Celebrating Disability Inclusion, Equity, and Accessibility Month at Brandeis
Feb. 29, 2024
Dear Brandeis Community,
We are excited to celebrate the contributions and achievements of people with disabilities and to support the ongoing struggle for inclusion, equity, accessibility, and justice. In the United States, more than a quarter of the population has been estimated to have at least one disability, while the recent COVID-19 pandemic has increased the population dramatically.
Since last year, Brandeis has dedicated the month of March to the annual celebration of Disability Inclusion, Equity, and Accessibility Month. We pause now to review the history of disability and look forward to a better tomorrow.
The modern disability rights movement had many precursors. With the rise of the U.S. civil rights movement, however, people with disabilities in this country found a path for increasing the cross-disability activism that would achieve significant legal, political, social, and economic rights.
In 1977, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act was finally signed and, in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed (amended in 2008). With these wins, discrimination against people with disabilities in many areas was prohibited, albeit subject to certain provisions. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (1990, replacing the EHA) required a “free appropriate public education” for students with disabilities, though again subject to eligibility, funding, and implementation. In 1999, the Olmstead decision recognized the right of disabled people in the U.S. to live independently in the community.
Each milestone took significant and persistent effort on the part of an intersectional movement of people with disabilities, their organizations, and their allied civil rights associations—in one prominent example, the assistance of the Black Panthers was essential to the success of the sit-in of disabled protestors at the federal building in San Francisco. Yet the struggle continues, including the struggle to realize commitments contained in laws passed decades ago. Meanwhile, the experience of disability stigma and exclusion acts as a powerful restraint on even the disclosure of disabilities in the workplace, at school, and elsewhere.
During this month dedicated widely to disability equity, inclusion, accessibility, and justice, we strive to recognize and support genuine movement against the forces of exclusion, marginalization, and invisibilization of disabled people. In line with the social model of disability and the contemporary disability justice movement, we can start to question the predominant identification of disability with individual impairment, and understand it instead more in connection to social and environmental barriers of all forms that create impediments. Access and inclusion can then be approached less in terms of individual alterations and adaptations and more in terms of new ways of building and sustaining spaces, processes, and relationships that welcome all people.
At Brandeis, over 20% of undergraduate students identify as having a disability. Many graduate students, staff members, and faculty members also identify as disabled. As we work toward disability equity, inclusion, accessibility, and justice, let us ensure the active representation and participation of all members of the community in our common endeavors.
This March, there are many events planned that highlight the past, present, and future of disabled people. Please join us during Disability Inclusion, Equity, and Accessibility Month at these events.
Among them are the Disability Day of Mourning display (February 26–March 4); the Carrie Buck Distinguished Fellowship lecture by this year’s fellow, Robin Wilson-Beattie, speaking on disability and reproductive and sexual justice (March 7); a workshop for faculty, staff, and students entering the workforce on disability justice in the workplace (March 15); and many events during Neurodiversity Celebration Week (March 18–24), including a talk on neurodiversity in higher education (March 18).
Access the full calendar.
In solidarity,
Mel Ptacek
Communications Specialist, Lurie Institute for Disability Policy
Chair, Brandeis University Staff-Faculty Disability & Accessibility Alliance
Lee Bitsóí
Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Associate Research Professor of Health: Science, Society and Policy