Multiple Perspectives on Access, Inclusion, and Disability Annual Conference 2015

Multiple Perspectives on Access, Inclusion, and Disability Annual Conference

Celebrate Our Progress and Write Our Future History
15th Annual Conference
April 13 - 14, 2015

Mark your calendar for the annual Multiple Perspectives Conference on The Ohio State University Columbus campus on Monday & Tuesday, April 13 - 14, 2015. Click HERE to register!

This year the Ken Campbell Memorial Lecture on Disability Policy, "The Stories We Tell: The "Americans with Disabilities Act After 25 Years" will be presented by Professor Lennard Davis on Monday, April 13, 2015. This event is free & open to the public.

The Ethel Louis Armstrong Memorial Lecture, "The Hearing World Around Me: A Performance by Trix Bruce" will be performed on Tuesday, April 14 2015. Sponsored in part by the ASL Program, The Ohio State University. This event is free & open to the public.

In 1990 Congress introduced the ADA with eight findings:

1. physical or mental disabilities in no way diminish a person's right to fully participate in all aspects of society, yet many people with physical or mental disabilities have precluded from doing so because of discrimination; others who have a record of a disability or are regarded as having a disability also have been subjected to discrimination;

2. Historically, society has tended to isolate and segregate individuals with disabilities, and, despite some improvements, such forms of discrimination against individuals with disabilities continue to be a serious and pervasive social problem;

3. discrimination against individuals with disabilities persists in such critical areas as employment, housing, public accommodations, education, transportation, communication, recreation, institutionalization, health services, voting, and access to public services;

4. unlike individuals who have experienced discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, religion, or age, individuals who have experienced discrimination on the basis of disability have often had no legal recourse to redress such discrimination;

5. individuals with disabilities continually encounter various forms of discrimination, including outright intentional exclusion, the discriminatory effects of architectural, transportation, and communication barriers, overprotective rules and policies, failure to make modifications to existing facilities and practices, exclusionary qualification standards and criteria, segregation, and relegation to lesser services, programs, activities, benefits, jobs, or other opportunities;

6. census data, national polls, and other studies have documented that people with disabilities, as a group, occupy an inferior status in our society, and are severely disadvantaged socially, vocationally, economically, and educationally;

7. the Nation's proper goals regarding individuals with disabilities are to assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for such individuals; and

8. the continuing existence of unfair and unnecessary discrimination and prejudice denies people with disabilities the opportunity to compete on an equal basis and to pursue those opportunities for which our free society is justifiably famous, and costs the United States billions of dollars in unnecessary expenses resulting from dependency and non-productivity.

What would they find today? What do you seek for the next twenty-five years?