By Amelia Faircloth
At any university across the United States and Canada, you will likely find a statement that describes the school’s commitment to serving those with disabilities, along with the resources to back it up.
But despite this well-intended attempt of inclusion, the public perception of disability will need to change before people with disabilities are truly accommodated, says disability studies scholar Tanya Titchkosky, a professor in social justice education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.
Tanya Titchkosky is a disability studies scholar and professor at the University of Toronto’s OISE school of education. As a part of her approach to disability studies, Titchkosky examines the social perceptions of disability.
In a recent talk organized by UCSB’s Graduate Center for Literary Research, Titchkosky described how representations of disability in university life and society as a whole continue to alienate people with disabilities by reinforcing a “background of ordinary.”
Titchkosky cited policies that require students to register their disability with student services or go to a doctor's office to be tested, effectively pushing those with different needs out of the classroom and sometimes even off-campus.
She says that directing students away from the classroom to specialized departments can isolate students with disabilities.
"Regardless of how welcoming or accommodating the access statement might start off, there is an invitation for the student to move out of the classroom," Titchkosky said. "From the extreme of 'don't talk to me about this’ to the regular 'register your disability at the appropriate center.' The invitation to go elsewhere remains the order of the day."
Since 1981, the World Health Organization has defined disability as "an inability to function in a way considered normal for a human being." As part of her approach to disability studies, Titchkosky, examines the background presumptions about what is “normal” or ordinary and how those can skew perceptions about disability.
The blue "icon of access" is an internationally recognized symbol used to signal which places are accessible to people with disabilities. But Tanya Titchkosky says it also reinforces the "background of ordinary."
The universal blue handicap symbol, also known as the “icon of access,” is an image that represents how society’s idea of what is “normal” changes how people with disabilities are viewed, Titchkosky said.
The icon of access shows which buildings, parking spots, or public transit lines are accessible to those with disabilities. But while only some places are accessible, the rest remain inaccessible. For Titchkosky, that inaccessibility is the “background” or universal idea of normal.
“Just as the background of inaccessibility is what allows the icon of access to show up,” she said, “the background of ordinariness or unexamined conceptions of being human is often what makes disability appear in particular forms.”
Just this fall, a student drew Titchkosky’s attention to an accessibility statement at the end of an 18-page course outline. The final two lines of the statement read:
“Do not approach your professor or TA about getting accommodations. Accessibility Services have the necessary expertise, and they provide full confidentiality, so your privacy is protected.”
That the syllabus offloaded inquiries about accommodations from the instructor to a different service stood out to Titchkosky.
Disability scholar Tanya Titchkosky urges the Zoom audience to change what they see as “normal” to improve public perception of disability.
“I’ve read hundreds of accommodation statements, and I’ve only ever read once ‘don’t talk to me or your TA,’” she said. “Do not talk to me can be read as an extreme version of what is a rather common practice in most accessibility statements that I’ve encountered— namely, the invitation to go elsewhere.”
The best way to change what is normal and alter how disability is represented is to think critically about how we view and interact with disability and bring it in from the "edges of inclusion," Titchkosky said.
She urged those in the academy to activate a sense of “wonder” and change cultural perceptions by imagining an alternative to what we currently see as disability.
“We can start to forge a feel for the importance of building critical understandings of common forms of engagement with disability”, she said “[and] work against the careless care that seems to surround many of the ways we see disability today.”
Amelia Faircloth is a fourth-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in English. She is a Web and Social Media Intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.