTE: so then we get into sort of the mid-1800s / Early 1900s with circuses and
human freak shows, and essentially what
would happen was if you were disabled, at
this point in time you had a couple
options with how you would live your
life: you would either be a, from usually
from a very young age locked away in
your family's home either in basements
or attics or somewhere that was very
hidden you would not be allowed to go
out into public, you would not be allowed
to go to school, get a job, anything like
that and essentially no one outside of
your family would really know about you,
because if you were made public in any
way that would bring shame onto your
family. That would bring shame onto your
parents, and, but then if you if you weren't
hidden away by your family you could
also be institutionalized. So your family
could essentially, for multiple reasons,
whether it's because they don't want to
have you, because you bring shame onto
the family, or because maybe they just
can't afford certain medical treatments,
or what have you, you would be
institutionalized. Again, not receiving
any form of Education, not allowed to get
a job, not allowed to go out in the
public, but if you, if you were to usually
escape those situations your alternative
to that because again you couldn't get a
job you can essentially live on your own,
you would join the circus or the human
freak shows. And this was a really good
way for people with disabilities to
actually make money, it's sort of one of
the very first jobs that we were
actually able to have. But, what's, what's sort
of bad about this is that it, it
normalized the fact that
we, our disabilities are something that can be
sort of entertaining that our our
history is not something that can be
taken seriously and we are only here for
the entertainment of non-disabled people.
So then
we get into the 1930s, and around this time
going back to, sort of like I mentioned
earlier when I was talking about
Aristotle and Plato, that they started to
enforce something called eugenics. And
this really came into popularity in the
early 1900s, er, sorry, yeah 1900s
but especially in the 1930s; and eugenics is
essentially this idea that if you are
disabled you should either be sterilized,
so you can't reproduce, or you should be
murdered. And essentially if, if you, [pause]
if our population of people cannot
reproduce and we cannot continue to live
then therefore there will be this sort
of pure race of human beings. And so here
we have Dr. Alexis Carrel, who was
actually a practicing doctor, and he
really brought eugenics into the
forefront of, sort of popular
conversation especially within the
United States, and there would actually
be all over the United States especially,
I mean there were, this happened in
Europe too but there would actually be
eugenics clubs that non-disabled people
can join. It would, the clubs would be held
in churches, at people's homes, you know
at country clubs, wherever, and it would
be a mix of anyone from housewives to
people in college to actually doctors,
and doctors would present
essentially, um, scientific research that
proves why we should practice eugenics,
why disabled people should not be
allowed to live or should not be allowed
to reproduce, and Alexis Carrel was
really central to this because in 1939
he publishes the book, "Man The Unknown,"
and it was, it essentially laid out his
argument for eugenics, it enforced
eugenics, but not only didn't do that
of course, in, you know, the 1930s we have the
upcoming rise of the Nazi regime,
and Alexis Carrel was really interested
in this, and in introduction to his book
he actually praises the Nazi regime for
what they are doing in terms of
enforcing eugenics, and, so then we get to
1935 where we, we have the Holocaust
that's that's starting and what a lot of
people don't know about the Holocaust is
that disabled people were essentially
used as guinea pigs to test run the
Holocaust. So from 1935 up until 1942
it was commonly known that disabled
people were being gassed, and being taken
into concentration camp,s and in between
that time period up until 1930, or sorry,
1942 it's estimated that about 70,000
disabled people were killed, but the
thing is is in 1932 Hitler, sort of made
this announcement that he wanted to end
the program, and the program for these
killings is actually called, "Operation T4,"
otherwise known as mercy killings, which
enforced the idea that, by committing
these acts of eugenics, by committing
these murders, not only are you relieving
non-disabled people of the burden of the
existence of disabled people, but you are
actually relieving disabled people of
their own, of the burden of their own
existence so he made this announcement
in 1942 that he was going to end and the
operation of mercy killings, but that was
completely false, and he actually
continued with these killings
up until 1945, at the end of World War
II, and it's estimated that in between
just those three years, and the total
number of disabled people that were
killed was actually 275,000, so essentially 205,000 more people were killed
just within those three years.
And so here we have some of the mass graves for
some of the disabled people who were killed.
>>MIEKO:
The 1950s murder of Emmett Till, of the
14 year old Chicagoan's for the Civil
Rights Movement, what precipitated the
death was the accusation of the
african-american boy had inappropriately
whistled suggestively at a white woman.
In fact, Till had suffered a bout of
polio of the child that left him with a
pronounced stutter. His mother had taught them to
whistle when he needed to relax his
throat muscles to manage his speech
impediment.
Well the story of the whistle is greatly known,
is generally known, the actual reason, Till's disability, is not broadly shared.
>>CELESTE:
So, now we're going to go back into a sort
of the culture of asylums, and
institutions, and state schools, so this
is a recent photo, a relatively recent
photo of an asylum, and I just want to
ask everyone, besides the fact that
everything is, -cause it is abandoned so
it's supposed to be kind of in disarray
and decaying, but besides that, can anyone
tell me what is wrong with this image?
[silence]
no one? yeah?
>>AUDIENCE MEMBER:
There's gates and bars...
>>CELESTE:
that's one thing but that's not
it. [laughs]
>>AUDIENCE MEMBER:
[inaudible response]
>>CELESTE: nope, not it. So, it's actually right in
the center there's a wheelchair there,
and the main purpose for institutions,
for asylums, for state schools, is to
treat people who are neurodivergent, and
if you don't, if you aren't familiar with
that term, it's actually it's essentially
more it's a more accepted and
appropriate term for mental illness, or
mentally ill, uh,  but, so it's sort of, it sort
of makes you wonder like, why would you
have medical equipment that suggests a
physical disability in a place where
you're treating people who are
neurodivergent? And the reason for this
is essentially places like Willowbrook.
So, Willowbrook was, was constructed in,
and opened in 1947,
and throughout this, throughout the 1940s
especially there were a lot of
institutions, state schools, asylums that
were, that were, that were being built and
put into action and they were
essentially advertised as almost like
these retreats. That if you had a
disabled family member and you couldn't
care for them or they couldn't care for
themselves, you could send them here and
they would be treated, they would be
cared for, and essentially when they came
out they would be, they would either have
a really great treatment plan, and they
would be, you know, they would be able to
perform well in public just like
everyone else, or they would be
completely cured, but, they, what the thing
is, is that there was this sort of stigma
around disability; that if you had a
physical disability it also meant that
you were neurodivergent, because no one
really considered the fact that with
physical disabilities, you know that's
something that, that's something that
happens to your body.
