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You lost me, in the middle there, with some of the Singer stuff -- but I agree with all you wrote, at the beginning and the end. How odd that physical barriers are "outside my academic pigeon-hole"...to most, here. A hyper-specialisation that doesn't serve the average PD on the street, I'd say. /\/\/\/ Re: What difference does it make if teachers of DS, are people who are AB or people with disabilities? An anecdote: In June '98 I attended the 1st international conference on "Universal Design". (See my report on that , on-line, in the Nov.-Dec. '98 back issue of "The Ragged Edge". go to: ragged-edge-mag.com ... click on "Cover Story") Since very few visibly disabled people were there (3% at most), I'd guess that it was a very very heavily AB crowd. And this is basically everyone in the world who's teaching it, or researching it. It's not a big field, yet. It was at Hofstra U. on Long Island. I got a ride back to New York one night, with 2 design professors. One a dean of a school, too. Both seemingly AB, and didn't disclose any disability. They were from out of town, and parked near Grand Central Station. I took them on a brief tour, since it was just renovated & restored & cleaned up. They ooh-ed & ahhhhh-ed. Then I mentioned two things that were done, i violation of the local accessibility code Local Law 58. I wanted to take them a few dozen yards, (meters) to these 2 locations in the station, to show them the new barriers. We just were at a conference about this stuff, they're already teaching it, so we're all interested in this stuff, right? Wrong. They both looked at me as if I were crazy. The message was clear. They didn't say it out loud, but the message was -- Why the hell would we be interested in seeing that? If nothing else, it was a case study in how a quasi governmental agency -- had blithely ignored the recent (1989 at local level, 1990 at national level) laws, that were supposed to prevent new inaccessible construction. And how there was zero enforcement of these laws. But they obviously thought that these barriers weren't barriers to THEM, so why should they be interested? Why learn a little something? Unless on paid-time. But their "paid time" had ended when we left the conference, so their interest in the subject of Universal Design & barriers had ended, too. How could these 2 inspire curiosity, interest in the subject, and a professional attitude, in their students (which includes, that a professional designer is responsible after graduation, for conducting his/her own lifelong continuing education)........... if they're so utterly un-curious & disinterested in the subject, themselves? After that, I was not at all surprised - to hear that the one who's also a Dean, told me that "students are very conservative, these days".. and he admitted that in several years of teaching a course in Universal Design... he had YET to successfully, as a professor, sell even one design student, on the idea that people with disabilities have a right to access, without architectural barriers being built. I submit that -- his personal lack of interest in newly-built architectural barriers in a major public space, or in the human right of accessibility (on his "unpaid time") .......... and his probable lack of any disability which would define these things as barriers, to him .......... and his admitted total failure as a UD teacher .......... were almost certainly -- not unrelated. Perhaps the students picked up on the fact, that underneath his classroom talk on "paid-time", he didn't really seem to give a damn about what he was teaching? For some, "universal design" teaching may just be a way to make a buck, when the course they really want to teach is "taken". Something "new" they can "get in on the ground floor" of.... with less competition. I wonder if.... %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%