Posts Tagged ‘Paulo Freire’

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Twenty years is significant, not because it’s a round number, but rather, because it represents a generation of experience gained since the law was enacted. Many of us who lobbied for the ADA believed at the time that it could take a generation or more, as it had with the Civil Rights Act before it, to fulfill the ADA’s promise of equal opportunity for Americans with disabilities.

I was asked to speak on a panel last week that discussed the practitioner’s perspective on providing accessible educational technologies for learning with disabilities. I wasn’t sure how to translate my experience into the role of “practitioner” – I’m not a special ed teacher or rehab counselor – then I remembered an essay I wrote 15 years ago that explained how my disability is my practice. There wasn’t enough time on the panel to explain this idea in detail, so I’ve revised the essay and posted it in the Fair Use Lab. Disability as Praxis draws on Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire’s influential 1973 book on literacy and liberation, to understand how the adaptations made and accommodations negotiated by people with disabilities represent a significant form of creative work and cultural production. The essay remains one of my clearest statements of what I know and believe about living with a disability.