People thought that for example if you
couldn't walk, you were, you were really
stupid. You weren't smart enough to know
how to walk, and so places like
Willowbrook essentially became these
dumping grounds, these human warehouses,
where if you had a disabled family
member, no matter what type of disability
it is, no matter if they need to be
treated or not, you can send them here
and they would be taken care of. They
would be dealt with, they would be
treated and, but, a lot of the family
members, like I said, they sort of had
this this idea that they were sending
their family members to a really good
place, that they were doing a good thing
but, ...oh... the clicker is not working.. 
[computer error noise]
>>MIEKO: ...I thought it was the
computer... [laughs]
[rustling]
oh, there we go, thank you. Okay...
>>CELSETE: but what they didn't know is,
that inside, this is actually the kind of
stuff that was going on. This is very
specific to Willowbrook, so Willowbrook
was essentially designed to house 4,000
patients, but what actually ended up
happening is it became so overcrowded
that they had almost 7,000 patients, and
that led to there not being, uh, just
enough room or enough resources
resources to be able to house and treat
and take care of all the patients who
were there. There was also a lot of
really severe patient abuse. So, here you
have an image of a young child who's
hogtied to their bed, and if you came
into Willowbrook as an infant you know
you were put in, like, a child's bed with,
like the, the bars you know on either
side so the child doesn't roll out, or
fall out but when, when will when these
things were sort of discovered they
actually found children who were put in
those beds as a small small babies who
were now nine years old, or ten years old,
and they had never left that bed and
because they were now older and, you know,
they had grown up in their bodies had
matured and they were essentially able
to climb out of the beds to keep them in
the beds they would literally tie them
down to the beds.  If any patient acted
out they were punished by, in a, multiple
of ways they can be beaten they can be
there's actually a story of a man who,
who acted out and they locked him away
in a closet, and a completely dark closet,
and he did not leave that closet for 27
years. And by the time he was let out he
he had been in there for so long that
his eyes had completely adjusted to the
darkness and he had gone completely
blind. So then in 19-,  1969 Robert
Kennedy visited Willowbrook because some
people had started to heard, to hear that
there were some
not very good things that were happening
at the institution and so he essentially
came there and just barged in and walked
around, and he essentially, when he came
out, he talked to a news crew, and
essentially told them that what he saw
was a human warehouse, that it was a
snake pit, that he, the conditions that he
saw were worse than conditions that you
know animals undergo when they're put
into a zoo. But unfortunately with that,
he liked that, that happened but then no
one really followed up on it.
Nothing, nothing happened with it. There
was no fallout, there was no
documentation. But then we get 1972, and
Geraldo Rivera sort of picked up on that
Robert Kennedy story and he decided to
get a camera crew, a whole news crew, and
essentially again barge into Willowbrook
and this time document everything that
that's going on, so when they leave they
have proof. And this is the kind of stuff
that they came out with: people not even
in rooms, there was like feces and urine
just all over the floor, the place had
not been taken care of. There was
actually, if you see in this image, you'll
notice that there's sort of a light
that's, that's there, that is the light
that is coming from the camera because
this area of Willowbrook did not have
any power. The conditions were terrible
patients were not being treated a lot of
patients were really malnourished and
had actually been starved, not just
because, uh, they, Willowbrook actually
couldn't afford to feed their patients,
but also because that was another form
of punishment. Again these are more
children who are hogtied to their beds,
that one actually by her neck, and he
actually noted that there were some
people who were in there who he actually
thought had passed away, who were, he, he thought that they were corpses
but they were actually still alive they
were just so sick and so weak because of
the conditions that they, they really
looked like they were dead.
So then we get, after that, the school you
know, he, he publishes that and he
publishes his findings and, the, instead
of actually closing down the school they
just reformed it, but it, butt this
footage led people to wonder, "okay, if
that's going on and Willowbrook ,what's
happening in all of our other
institutions? All of our other state
schools?" and more sort of things like
this were, were going on where people
will just go into other institutions, and
with cameras and document what was going
on. That led to either a bunch of these
these institutions being completely
closed down, or getting more reforms, but
specifically for Willowbrook, the reforms
that you know, that they did just, they
just weren't enough and so in 1982 the
school closes down. Then we get a the
Vietnam War, and because of advances in
medical technology, medicine, treatment
plans, everything like that a lot of the
soldiers who who were able to come home
actually had some way of, you know,
instead of just being confined again to
their beds and not being able to get up
and move around, or go back to their work,
they could, they could be treated, but I
think you, do you want to say...
>>MIEKO: I do. Actually, I just
wanted to say, off of that, a lot of the
soldiers that went to Vietnam were
minority soldiers, and when they came home, they, since they were more likely to
serve in ground units, and experience
combat, they were, they were likely to
suffer higher rates of post-traumatic
stress disorder and other mental health
problems than white soldiers. However, the
Black and Latino Vietnam vets were not
treated equally by the VA upon their
return, and were more prone to
disabilities that could have been
treated. It's further studied that Blacks
are more likely to have been exposed to
Agent Orange defoliants, and, in Vietnam,
and we're more susceptible to ailments
linked to dioxin, including heart disease
and cancer.
And, the officials have publicly
acknowledged that minorities and female
veterans often were treated as
second-class citizens despite wounds
illnesses and injuries as serious or
more grievous than those received by
white G.I.s.  
[PAUSE]
>>CELESTE: But yeah, so you have all these
people who are coming back, who are now,
you know, they get back, and they want to
return to their homes, they want to be
able to go back to work.
And when they get back they realize, oh,
wait, there are a bunch of stairs to get
into my house, I can't actually get into
my home, or I can't take the bus to go to
work because there are stairs that you
have to take to get onto the bus, or you
know, once I, once I get to work I can't
you know, I can't actually do this, there
are just so many barriers in terms of
the way that public spaces were designed,
that people found that they couldn't
live the lives that they were living
before they went off to war. So that
spurred a bunch of protests throughout
the 70s where it wasn't only veterans
who were protesting from from the
Vietnam War but other people with all
different types of disabilities got
involved, so here you have "HELL NO, WE WON'T GO
into any nursing home".  That was
essentially saying that, you know, the
government needs to start providing
people with disabilities resources so we
don't have to be in places like, you know,
reformed Willowbrook, we can actually
live on our own, we can have our own
lives, and we can operate, you know, just
like anyone else in the world, and then
did you want to speak about this slide? No?
