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Engage in Disability Advocacy & Innovation

Three students walking in front of the Husky Union Building, laughing, and wearing F*** STAIRS T-Shirts
Photo of members of the Student Disability Commission during their annual F*** STAIRS campaign | Photo via ASUW Student Disability Commission 

Want to learn more about how you can advance accessibility, learn about research and innovation occurring, or engage in disability advocacy? Check out these multi-media resources for continued learning and engagement! Please note this is not an exhaustive list of resources, but serves as a starting point to learn more about UW’s 504at50 campaign goals.

Accessible Accordion

  • Access Intimacy: The Missing Link — A brief article by Mia Mingus discussing the deep sense of comfort, trust, and connection that arises from disabled individuals who share similar accessibility needs or lived experiences.
  • ADA 30 in Color — A series of original essays on the past, present, and future of Disability Rights and Justice by disabled BIPOC writers in honor of the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
  • Global Disability Innovation Hub — a research and practice centre driving disability innovation for a fairer world. Operational in 41 countries, with more than 70 partners, we’ve reached 29 million people since launching in 2016. The Hub highlights disability innovation news and recurring blog posts.
  • Leaving Evidence — A blog by Mia Mingus, is a writer, educator and trainer for transformative justice and disability justice. She is a queer physically disabled korean transracial and transnational adoptee raised in the Caribbean. She works for community, interdependence and home for all of us, not just some of us, and longs for a world where disabled children can live free of violence, with dignity and love
  • What is Disability Justice? — A brief blog post defining and understanding what “justice” means in the context of disability services, advocacy, and studies.
  • What is Universal Design? — A resource highlighting the 7 principles of Universal Design, the history behind it, and the benefits to users, companies, organizations, and society as a whole
  • 10 Principles of Disability Justice — Learn the 10 foundational principles of the Disability Justice movement, a new disability framework that has evolved and improved on the Disability Rights movement

  • Ableism is the Bane of my Motherfuckin’ Existence [5mins] — Exploring a Disability Justice framework, Patty Berne and Stacey Milbern discuss the need for a politicized understanding of ableism within a context of racism, classism, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy
  • Disability & Innovation: The Universal Benefits of Accessible Design, by Haben Girma [26mins] — The first DeafBlind person to graduate from Harvard Law School, Haben champions equal access to information for people with disabilities, earning her recognition from both President Obama and President Clinton. Haben will share how designing with accessibility in mind benefits not just users with disabilities, but developers, too. Throughout history, disability has sparked innovation, leading to breakthroughs in wide-ranging inventions from keyboards to telephones.
  • My Body Doesn’t Oppress Me, Society Does  [5mins] — Patty Berne and Stacey Milbern present a social model of disability, explaining how universal design, adaptive devices, and meeting people’s access needs can limit the social, economic, and physical barriers that render physical impairments disabling in an ableist society.
  • The 7 Principles of Universal Design: Ed Roberts Campus [6mins] — What is universal design? On this episode of Power On, “Professor” Rafael Siegel takes you to Berkeley, California’s Ed Roberts Campus to teach the 7 Principles of Universal Design. Learn how to create buildings and interiors for people with disabilities, people who use wheelchairs, and… everybody!
  • Why We Need Universal Design [10mins] — A TEDTalk from Deaf presenter and Gallaudet graduate, Michael Nesmith, discusses the importance of Universal Design

  • Ableism & Racism: Roots of the Same Tree — Dr. Kendi sat down with Disability Justice advocate, Rebecca Cokley, for a frank conversation on the intersections of ableism and racism in America, the historic civil rights legislation governing both, and what we can all do to advocate for a better future for people with disabilities.
  • Heumann Perspective Podcast —  Join Judy Heumann, an internationally recognized bad-ass disability activist in conversation with disabled changemakers and their allies. For all fighting for social justice, these conversations around disability culture, art, entertainment, policy and advocacy are sure to light a rebellious fire under you to fight harder for all people.
  • The Accessible Stall Podcast — The Accessible Stall is a disability podcast hosted by Kyle Khachadurian and Emily Ladau that keeps it real about issues within the disability community. Because we each have different disabilities and mobility levels, we approach everything we talk about with two unique viewpoints, offering our listeners a fresh insight into how differences in disability can color your experiences and perspectives. And we never shy away from offering our honest opinion. Even if they go against the grain of the disability community at large, we always speak our minds.
  • The Politics of Disability — Disability is messy, political, not palatable and intersects at every identity. This podcast examines those intersections and their nuances.

  • Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha​ — In their new collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and disability justice activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all. Care Work is a mapping of access as radical love, a celebration of the work that sick and disabled queer/people of color are doing to find each other and to build power and community, and a toolkit for everyone who wants to build radically resilient communities of liberation where no one is left behind.
  • Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice & Art Activism of Sins Invalid, Shayda Kafai — Kafai explores the art-activism of Sins Invalid, a San Francisco Bay Area-based performance project, and its radical imaginings of what disabled, queer, trans, and gender nonconforming bodyminds of color can do: how they can rewrite oppression, and how they can gift us with transformational lessons for our collective survival.
  • Deaf Gain: Raising the Stakes for Human Diversity, H-Dirksen Bauman and Joseph Murray — Through their in-depth articulation of Deaf Gain, the contributors to this pathbreaking volume approach deafness as a distinct way of being, one that opens perceptions, perspectives, and insights less common to the majority of hearing persons. By framing deafness in terms of its intellectual, creative, and cultural benefits, Deaf Gain recognizes physical and cognitive difference as vital to human diversity.
  • Haben: The Deafblind Woman who Conquered Harvard Law, Haben Grima — The incredible life story of Haben Girma, the first deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School, and her amazing journey from isolation to the world stage. Haben defines disability as an opportunity for innovation. She learned non-visual techniques for everything from dancing salsa to handling an electric saw. She developed a text-to-braille communication system that created an exciting new way to connect with people. Haben pioneered her way through obstacles, graduated from Harvard Law, and now uses her talents to advocate for people with disabilities.
  • Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life, Margaret Price — Price explores the contested boundaries between disability, illness, and mental illness in the setting of U.S. higher education. Much of the research and teaching within disability studies assumes a disabled body but a rational and energetic (an “agile”) mind. In Mad at School, scholar and disabilities activist Margaret Price asks: How might our education practices change if we understood disability to incorporate the disabled mind?