When the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990, the goal was to ensure that people with disabilities had opportunities for equal participation in American society. The ADA30 Celebratory Symposium, hosted remotely by Oregon State, considered the ADA as a tool for inclusion and social justice.
Gabrielle Miller, M.A. ’21 and Lzz Johnk, Ph.D. ’21, both graduate students in the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program at the time, worked for more than a year on the symposium committee. The symposium’s 17 sessions were held over Zoom May 4-27 and included academic presentations, workshops and discussions. More than 500 disabled and nondisabled participants joined from artistic, scholarly, activist and other community groups at Oregon State and nationwide.
Miller says the symposium committee wanted the program to include both research and activism, addressing theories, systems and structures that affect people with disabilities, particularly disabled people of color.
“There’s a huge gap between people’s lived experience and the actual document of the ADA,” Miller says. “We wanted to talk about what we can change to create a more accessible future for everyone.”
Gabe Merrell, deputy ADA coordinator in the Office of Equal Opportunity and Access, says a key takeaway from the symposium is that while the ADA is a civil rights law, it does not mandate inclusion and social justice.
“We can go further,” he says. “We look at the ADA as an important legal success, but barriers still remain for a lot of individuals to participate fully and equally in our society.” Beyond the physical barriers that are resolved with ramps, doors and elevators, there is a need to “address the social stigma of disability and dismantle systemic ableism.”
Merrell points to information technology as one area where barriers for the disabled often go unnoticed. While the text of the ADA says exactly how to make buildings accessible, there is no technical standard for IT accessibility in the law, which predates widespread use of the internet.
“Everyone that makes any decision or creates or manages anything related to IT needs to know what to do to make it accessible to our disabled community,” Merrell says. At Oregon State, that includes an information technology accessibility policy, and Information Services offers Monsido, an all-in-one tool to find and fix accessibility issues and other errors on a website.
Both Miller and Merrell credit OSU Media Services for making the Zoom sessions work seamlessly and just as important, ensuring they were accessible for all attendees. Miller says the remote format and sessions spread out over a month encouraged discussions among attendees.
“Some of the conversations were really illuminating and gave insight into people's lives and what they're experiencing,” Miller says. “Having that space, even virtually, to talk about disability-related topics with people who identify as disabled was a great opportunity.”
Liat Ben-Moshe, an assistant professor of criminology, law and justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago, gave the opening keynote. Based on her book, “Decarcerating Disability,” Ben-Moshe’s presentation looked at how people with intellectual or developmental disabilities are frequently incarcerated or institutionalized. For the closing keynote, Therí Alyce Pickens, a professor of English at Bates College, focused on public discussions of Blackness and disability. Both keynotes, along with some other sessions, were recorded and will be available online from the OSU Disability Archives.