>>CELESTE(continuing): Okay, but yeah so more protests went on, the
sign that says "I can't even get to the
back of the bus", "we will ride" and then
you get this image here, and there's a
lady who is in a white t-shirt sort of I
think to your left yeah and her name is
Judy Heumann, and during this time she
was one of the, sort of, forefront
activists who really pushed this whole thing,
and her story is that when, I think, she
was 12 years old she contracted polio
and she had to start using a wheelchair
and, you know, after, after she got her
chair she wanted to go back to school
and when she tried going back to school,
her teachers told her,  "we can't have you
because your wheelchair is a fire hazard."
[QUIETER] This is actually something that I've been
told before, so it's interesting seeing
it in this context, but,
[CONTINUING] so yeah you
can't go to school, and she and her
mother were completely outraged by that,
so they fought with the school to get
her in school, and she eventually did go
back to school and she was able to
graduate, and then after, after she
finished school she wanted to become a
teacher in New York, and when she applied
for her job, she was told by the New York
Public Schools the same exact thing.
"You can't teach because your wheelchair
is a fire hazard. If there's a fire how
can we expect you to get out of the
building, let alone get your students out
of the building?" and that led her to file
a huge lawsuit that actually ended up
going to the Supreme Court, and she won,
and she became the first disabled
teacher in the state of New York. And
then, that's Judy in the middle and then
next to her on her left is Ed Roberts,
who, he also had polio, and he was the
first student to, the first disabled
student to graduate from (U.C.)Berkeley, and
when he slept at night, he had to sleep
inside of an iron lung, and there were a
whole there were many issues in terms of
him actually getting accepted into the
school but once he finally did, he said
"okay, well, I want to I want to live in
the dorms" and they said "oh, well,  we can't
do that, because we don't want other
students to see that you sleep in an
iron lung, because that's going to, that's
going to really freak everyone out.
That's not okay, we don't, we don't think
that's appropriate" and so he said "well,
you know, what do I do?
What do I do about that? I have to have
somewhere to live" and they suggested
that he go live in a hospital, and the
hospital that's close to the Berkeley
campus, and there was a lot of arguing,
sort of back and forth about
that, and the school wouldn't really
budge on it, so what they came to was
that he would live in a hospital, but he
had to be treated, he couldn't be treated
like a patient, he had to be treated like
a student, that this area of the hospital,
he wasn't going to have like nurses or
doctors coming in to check on him, he can
be fully independent, and then he ended
up graduating and yeah he did a ton of
really amazing act-, activism work
throughout the 70s with with Judy
Heumann, and then largely because of
those protests in the nine-, in 1990 you
get the signing of the ADA act and the
ADA act essentially requires that, it's
a whole, sort of slew of things, but it
requires that all public and government
buildings be made fully accessible, and
so that means stuff like automatic doors
with push buttons, what else, making sure
that in bathrooms there are accessible
stalls, things like that, and it also
required stuff like, you know, if you're
an employer, you can't discriminate
against someone who's applying for a job
at your business because of their
disability, so it covered a lot of things.
But what, what's difficult with it is
that the majority of that of the ADA Act
was actually created by non-disabled
people,  so that brings us to... go ahead.
>>MIEKO: it exists to  a quote by Nelson Mandela
when he addressed the... [pause] I think it's the
committee of the conference of a
disabled International, disabled, the
International Disabled Institute. "It is not
a question of patronizing
philanthropy towards the disabled people.
They do not need the patronage of the
non-disabled. It is not for them to adapt to
the dominant and the dominating world of
the so-called non-disabled. It is for us
to adapt our understanding of a common
humanity..." 
>>CELESTE: So that sort of brings us to
our next segment with segregated spaces.
So while the ADA Act is really, really
amazing, it's still there, the sort of
disabled voice that was involved in it
is, it's barely there, so while it allowed
us to now go out into public, it allowed
us to, you know, get jobs, to go to school
to not be discriminated against, that was
created all under the guise of sort of a
non-disabled opinion, so what we're left
with is we can go out into public, but
the majority of that experience is going
to be a segregated experience. So that
gives us stuff like what is known as
handicap accessible parking spaces. I'm
just going to call them accessible
spaces because handicapped is actually a
pretty derogatory term that we don't use,
even though it's still on many of the
signs that you see in these parking
spaces, but what's interesting is that
usually when you go into a parking lot
you get about two or three of these
spaces, all of the other spaces are
they're just regular parking spaces and
what I've always wondered is, why is it
that when I park I have to have my own
designated area? Why can't we just make
it so every single parking space is
accessible, and when, you know, why, why do
I have to go into this one particular
area and another problem with this is
that by only having two or three three
spaces per parking lot, that sort of
assumes that there aren't a lot of
disabled people in the world who
actually need those parking spots. So, one,
it can actually be really hard to find a
parking spot sometimes, and two,  you also
get people who aren't disabled who
decide, oh, that's really convenient
because these parking spaces are right
at the front of the lot so I'm going to
take them, and I'm going to park there,
and, whereas if every single space was
accessible not only do you have a range
of options, but you don't have to worry
about, you know, circling around the
parking lot waiting for one of those, you
know, two or three spaces to open up, and
then you all think it's tough, like in
the disabled community we call these
"stramps", and it's essentially a ramp
there's a few variations of it but this
one is basically a ramp that is so
steep that if you're in a chair you
can't really get up that on your own, you
have to have help. So this is another way
that sort of you know, the, the ADA
requirement is there, but it still
doesn't really work. And another thing
with the ADA is that there are so many
public buildings, and government
buildings that either do not fully live
up to the ADA standards, or they just
completely ignore them. So, for example
here on campus if you go to Weiser Hall
there's an elevator there, that, but, when
you go inside of it it only takes you to
the basement where all of the janitor's
lockers are. So if you need to get to class
you'll have to go up, I mean I was there,
I had to go to class there a few weeks
ago, and I have never seen such a large
flight of stairs in my entire life. That
is your only option to get to class, so I
couldn't go to class that day. But it's
just stuff like that, where you know,
people feel like they can sort of get
around the ADA, because they know that
one, probably no one's going to call them
out for it, no one's going to try and sue
if they do. It's most likely going to be
someone who's disabled, and because of
that, that court case probably won't be
taken so seriously, and you know it's
your chances of winning aren't-, aren't
really that great especially if for
example you're disabled and you're going
up against something like, you know, a
really, really big institution like the
University of Michigan, or you know other
really major institutions, but you just,
you don't have a chance with that. Then
we get other stuff like this, where you
have your sort of standard building and
you get this really, you know, grand,
extravagant set of stairs that take you
to the front of the building, and this is
the main entrance.
