This was a rich list of eye-opening resources and since it was mentioned in more than one of the resources I looked more into the social vs. medical model of disability which I had not heard as a concept before.
Putting responsibility solely on the disabled person feeds into the same debate of blaming a woman for being raped because she wore certain types of clothes / was drunk / etc rather than looking at how society is structured to enable rape and exclusion. There is so much more work to be done and I hope that the medical model will loose traction.
I love the podcast “the Guilty Feminist” (https://guiltyfeminist.com) which provides a platform for a wide range of disabled people and other marginalised groups. It has made me very aware of subtleties of disabilities and helped me recognise my many privileges.
I found Christine Sun Kim’s film and Khairani Barokka’s (Okka) article particularly inspiring. Although deafness a disability that reveals itself quickly in a social situation, I think the film introduced it well as a potentially hidden disability to begin with. I’m a sucker for stories in which the ‘hero’ overcomes their biggest hardship and uses it to their power, so I was absolutely taken by her journey of ‘reclaiming’ sounds for herself. But more than it being an amazing journey it shows how inaccessible parts of the world are made out to be for young kids with disabilities and how they are ‘othered’ not only in society but often by their closest friends and family.
After reading Okka’s article I went on to watch one of her other performances (ANNAH, NOMENCLATURE) which deals with historic and present misrepresentation and non-documentation of ‘other’ races in European perception. I loved her performance style which is very direct, sitting on the floor drawing while reading from a book and singing traditional Indonesian songs.
How could you apply the resources to your own teaching practice?
All of the resources were very inspiring but the most practical one for supporting my students individually throughout the term was properly reading through the UAL disability and dyslexia website.
I’ve had many students with ISA’s in the past and an increased number over the previous year with the added pressure of corona. I often don’t know what the ISA says unless students discuss their impairments with me directly. However I always get informed of it at the marking stage, which usually comes in the form of adjusted assessment (formerly accommodated assessment).
It is helpful to know what an ISA entails and also what options are available to students with disabilities and learning difficulties so I can give better guidance in the future.
How could you integrate the research/work your students do on this subject into your teaching/professional practice?
The video by Christine Sun Kim made me think of the work of Marie van Driessche – a deaf student from the MA Graphic Moving Image course I used to teach on. She graduated before I started teaching on it but her work got referenced often within the teaching context on the MA so I know of her and her work.
One of her projects for the MA was about the triangular relationship between her, her interpreter and the tutors and she is now very involved in advocating for inclusive design for deaf people.
In an interview from 2018 she says “Accessibility is a feature, whereas inclusive design is a method” which I think does not only apply to design but to teaching and general planning of interactive and physical spaces.
This is a powerful statement and I’ve definitely touched on this on a project by project basis during my teaching but I never make this a priority when encouraging my students to think about their design outcomes.
For example my students are often asked to define a target group for their project. The chosen groups may be ‘young people between 20-30’, ‘mothers with young children’, ‘commuters’ etc but unless the project is about disability this usually implies ‘able-bodied’ and ‘non-disabled’. I will start to weave the notion of inclusive design more into the way I talk about a design outcome and my feedback on design process.
Hi Svenja, I agree with you that reading through the UAL disability and dyslexia website was an eye opener (I am dyslexic and didn’t know!). It occurred to me too that it is only through this PG Cert unit that we get to learn about ISAs and disability although we all have to deal with students that have disability. It seems that a training on disability should be compulsory just as the fire or the GDPR trainings are. You came to the same conclusion than me. It is up to us, teachers, to highlight the importance of inclusivity and representation in our work and in the work that our students create.
A compulsory training covering disability and dyslexia would be great – just like there is one for online security now. I often think that I ‘missed’ things like that due to being an AL but I’ve been with UAL for 7 years now and it’s really not an excuse anymore.
Hi Svenja, this is a really reflective post! It’s really useful to have the links to related resources, and the work of Marie van Driessche sounds really interesting and relevant to the topic. I think you’re right about ISAs – although they can be accessed by staff, often the format is quite generic, and we can only really understand the detail of a student’s situation if they choose to disclose it to us. I don’t like to be too invasive with questions so it can be hard to always know what will help. However, I think the system in place is a good start, and I can see that it’s an attempt to balance care and confidentiality.
Hi Svenja, you raised a good point about the ISA. It is very helpful especially when not all students are comfortable with sharing their disability with tutors. I haven’t engaged with students on that level yet but I will definitely use it as an indicator in the future. Raising the awareness of disability in student project is definitly an important start in changing the larger picture in art and design.