Page 69 - FDCC Flyer Summer 2021

2016. At a community meeting in 2018, I spoke up and asked how a housing organization that worked with underprivileged individuals in diverse populations would serve people with disabilities, and I was met with silence.
Most recently, I took part in my university’s implicit bias training during our 1L orientation week. Although the training included
a few mentions of disability, the PowerPoints were full of images
my screen reader could not read, and I was not provided with the files ahead of time so that I could convert them into an accessible format and follow them during the presentation. I raised this issue on chat over Zoom, where hundreds
of my future classmates could see. Many of them joined in my call for greater accessibility of the training, and when the presenter failed to heed my request and describe the images on screen, they provided the necessary descriptions over chat. I
was grateful for their support and intervention, but I wondered how an implicit bias training could be so explicitly inaccessible to a blind participant.
I chose to pursue a law degree
so I could advocate for children and others who cannot speak for themselves. Before I started at the American University Washington College of Law, I worked at the National Federation of the Blind, an advocacy and civil rights organization led by the blind. I met numerous children whose schools overlooked them rather than giving them the tools they needed to succeed. Likewise, I assisted a number of adults and seniors who had recently lost their eyesight and needed mentors to help them acquire skills for living as blind people and advocating for themselves in their communities. In my work, I met so many blind and disabled people of all ages who were excluded from some of
the most basic experiences of life: reading, employment, and even parenting children, all because someone in power would not raise their expectations of people with disabilities and do their research.
Diversity and inclusion is a process, not a product. We can celebrate diversity like the city
of Columbia, Missouri, with breakfasts and events, but the
true progress occurs when we embrace diversity by learning inclusion. I have been in positions to educate employers, professors, and university administrations on disability inclusion firsthand, and the process works for me when those in power listen with an open mind and respect me as a colleague or student. As I finish my second semester of law school, I continue to speak out against accessibility barriers at my university and dispel misconceptions about people with disabilities in class.
FDCC Pillars
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