Whereas
if, you know, if you're someone who can't
take the stairs, you have your own little
labeled entrance that takes you all
around, you know, to the back or to the
side of the building, to your own door.
And this is actually like a really,
really nice drawing; like usually when
you go to the back of a building to get
to the accessible entrance, instead of
having like really nice bushes and
shrubs you get like a giant dumpster, or
trash, and I feel like that kind of says
a lot that, you know, as a disabled person
if I want to get into a public building
I have to take the same route as the
trash.
So it's just kind of like all
these little things like you know we
don't really think about them but in
terms of how that impacts how disabled
people are viewed by the public and how
we're treated it's actually huge, because
if I can't take the main entrance to the
building, if I have to go around the side,
my body, my disabled body, is completely
hidden. How do I engage in the public
space? How do people know that I exist?
and I feel like if you can't see the disabled body, if you can't engage with
disabled people because we are so
segregated, I don't understand how there
can be a conversation so that we can
work to sort of move forward, and you
know, change things like segregation and
get, you know, get more basic human rights
for people with disabilities. There's
also signs like these that I'm sure a
lot of you have seen before: "in case of
fire do not use elevators, use stairs"
Again,
Oh, what happens if you can't take the
stairs? What do you do in a situation
like that? For me,
usually, what I've experienced in the
past is that if I'm, you know, not on the
first floor and they and the fire alarm
goes off, I'm told that I have to wait. I
have to wait there. If there's like an
emergency call button, I press that. It
directs me to, you know, whoever the
police, the fire department, whatever. I
tell them who I am, where I am,  what's
going on, all that kind of stuff, and then
I literally just wait, and I'm not
allowed to have anyone by law. I am not
allowed to have anyone wait with me.
I am completely alone. Now imagine
you can't take the stairs, and your
you're five years old, or you're six
years old, and you can't have anyone wait
with you. That's really, really scary. And
then, not only are you waiting, but I've
waited times for up to an hour even more.
If there's a real fire, and I'm waiting
there for an hour that's like, that's
like a life or death situation for me,
and essentially what I'm waiting for is
for someone from the fire department to
come and get me, and what I've been told
in the past is that when that happens I
have to be carried down the stairs
lifted out of my chair. Well the problem
with that is because of my disability I
have to have a customized wheelchair. To
get a customized wheelchair, you usually
have to wait anywhere between four and
six months. So what am I supposed to do?
Just lay in bed for four or six months,
for like half a year? How do I go to
school? If I have a job, how do I, you know,
how do I go to work?H how do I make a
living? You life is just completely put
on hold because of stuff like that,
because no one ever decided that it
might be important to come up with
something alternative compared to stairs.
So now we've got some really good
examples of accessible spaces. Um, so this
is Gallaudet University. It was designed
by LTL Architects, and Gallaudet is a
university that caters specifically to
those who are deaf or hard of hearing,
and you'll see in this image, is a,
there's a ramp that you have, and not
only is it a ramp, but it's a really wide
ramp, so if you're next if you're talking
with someone, and you're signing, if
you're in a really narrow space, someone,
you know, the person who you're signing
with, other people that you're signing
with, might have to go behind you, so
instantly that communication is
completely cut off, whereas if you have a
wide ramp you can be walking or going
down the ramp, and you can still be
signing and carrying on that
conversation. It's also important that it's a ramp because if you're going
down a flight of stairs, you usually have
to be looking at where you're putting
your feet, and being careful of your
movement, which, if you're, again, if you're
signing that, that sort of visual
connection between you, you looking at
the person next to you who's signing is cut off
because you're looking at where you're
putting your feet. You'll also see that
there's a lot of natural light, so that
makes it easier on the eyes, that also is,
natural light is really good against
skin tones, so it makes, it makes signing,
it's easier for the for the hands to
stand out, and it's not, you know, compared
to neon lights that are, actually,  really
exhausting on the eyes, natural light is
just a lot better. The entire color
palette of the University works well,
again, with any skin tone so if you're
signing, and, for example, if you're a
professor you're signing to a group of
students, everyone in that entire group
can still see really well without having
any colors, you know, distract or not
be in good contrast with your skin tone.
Also, the majority of the furniture is, uh,
isn't fixed so you can move it around, so
that way if you, if students who are all
signing, or if there's a group of people
who are all signing, they can they can
move that furniture around so they can
be in a circle so everyone can see each
other instead of being in rows, or
something like that. Then we get the Ed
Roberts campus at Berkeley, and as I
mentioned before, Ed Roberts was the
first disabled person to graduate from
Berkeley, and they actually dedicated an
entire campus to him, and in the very
center of this building they have this
very large, very beautiful ramp, which
again is really important, not just for,
you know, obvious reasons like being
being able to maneuver through the
building if you can't take the stairs,
but it's also like this central piece
within the building. It's not hidden.
You're not being segregated when you
take this ramp. This is like the main
form of circulation. It's also really
cool because in this representation
they're actually using, like you can
actually see people with a very,
in varying types of disability who are
represented, whereas usually when you get
that, it's like there's maybe just one
person in a wheelchair who's kind of
like off to the corner, or in some cases
no one in it is, is visibly disabled. And
then you also get stuff like this on the
campus where if you go into an elevator,
they actually have push buttons that are
down by your feet so if you can't use
your arms to get to the buttons, you can
literally just run, or run into these
buttons or just kick them, and you can
get to whatever floor you want to get to.
Then we get the Asclepius Machine by my dad,
professor Robert Adams, who teaches here.
