The Clarity of Social Accessibility

This event will be online on YouTube and in-person (New York City). The speaker and live stream starts at 7:30 pm ET. In-person attendees may arrive as early as 7 pm ET. If arriving late, please leave a comment on this page and someone will come down ASAP.

Description
Without social accessibility, or the acceptance of disabled people as peers in life value, the struggle to infuse society with the physical, environmental and digital elements of accessibility that we all require will remain aspirational. The creation of access as a design driver, not only in physical or digital space but also throughout society is the prerequisite to making accessibility like breathing, because disability is living.

Our challenge is for recognition, not inclusion. Inclusion is an expression of an empathetic offering to come inside a boundary set by another. Yet, we are already there, and it is up to us to draw – or erase – any boundary lines. Inclusion was begun as and remains a tool of privilege that highlights, inadvertently or not, the prime position of the extender or enabler of inclusivity. Our challenge now is to complete the reframing of disability and disabled living as a social continuum like any other.

This presentation is a discussion of the ongoing resistance to the comprehensive adoption of accessibility in all forms, where it comes from and why it endures. It offers a framework for dismantling it called Social Accessibility.

The presentation answers these questions:

• Is Social Accessibility a third foundation of accessibility or something else? Where does it belong?
• What’s the Contagion Response?
• What’s wrong with inclusion?
• What is the role of empathy in understanding disability and in recognizing disability equity?
• Is there something we can learn from older people entering disability?
• Where do I start?

Presenter bio
Peter Slatin is a writer, accessibility consultant, and disability advocate. Peter, who is bli