Felcity wrote:
>I should be grateful if you could provide me with your definition of
>full access for my information.
'Full access' is exactly what it says - expensive! In the first instance,
though, it is about demonstrating an understanding of the range of access
needs in the disability community and not setting up artificial hierarchies
about whose needs are most important and/or urgent. The it is about making
those hard choices on the basis of requests for accommodation. At this
point you juggle with people and money by asking questions such as:
*Can most hard of hearing people access information through BSL?
*Can most deaf people who use SSE access information though BSL?
*Can most people who use induction loops access text?
*Can most deaf people who use SSE access text?
*Can most BSL users access text?
Answers to these questions should help you to arrive at a situation where
you can decide in the most politically unbiased way possible, which forms
of communication support will allow access for most of the Deaf, deaf and
hard of hearing people who wish to attend - which is surely the objective?
In other words, if some people's access needs are met and others' are not
to the degree that they are prevented to attending the meeting then
wouldn't this be a cause for concern?
>In response to the points you raise:-
>1. I work for a small user-led organisation of disabled people with
>extremely limited and insecure resources. In common with many others I
>await Utopia when it comes to access... In the interim however I must do
>the very best with what I have. It is a case of hard choices and the
>staging of a large meeting to launch the organisation's Lifelong
>Learning project has taken resources away from other valuable services
>that the organisation offers.
These are struggles that most disabled people face.
>2. In our largely inaccessible world to wax lyrical about the hoops one
>has to jump through to provide a meeting with the given, albeit
>obviously inadequate, access seems churlish. But there is a serious
>issue here relating to definitions. I would like the meeting to be
>accessible to all linguistic minorities. However, working within an
>inner London borough, that potentially leads down the route of blowing
>the whole organisation's annual budget within two hours. Hard choices
>again. I have received requests for BSL interpretation and an induction
>loop facility. These have been met. If anyone wishes to attend the
>meeting and has additional access needs every attempt will be made to
>accommodate these given available time and financial resources.
If the information about the meeting had been received before it was then I
would have requested STT, and I would have offered to pay for part of it
myself from my ATW budget. I don't know where it was advertised before but
your email to the mailbase was the first time I had seen anything about it.
What you must understand, however, is that those of us who negotiate ATW
packages work to increasingly fixed budgets that are decided at the
beginning of the year. These negotiations can be tortuous anyway and
'adjusting' the budget later can be difficult especially when the DST's may
have a view of what constitutes 'work'. I do appreciate that there are hard
choices to be made but I'm very much afraid that the statement 'If anyone
wishes to attend the meeting and has additional access needs every attempt
will be made to accommodate these given available time and financial
resources' sounds just like the various 'special needs' education acts that
say that provision will be made 'wherever possible'. This always means that
in practice, people will be excluded. I am therefore interested to learn
how decisions are made about which people?
>3.In answer to the final point, I have ever growing concerns around the
>'Deaf not disabled' agenda. My aim in arranging the meeting was to make
>it accessible to as many interested parties as possible regardless of
>how they self-define. If deemed a 'disability' event the option is of
>course to be elsewhere.
What I meant by 'disability event' is that it has been organised by
organisations of disabled people and has, in Colin, a disabled speaker.
Unless I'm totally out of kilter, it's my experience of going to
'disability events' that Deaf people rarely, if ever attend. I am as
concerned as you about the 'Deaf not disabled' agenda, and I want to make
it clear that I would like to see more Deaf people IN the movement and
concerned about the broader 'rights' issues that the movement addresses,
not just about Sign language rights. But I am also concerned that this
agenda is increasingly being translated as the 'Deaf not deaf' agenda so
far as the disability movement is concerned. There seems to be a view that
there is only ONE possible 'positive, proud' way of being deaf, and if
you're not that you're 'hard of hearing' or worse 'hearing', which of
course is the common view amongst the Deaf community and their hearing
allies. Therefore to emphasise the inclusion of Deaf people may be to
exclude deaf people.
>The prime objective is to stimulate interest in
>adult learning for people whom are likely to have experienced many
>educational barriers.
As a former manager of adult education services to Deaf/deaf students in
the primary provider of adult education in Greater London (there you have
it - the reason why I am interested in this meeting), I can assure you that
disabling barriers in adult education and life long learning are not
confined to educational barriers. Also may of those who DID receive an
education were not exempt from barriers along the way and may have
important insights to offer.
>It must be remembered that away from the academic
>debate that surrounds 'disability' the day to day reality for service
>users, many of whom have never even heard of the social model, is the
>availability of Dial-a-Ride as the determining factor as to whether or
>not they can attend. I wish it were not so but despite my zeal for
>world-changing activity, I cannot build Rome in a day any more than you
>can, despite your influence relative to mine.
These kind of comparisons are unhelpful because they set up hierarchies
amongst disabled people. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but this also sounds like
another dismissal of academic debate and implies that academic debate does
not reach the realities of disabled people. Disabled academics experience
disabling barriers every day of our lives - and believe me, neither the
movement nor academia seems to be prepared to address the fact that
academia is 'a communication culture' that has particular implications for
particular disabled people. We're hardly likely to forget the material
reality of disabled people's lives even though our jobs do, on occasions,
demand that we live in our heads. No-one's asking you or anyone else to
build Rome in a day, but I'm certain that when it happens, you will have
far more influence than me.
Best wishes, and, as I say, no assault intended!
Mairian
Mairian Corker
Senior Research Fellow
Department of Education and Social Studies
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
Address for correspondence:
Deafsearch
111 Balfour Road
Highbury
London N5 2HE
U.K.
Minicom/TTY +44 [0]20 7359 8085
Fax +44 [0]870 0553967
Typetalk (voice) +44 [0]800 515152 (and ask for minicom/TTY number)
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"To understand what I am doing, you need a third eye"
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