#universal accessibility

Clear, detailed, specific instructions, for example, can massively help autistic and anxious students, but might overwhelm ADHD, PDA, or other anxious students.

Flexible deadlines can be really helpful for some ADHD students or students with anxiety, but they can also trigger executive dysfunction.

Interactive elements, ice breakers, and group work can offer much needed stimulation and hands-on learning for some ADHD'ers, but can overwhelm other students.

All of this means there is no one universal way to make teaching, or workplaces in general, accessible to everyone.

Recently, requests for wheelchair accessible garden beds was brought to our attention. A simple, quick, cost effective way to meet that need was suggested at our board meeting. And then was immediately shot down because, "if we make one part of the garden wheelchair accessible, then we'll have to make the whole garden ada compliant so ambulance chasers don't sue us."

When pushed, the same board member continued, "we looked into making the garden ada compliant several years ago, and it just wasn't economically feasible."

Well, friends, I'm pretty sure the ADA doesn't require community gardens to be ADA compliant. There are no federal guidelines that I can find.

So that means this board member was *lying* and I can't wait to passive aggressively call him on it at the next board meeting. Imagine, having an option to make a COMMUNITY garden more accessible to THE COMMUNITY and instead choosing to exclude THE COMMUNITY.

Father Mulcrone, who is part of a community that celebrates Mass with the deaf community in Chicago each week, agrees that it is a matter of justice for the church to provide access to the sacraments for Catholics who are deaf.

He laments that few parishes have interpreters available to sign Mass and there are even fewer priests proficient in American Sign Language to hear confessions or anoint the sick.

What is Grand Universal Design?

C O N T E N T S:

KEY TOPICS

The concept of Universal Design originated in the field of architecture, with the goal of creating places and things that were accessible to as many people as possible.(More…)

POSSIBLY USEFUL

I am happy to announce that Progressive AE is expanding through a merger with ai Design Group, an architecture and interior design firm based in Charlotte, North Carolina.(More…)