Holistic Accessibility and Inclusion

I had some interesting conversations about masking in the context of academic spaces this week. And when I say masking I mean masking as in N-95s, but ultimately I do also mean masking as in neurodivergent masking. In one conversation someone was mentioning how they felt they had to stop masking because it was causing them to be excluded from academic places that they wanted to be a part of. I then had a custodial staff member give me the third degree about my mask in the elevator, asking me why I was masking and was I sick and should he be worried. It was a weird and uncomfortable 2 minutes. Then I had another conversation where someone reminded me that masks can be activating for some people who experienced a lot of trauma at the beginning of the pandemic.  So I have been sitting here all week reflecting on how we can make our spaces more holistically inclusive, and trauma-aware when so many folk have so many bodymind needs and experiences. But also at a time where empathy seems to be at a premium and people are actively choosing to ignore other's lived experiences.

When I facilitate workshops on-campus or at conferences, I use windowed KN-95 masks that allow for lip reading because I know that my need to mask and some auditory needs of participants may be an access friction. This is I feel an easy way to strike that balance. But when the conversation turns to the aggression I felt from the custodial staff this week or the reality that masks may be activating for some, it occurs to me that what is needed there is not necessarily a simple thing, but more of an awareness conversation coupled with a deep need to acknowledge and empathize with positionality and experiences. If we are invested in supporting trauma-aware spaces, part of the conversation has to be that some folk wear masks because the reality is the pandemic is not over, and also some folk wear masks because some folk can't wear masks for different reasons and so it is a way to support community and care. Masking can and is a form of empathy, just like being more aware of what is happening in the world socio-politically can support empathy in communication and actions.

But part of the problem of awareness is that we are living in a time where there's so much poorly done research in eduspace that is being paraded around as good research, that when you mention something there will always be dozens of gap riddled journal articles and books that folk will use to make their point. Just like there will be many to jump to what-aboutism to avoid sitting with the feelings of difficult conversations and that action that is needed.

And the main issue is so often that the research cited is not holistic, it is not inclusive, because that research doesn't include disabled folk because the REB system is flawed. Disabilities are almost never a consideration in research. I am seeing this so much in GenerativeAI discourse, where disabilities are talked around and not included, but that gap has been present in scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research for decades. I reminded colleagues this week that one of the things I do when I start reading research that says we absolutely must do thing, is first do a CTRL+F for "disab*" or "access*" in the article because chances are those words are not there, not even once in passing. I do this when one of those articles goes round that talks about how handwriting means you remember things more and everyone goes yes, down with all the tech. And then I go CTRL+F "disab*" and the search= 0 terms, and I ask so what happens to students who need devices to support their writing, like folk with dysgraphia, or dyslexia, does that mean they don't or can't remember things if they use a device? And of course the answers is, oh no not them, they can use devices, just not everyone else. And I let out a heavy sigh.

This all or nothingness that surrounds educational spaces hurts so many folk. It is tragic how difficult it is for folk to see the complexities of situations and communicate and react with those complexities in mind. I should not be able to identify the only other person on campus who still masks by name in a school my size, but I can. But I also want us to have conversations about how my masking is an activation point for the friend I was talking to today, and I want them to feel comfortable with me. Ultimately this is about relationality, about a need to be open to conversations about what folk may need in certain spaces to feel comfortable and supported, without those same comforts and supports causing harm to other folk. In an individualistic eduspace informed from an individualistic society, we are being asked and forced to find our small bubbles of humans, but never go beyond those spaces because they don't feel safe, because other people just "don't get it". 

We talk about trauma-informed education, but having hard conversations is actually how we move from trauma-aware (in that we know trauma exists and is activated by spaces/actions) to being trauma-informed. If we don't want to have hard conversations, or we actively avoid those conversations, because we don't want to reflect on how certain things can activate, how certain things are needed to support different bodyminds (like masks, captions, ASL interpretation) and different socio-cultural positionalities then I worry all we will be left with are siloed bubbles of humans, never connecting, never seeing each other for what they bring to spaces, for what they carry daily, never caring for anything outside that circle. That's part of the real disruption and harm happening in eduspace right now. So maybe this week, take a moment to reflect on what could be needed to support others, or what could be activating others, and maybe reach out to have those hard conversations you have been avoiding. Many will thank you, and that is just a small step to making your eduspaces a bit more holistically inclusive.