He's right there, but essentially what this is
is he describes it as a tricked-out
wheelchair ramp. And what's really great
about this, again, not only is it a ramp
and you know not something like stairs,
not only is it accessible but it creates
what I like to call the disabled
experience within a space. So as you go
through this ramp, the entire thing sort
of opens up and expands around you as
you move through it, as you pass through the space, and as you exit, it slowly moves
down and closes behind you, as doing this
it sort of makes this breathing noise
that's, um, that's similar to artificial
breathing machines that you hear in
hospitals, so as soon as you're passing
through the space, especially if you're
disabled you're going to recognize this
space it has similar aesthetics to a, to
hospitals so it's actually really, really
well designed, so you're sort of taking
an aesthetic that is usually seen as a
really ugly,
that's not appealing, that's something
that should be hidden, and completely
exploiting that in the best way possible
to make this really, really outstanding
experience. So now we get into more
contemporary times, specifically with the
election, and,
a, inauguration of Donald Trump. So as I'm
sure everyone here knows, during one of
his presidential candidate rallies, Trump
mocked a disabled reporter, and while
that is really, really bad obviously and
is really terrible, it was interesting to
me that this was sort of a, this was huge
to people who weren't disabled people,
who weren't disabled were completely
blown away by this, whereas a lot of
people in the disabled community, they
were kind of like yeah this is stuff
that we experience all the time, and it
was interesting that this is what it
took to sort of get disabled people into,
not even into the forefront, but just to
be a part of any political conversation.
It took a candidate mocking one of us.
But then it also sort of begs the
question like, there's so many other
things that not just Trump but other
politicians have done that hurt disabled
people so much more than just being
mocked that no one really paid attention
to, but, or they do, but they don't, they
don't say this is, this is something
that's hurting people with disabilities.
For example, the, the, you know, the whole
repeal and replace Obama care. If that
happens, they're actually voting on it I
think, maybe even right now [uncomfortable laughter], but if that
were to happen, it's not looking like
it's very likely, 24 million people are
going to lose lose their insurance
coverage and people are going to die
because of this, and when you see this
kind of stuff covered on the news you
usually, or you know, town halls that
happen, you usually get people in the
audience who say, for example, "I'm a
single mother, what do I do
if I get sick?" or "I'm a business owner" and, you know, for example, sort of like
the flip side to that, "under Obamacare I
can
afford to to cover all of my employees
right now, I can't give them the health care
that they deserve. What happens if one of
them gets sick?" and it's sort of all of
these what-if situations, that, you know,
you hear in the majority of these town
halls, in the majority of, you know, the
things that are covered by the news
relating to health care, but then, no one
ever really looks at the disabled
community. If I lose my health insurance,
this chair is almost fifty thousand
dollars. You're supposed to get a new
chair every four years. if I don't have
health insurance to cover that, what am I
supposed to do if my chair breaks down?
What am I supposed to do? How do I go to
school? so there are all these issues
that sort of go beyond the "what if" that,
you know, are very real and it amazes me
that when, you know, news channels do
things like town halls, like for example
there was one with, a,  it was more like a
debate with Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz
and they should have had like this
face-off over health care
there was only one disabled person in
the audience who asked them the question
and she had polio. It was only one. So the
representation with something like
health care for disabled people is
completely lacking and I do not  under-, you know if
you want  to have a conversation about
health care, you cannot have one without
mentioning and without incorporating
disabled people and our voices, um
there's also another thing that's been
going on with a lot of the sort of
criticism that Trump has been getting,
where people say that, you know, he's, he's
doing all of these things because, uh,
because he's mentally ill, not
neurodivergent, because he's mentally ill.
All of this, uh you know, all of this
really, really terrible negative things
that he has done, all of these, you know,
racism, what-have-you, the,  everyone's
saying he's doing that because he's
mentally ill, and they're actually shows
that are bringing in psychiatrists to
analyze Trump's mental health. And you'll
hear on new channels people calling him,
you know, saying Trump is crazy, he's a,
saying he's psychotic, he's having an
episode. All of these terms that a lot of
people don't know are actually really
ablest, really derogatory terms that you
should not use, especially if you are not
neurodivergent. You should just not use
them. You do not describe something,
especially something that's negative, as
crazy or as insane, because then that
brings on this, that it enforces the
stigma that people who are
neurodivergent are inherently bad. They
are inherently evil, and what's really
important to remember, especially in the
case of Trump, is that when you are
neurodivergent, the, sort of like the
the main thing with that is you are
experiencing distress. And the difference
here, is that with Trump, he is not
experiencing distress; he is causing
other people distress. And yet, we are still
labeling that as him being mentally ill.
We're still calling it that. We're still
calling him crazy. He is not crazy! He is
not insane! You can call him whatever you
want but do not use terms that are derogatory, and
that are ablest to describe such evil
behavior, because that is the type of
language that gets people who, not just
people who are neurodivergent, but people
with all types of disabilities, killed. I
mean, that's literally what you're
enforcing here when you use those types
of terms, so you have to be really, really
careful with that. Then we get, so on
March 1st of every year, the disabled
community, and hopefully people outside
of it, but I don't really know of any,
celebrate disability day of mourning, and
this is a day that we take to celebrate
every single disabled person who has
been murdered, specifically by either
their relatives or their spouses, and it
is very, very specific to that, and
unfortunately a lot of these people are
really young children, so just this year
since January first, and I actually have
not checked the site in a few
weeks, but 14 disabled people have been
killed by either their relatives or
their spouses alone. This is not
including the police, this is not
including, you know, strangers this is not
including doctors, this is not including,
this is literally just your relatives
and your spouse's. 14 people. Have you
heard about any of this in the news? Has
anyone talked to about this? No one, right?
I didn't even know about this until like,
just a few weeks before, before
disability day of mourning this month, or
yeah, this month I had no idea, um, but
what's interesting here is that when,
when I was actually putting this slide
together, I was trying to find images of
some of the victims who had been killed,
and I had probably about 30 stories that
I was looking at, like 30 tabs open, each
with a different article that had to do
with with these killings, and out of all
of those only 5 articles actually had
images of the victims. These are the only
images that I can get. And I would argue
that maybe about half of those articles
had images of the actual murders, and the
majority of those images were of them
for example crying in court and, so not
only if you have this lack of
representation, and therefore lack of
remembrance for the people, the actual
people who were actually hurt in this,
but you have this sort of pity for the
people who actually committed these acts, 
of the actual murderers here, and not
only do you get that with the images, you
get that directly in the text of these
articles, where you'll get something like,
uh, you know, there was one article that I
read that essentially said at the bottom,
after it listed everything that had
happened, you know, it essentially
reminded the reader to not judge the
parent because you, quote, "have not walked in their shoes," you don't
know what it's like to carry the burden
of being a parent to someone who is
disabled. So therefore, you should not
judge them for decapitating their child.
