I have very strong feelings abut accessibility in all shapes and forms because I identify as “partially” disabled that I would not like to expand upon here in this post. I even feel frustrated with myself referring to any kind of disability as partial since for so many individuals, it is usually invisible. This is discussed in both Rachel Zemach’s article as well as Kat Mcfarlane’s appearance in the podcast. Zemach’s article about having perfect english while being deaf resonated with me so much. When you find yourself being viewed as “in-between,” the accessibility discussion becomes so much more difficult, as explained with numerous examples in the spilled tea podcast with Kat Mcfarlane.

The process to prove disability not only makes you feel like you’ve been outed, but is also costly and not very respectful of one’s time. Mcfarlane refers to this as the medical documentation loop in her example about laptop use permission in the classroom. If this process is cut out and applied across the board to all students (which I think our department has been making great progress in), we can create a more comfortable learning environment.This is why I strongly feel that accessibility should be naturally built into our courses. In the last two years, every accessibility option I could have utilized seems to have benefitted nearly every student and has caused absolutely no harm. There should be no red tape or documentation proceedings on a repeated individual basis for each and every single class. Let’s take the bureaucracy out of our accessibility please.