Greetings to all, I am a post-graduate student in Disability Studies
at Sheffield.
Philip, regarding your recent message about simulation exercises, you
may be interested in an alternative to simulation exercises which I
was involved in developing and running.
In 1998 and 1999 I and other disabled people from a local
group offered training to officers of the local Council on how to
create better access within the built environment for disabled
people. We developed the training ourselves. We didn't feel that a
lecture on the social model would be fully effective on its own,
although we included an extensive discussion of the social model in
the training. We wondered whether to use a simulation exercise but
felt that it would be ineffective and tokenistic, and would give
able-bodied people the feeling that they had fully experienced
disability, when of course they had not.
At the same time we felt that without any direct experience of
disability it is difficult for planners, architects, engineers and
other professionals to have any sensitivity to it.They don't
necessarily have the experience or equipment to spot disabling
barriers within the environment, barriers that they themselves create
and perpetuate. They may grasp the social model in theory, but don't
see how they are helping to create disability in practice.
Our solution was to avoid a classic simulation exercise, but to
include a tour in the training session. We designed and led this
ourselves, and we used it to point out and discuss specific
disabling barriers. We were completely in control of the process and
never felt the victims of a spectacle. We presented ourselves as
experts, and this is how we were treated. There seemed a lot of
respect for our knowledge, and for our own abilities to use and
access the environment in spite of its many disabling barriers. One
could be cynical about this, but it felt genuine. We reiterated that
the tour was only a sample of barriers, that we could not, in a
morning, give a comprehensive account of all the barriers faced by
disabled people. A valid criticism of our work would be that we had
little time, and that a little information is worse than none at all
if as a result of it people feel they know all about the subject.
I think that the people involved gained new insights during the
tour. Subsequent discussion was much more engaged than discussion
before the tour. It seemed to me that before the tour the officers
knew they should take disability seriously; after the tour, they
really wanted to.
Anna
Anna Ravetz
[log in to unmask]
tel 0114 234 7133
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