You should not judge them for overdosing
their child. You should not judge them
for drowning their child. You should not
judge them for stabbing their child. You
should not judge them for strangling
their child, and so on and so forth.
And what's really terrible about the
majority of these murders, is that they
are not they are really gruesome murders,
they're really really bad, I mean, if you
want to read about some of them, like
most gruesome murders that are going on
right now, you, you just look up, you go to
the disability Day of Mourning website,
and you can read all about it. It's
amazing, and yet with the sort of
extremity of these murders. There's still
sympathy for the people who are
committing them as though they are the
victims, as though they are the ones who
experienced the real burden here, and not
their kids, and not their spouses not the
disabled people. And then, Mieko...
>>Mieko: um, Let's see,
so here we have some images of children
with disabilities who have been wrongly
 persecuted or criminalized or
publicly shamed for their atypical
behavior. And African-American students
are far more likely to be arrested at
school than their white counterparts.
For example, Salecia Johnson is six, and
she had a tantrum in school, and police
arrested her. Hunter is three, he's in the top right, and he was deaf, and he's
no longer allowed to sign his name
because H in his name makes a sign of a
gun. And their not allowed to use that symbol
anymore in schools. Let's see,
Caleb Moon Robinson, 12, bottom left, he's
autistic, and he was convicted, excuse me,
convicted of disorderly conduct and
felony assault after kicking over trash
can and having an autistic episode.
They arrested him and convicted him of
felony charges, as I said. Colton
Granito is eight, also autistic, and after
an episode at his alternative school,
which was expecting him to have one, he
was actually arrested and placed in a
straitjacket, and then held in a holding
cell
at the police station until his parents
could pick him up. Michael Kelly, bottom right,
has a Down syndrome, and plays basketball
but the principal of his school, also an
alternative school, forced him to remove
his letter jacket because another
parent complained that he's not actually,
an actual varsity athlete. All these
children, and then many more, are actually
victims of a zero-tolerance policy
that has gotten more restrictive since
the 1990s. It's an institutional standard,
I guess colloquial termed the cult of
compliance, also found in, in prisons. And
David Perry coined the term. David Perry
is a freelance journalist who
actually looks into the, the
disproportionate persecution of
minorities, disabled minors specifically,
and let's see, Mr. Perry also "ponders the
disproportionate targeting minorities,"
especially disabled minorities, again, by
police brutality. Tanisha Anderson was a
thirty-, 37 year old black woman diagnosed
with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia,
and died while in custody of the Cleveland
Police. Keith Scott, Ezell Ford and
Jeremy McDole were disabled black men, also
among the many police killings in recent
years. All were also disabled. An
estimated half of the police brutality,
murders of minorities, in the past recent
years, were due to misunderstood or
undiagnosed disability.
[silence]
So, what are we doing about this? Clearly
there are a lot of problems, and you know
like we saw in the 1970s there are a lot
of protests, but with the rise of social
media, for the very first time disabled
people now have a platform where you can
voice your opinion. I mean, and we, we mean we
do this through Twitter, and of course
Twitter isn't going to be something
that's accessible for all different
types of disabilities. There are still
going to be, you know, some people who
can't use it, but right now this is the
most effective platform that we have. So,
for example, if you can't go to a protest
if you can't, you know, you wake up one
day and for example maybe you don't have
the energy to go out and march down the
streets. Or maybe, for example, the streets
are not actually accessible, and you
cannot get to the streets, Twitter is a
really, really great way to voice your
opinions without having anyone shut you
down. You can, you literally cannot be
shut down by using Twitter, and so right
now, there's this really, really great
sort of sphere of disabled people that are
joining the Twitter community to voice
their opinions on all sorts of issues
and it's not just voicing your opinions,
it's, it's having conversations about
certain topics, for example, there's a
person, their name is Dominic Evans, and
they are really interested in film
culture and especially with the lack of
representation of disabled people with,
within film and so every single week
he hosts this conversation called "film-dis"
where anyone who who is disabled who
has a Twitter can join this conversation
and you essentially talk about film and
disability, and it's also really great
because there are a lot of people out
there, myself included, who, you have a
disability but you don't really know
anyone else who is similar to you.You
never really get exposed to that. For
example, growing up, I didn't have any
friends in school that I knew of who were, who
are disabled let alone who used a
wheelchair. So you never really get
anyone throughout your life to relate to
and if you can't relate to them, you sort
of start to think that a lot of the
experiences that you have might sort of
be just your own, and you're not really
sure if anyone else is experiencing them,
and so Twitter is a really, really great
platform to hear about other people's
experiences, and to get in touch with
other disabled people, to find people who
might even have your same exact
disability, and yeah, I mean there have
been like some of the most important
disability activists right now have, you
know, gotten to where they are because of
the platform of, of Twitter, and I
definitely recommend if anyone has a
Twitter I would recommend following some
of these people up here because they all
are so amazing in these conversations. I
mean I have learned more about
disability culture, you know, my, my own
identity, my own sort of group of people,
my own culture through, Twitter and
through, you know, all of these tweets
that all of these disabled people are
sending out than I have in any other way.
I mean I literally learned so much from
this, so if you want to be, if you want to,
if you want to learn about disability
activism, disability rights, disability
culture, like, do that through Twitter,
because, you know, that that is, right now,
the best and most effective way that
that you can do that, that we can get our
stories out,  and that you can, you can
participate in.
[recording of women's' voices plays]
Heavy. Grace. Time.
Spacial. Open. Wide.
[inaudible words]. Architecture. To undo that is our responsibility-
[another voice] In, without equity
[another voice] I think of the line, the horizontal line,
[another voice] conversation
[another voice] balance.
productivity.
[another voice] inclusivity.
