Disability and Accessibility Town Hall Disability and Accessibility Town Hall By Steve Yang
[email protected] Two years ago, President Kington tasked a group of faculty, administrators and students with developing a “comprehensive response to serving students, faculty and staff with disabilities.” The efforts were motivated by regulatory compliance concerns and a push to adopt universal design principles that reflect and represent the College’s core values. On Thursday morning, these findings were summarized and discussed at a town hall in JRC 101, dedicated to informing the campus-wide Grinnell community. The Disability and Accessibility Task Force is chaired by Angela Voos, vice president for strategic planning and Joyce Stern, dean for student success and academic advising. They collaborated with Autumn Wilke, coordinator of disability resources and over 50 other individuals across six subcommittees to raise awareness, discuss accommodations and develop numerous forms of access for disabilities at Grinnell. The Task Force emphasized accommodating “invisible” disabilities and implementing universal design concepts, specifically in the College’s new social studies building under construction, the Digital Humanities Lab and Campus Safety. “Disability is a giant umbrella that covers a lot of different identities, a lot of different people,” Wilke said during the Town Hall. “Many things are related to mental health and many physical disabilities such as chronic fatigue … are invisible. Advancements in accessibility … are also having great benefit for people with invisible disabilities.” A major issue is the perception of what disabilities look like or how most people envision “disability” and the specific accommodations that must be provided. Joyce Stern focused on “invisible” illnesses during Thursday’s Town Hall in JRC 101.