[another voice] the distant, the misunderstood, maybe a few more words,
jarring, stairs. our responsibility. [laughing]
[man's voice]by campus, I think it's excellent it's
never been better [woman's voice] lack of understanding
[man's voice] operations obviously improved... more problematic, cuz we have some 
sort of historical buildings
[inaudible voice over phone] ...ADA, which has made a huge difference
but I think there really has to be a commitment to making it work
[woman's voice] I'd heard of it in school, but never was asked to engage in it.
My first experience was in a firm and [inaudible] ADA compliance copies from the
manual. The formula had been played out,
played out enough to get it through, but it
wasn't enabling. I mean to me, with,
without ADA, if I was sitting down
designing a building, I probably would do
more than ADA would ask me to knowing what I know now...
-but still not doing enough. -but that is
so evident of the lack of understanding
[man's voice] I own a business. I have a historical
building, that building's 140 years old, it
is accessible, from the bank, where the main parking is, by the way...
[woman's voice] How Humiliating is that?
[Man's voice, continuing] and for us to renovate the front and make it
accessible up there would be $35,000 to 
 $45,000
[woman's voice] the argument is going
to become more and more difficult
because it is about money.
[man's voice, continuing] It's, it's simply
not in the cards. If that were mandated, we would have
to fold up shop, because it simply 
wouldn't work. Um, Fully Accessible... from the back...
[woman's voice] How humiliating...?
[man's voice, continuing] it's just as a matter of
dollars and cents.
[man's voice over phone] You know, I don't think it's all that expensive
[woman's voice] it has defined our society,
and we're-, to undo that is our
responsibility. What is the psychological
cost of that? What is the psychological
cost of Celeste going downtown and the owner of
the building says that they can't, they can't
give her access to the building because
it's an historic section of town?
[man's voice on phone] I think it's worth asking, you know,
why, why doesn't the sidewalk put some work in?
A lot of cities, including Ann Arbor,
just a few years ago
you know, the sidewalk system was left to the
individual property owners to take care of.
I mean if roads are a public service, why are sidewalks not?
[woman's voice] that is so evident of the
lack of understanding. That's a very narrow
way, I think,
of thinking about architecture and what our responsibilities as architects are.
Cost has nothing to do with anything.
Why would suddenly it be an excuse to
not think of inclusivity in design? You can spend how much
money of materials that are imported from
halfway across the world, and you can't
make this space inclusive for other
people? Or you go to some place and you
see, oh, there are the stairs into the restaurant, well just
go around the back of the alley through all the trash and that smell,
and then we'll, we have a ramp back there for loading produce into
the back of the kitchen.
How humiliating is that? There is absolutely no excuse for that.
[man's voice over phone] it's a question of what, you know, how do you ask
the right question?
>>MIEKO: so... [speaker noises] So, that concludes, I think
>>CELESTE: I think so, yeah. Thank you
you guys so much for coming.
[applause]
>>RACHEL: Are there any questions? We have about 10 to 15
minutes for further conversation with
Celeste and Mieko.
[silence]
Yes?
>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'd just be curious to know more about the Initiative for Inclusive Design. Like, what's your agenda moving forward?
I noticed that Dilip Das from the provost office is here,
>>RACHEL: mhm?
so, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiative conversation with that office?
>>RACHEL: Yeah, um, yeah, we are working with different areas of the
diver-, or, of the commu-, er, the university
to help, um, kind of further the inclusive
spaces that are lacking. They come to us
and they just want to know things that
they aren't educated in up to this point.
Things that ADA hasn't really covered
yet, or just doesn't cover at all, and we
hold more events, we are participating in
the campus-wide competition where we
hope to kind of
submit how we think the university should
be regarding inclusive spaces, and
accessibility, and yeah. That's where we are
currently.
[silence]
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: I think I was an amazing
presentation, like, completely well put together
and stunning. It was super informative to
me, like, it's going to take me a long
time to unpack. I guess, as a designer, I look at it
as a challenge, and I am curious to what
degree you guys have mobilized on
your own challenge? Not in terms of creating
awareness, which I think is super effective, but like,  I don't know, like playing out
the game of, say, the parking lot, or say the
that building that exists already.
>>RACHEL: yeah.
>>AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: what potential solutions might be, -cause I
hear it as a challenge, and then I'm like, well, how
do we address that challenge? And, so, one
level I think, there's the sort of
everything all at once all the time,
which I think is completely laudable, so
we change the parking lot, and all
parking lots are like that, create a new situation, 
>>RACHEL: mhm
>>AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: what do you do
with like, all the things that exists now, or how do you like...
>>RACHEL: yeah.
>>AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Is it a all or nothing?
In terms of design? Or do you entertain ways of
having better solutions in the interim?
I guess I'm curious where this goes from a
project of education and awareness to a
project that design advocacy as design.
>>RACHEL: yeah.
>>AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: so that's part of imagination.
>>RACHEL: yeah, I mean the group is heavily
involved with research on the campus
currently, so, we've gone through more of
central campus and a little bit of North
and just try to recognize where the
inaccessible areas are. We've documented
it, and we will be presenting at it next
Thurs-, er, next week's conversation, and
then just through that we've kind of opened
the door to a lot of other areas that
are lacking within space, so we're still
kind of figuring out all the areas that
need to be covered
um, it's cut-, it, well, I don't want to say
impossible, it's just not possible yet to
have a completely inclusive space, so for
us as architecture...
>>AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: both as a pedagogue, like, because the
request seems to be why not?
>>RACHEL: yeah.
>>AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: so I think it would be quite interesting as designers,
and the school, and as groups, as individuals, to
like play that out. I don't know what the
answer would be, so it's a Center in Berkeley
which was great, I really love the reading
of the drawing and... [inaudible]... but also like
typollogically it seems like it's a
two-story louse on building, so I'm just curious
when you confront other, more vertical
buildings around, like, what would the
world look like? Would it be one story?
Would be like...
>>RACHEL: yeah.
>>AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: like, you know, like there are fire stairs,
like I think these are super
interesting concerns, but, like if it's hard to
think about
amelioration strategies, I guess I would like to
see the Utopian, like, play out across the whole field and see what that would be. -Cause I think that would
be a totally interesting...
>>RACHEL: yeah, yeah,
>>CELESTE: I mean
I think, I think the thing with that is
like, because, um I'm going to call it, a,
non-disable design, is so prevalent and
in the world like, like you mentioned,
um, this isn't something, of course, that
we can just fix overnight, and I'm going
to argue that it starts with a
conversation. So for example, uh, when I
was talking about the ADA Act, not only
is that an issue because it comes from
the majority being a non-disabled people
but it's also kind of a small group of
people, so you can't just do something
where you're going to say, "okay, I'm going
to design something that's accessible.
I'm going to get one person in a
wheelchair, and or maybe like five people
in a wheelchair, and you know, we're going
to be good to go." You can't do that. I can
only tell it, I can only talk to you
about design coming at you from from the
point of view of a wheelchair user. I
can't talk about, you know, spacial
experiences for people who are blind or
people who are deaf or hard of hearing
or people who maybe sometimes can't, can
walk with aid, but  sometimes they can't
and so they have to use a chair, so my argument for like
the sort of first step in that is
gathering as many
different voices from as many different
types of disabled people as possible, and
what's really important with that is so
much of, you know, our, our conversations,
like the sort of popular conversations
regarding disability, disability activism
are totally whitewashed. Disability is
like a most intersectional group of
people ever and so when you're bringing
disabled voices into the conversation it
can't just be, you know, like white
disabled people, it has to be disabled
people of all different types of
backgrounds, and once you have that group
together then you can start having a
conversation about, you know, how do we
design this space so not only is it
accessible but it works for all these
different types of people, and then even
more than that. So in i(ID), what we're
trying to do right now is, you know, right
now, Mieko, myself, and then another
member who couldn't be here today her name is Emily,
we're the only disabled people within the
group, and it's really really hard to do
work that we can sort of say is
accessible when we're only coming at it
from three different points of views, so
the work that we're trying to do right
now is to sort of get as many different
types of people from around campus in on
our group so that we can have the most
effective projects, and then once you can
do that, then, you know, what you're saying
about how it sort of comes off as like a
challenge, which it definitely is, it's
always going to be a challenge to do it.
But once you have that group of people
then you've got the tools to be able to
say, okay, here's how we're going to
design something.
>>ELLIS: to add to that, I think a lot of
the design aspects, the elements on the role of
the architect, or the role of the designer,
in this is not, it's not completely, you
know, that which is preparing for future design
it's not from our perspective,
it's not architecture that has yet to be designed.
A lot of it does deal with adapting historical sites. You know, the  Laurentian Library,
how do you, how to deal with such... [inaudible]... questions, issues like that.
But I think, I think that part of, that part of design,
designing social, social processes around
around accessibility such as the
infrastructure in which, like public
transportation for example, we have the
architecture there already implemented
or in place to allow the people to
access space, accessibly, but yet the education,
say, for the example of the bus driver,
who drives, back those buses, those infrastructure,
are necessarily educated on how to, or
taught how to operate that
infrastructure... [inaudible]. So they're designing, that
designing that education, teaching the bus
drivers how to use that. Furthermore,
another project were working on right
now is, um, is working with, we met yesterday
with two women from the university department of
residential housing, and so one problem that Celeste encountered last week was the fact that during the wind
storm, during a, two weeks ago, a power outage left Celeste unable to get to her room, because she was on, she was in one of the
accessible rooms, but on the fifth floor of the building, and so,
>>CELESTE: and there was also only one elevator
that can take you to the fifth floor, and
they had four elevators in the building.
>>ELLIS: so the, so the design challenge in that, comes restructuring
where, where do disabled people live?
Which floor? How do you get to there, and
making sure that there are alternatives to that when, when means of accessibility is removed from that equation.
So, it's both that design component, you know, 
perspective, but also adaptation.
>>RACHEL: Yeah, I also
think as far as pedagogical standards go,
I would love to see it as more of a
requirement within architecture,
architectural education to kind of
implement into the design studios, ADA
and even further beyond that so that
it's not just something that we learn
once we're in the profession, and it's
like,
kind of looked at, at least in my
experience in the professional world,
it's like okay, how do we design around
this ADA code, or keep our, keep our
theme but still have this ramp off to
the side, and I think having it within
studio or education would allow for much
more creative space to happen early on
and kind of just become a habit.
>>CELESTE: yeah, and
what's really sort of interesting with
that is, I sort of think of you know
accessible design, disabled design, as
sort of like the potential computer of
the design world. So when we got the
computer, that completely changed
everything. That was huge. No one had ever
really seen anything like it before and
while I'm sure that was a challenge to
invent, look what it ended up doing. It's
amazing. So, but there's, it's really
unfortunate because there's this whole
argument that, you know, we're not going
to implement accessible and disabled
design in the disabled experience within
our architecture, and within our spaces
because it's just too hard. It's really
difficult, and we as architects don't
want a challenge. We want to do things
our way. We don't want to think outside
the box with this, and, [noise from audience member] hmm?
[continuing] and so you
know when you see work like Gallaudet
University and the Ed Roberts campus, and
the Asclepius Machine, like those are so
beautiful, and they work, and they're
innovative, and they make it so that
people like me,  and Mieko, and every
other disabled person can use them with
you know, with the technology that we
have available right now, and that's so
amazing, so, you know, when I hear stuff
like, "oh, I'm not going to design this
because it's, it's too difficult," it's like
you're there is so much potential in
terms of what that design can be because
you're literally doing something that
has never been done before, or it's been
done but it's not not really been done,
and then also kind of
what I was saying earlier about how we
need to start a conversation, I think not
only do we need to start a conversation,
but we also need to start promoting
disabled designers, because I think that
the majority of not just architects, but
really anyone who designs anything, they're,
they're either not disabled or their
disability is completely ignored, so for
example the other day, in my art history
class I was learning about Michael
Graves, and you know, towards the end of
his life he has, he had to start using a
wheelchair, he designed a bunch of
medical equipment that completely
rethought, you know, what, you know, the
aesthetic of medical equipment can be,
and that was hardly even talked about.
Hardly anyone even brought that up,
and yet that's huge, that does so much. There's so much untapped potential that
he went in and, you know, grabbed on to
with that, and so I think, yeah, making
sure that we we start a conversation,
that we recognize this as an opportunity
rather than, you know, a burden is, is what
we need to-, we need to have that sort of
change in how we think about design.
[silence]
>>RACHEL: Anyone Else?
[Silence]
Okay. Thank you.
[Applause]
