[nabs-l] Presence of disability organizations on college campuses

[Kaiti Shelton]

Hi NABSters,

I'm hoping to hear some of your thoughts on this:

Last semester I got in touch with one of the professors I have now so
we could prepare for her class.  In passing she mentioned a few times
that she was getting some practice because she currently had a
visually impaired student in her section for non-music majors.  This
surprised me, as I had no idea there were other students on campus.  I
did meet another girl from my hometown in one of my eye specialist's
waiting rooms who started at UD that semester, but the class was a 300
level so it was unlikely that it was her (which it wasn't).

I asked my DS coordinator once if there were any other visually
impaired people on campus.  She told me only vague things like,
"You're the only JAWS user," and "We had a deafblind grad student a
few years ago," but no clue as to what any demographics were like.

Fast forward to this semester, the girl my professor had joined the
ensemble that accompanies the course, and I did the same to take
advantage of the extra credit opportunity.  We had this little "get to
know you party" at the professor's house, and that was when she and I
really started talking.  It was like, "Boom" for me, and possibly for
her as well.  All of a sudden there was someone who understood my
frustrations with the constant and always moving construction, the
issues I was having getting my proof of purchase from the bookstore,
and had the kind of attitude I have about blindness.  We're also both
interested in things like martial arts, music, and learning about
different cultures.  We're both juniors as well, although our majors
have largely accounted for us never bumping into each other until now.

I absolutely understand the need for confidentiality from a
professional perspective, but the other girl and I agreed that it
would have been so beneficial for us to have been able to swap ideas
and such for the past 3 years.  Our university is all about
"Community" and "Diversity," yet there are no disability-related
student organizations on campus.  There are clubs for everything from
College Democrats and Republicans, to ethnicity-related clubs, and we
even have a gay-straight alliance called Spectrum.  There is no club
which acknowledges students with disabilities or provides them a place
to meet and exchange ideas if they so desire though, so we'd like to
do something about it.

>From being vice president of a fledgling club before, I know some of
the specifics about how to get a club started.  You need faculty
sponsorship (which probably cannot come from the disability office),
you need a constitution or bylaws, and you need at least 5 people to
achieve club status.  The tricky thing I see if we end up going
through with this process will be to market the group to people who
self-identify as being a student with a disability.  Putting flyers in
the DS office would make the most sense, but I don't think we'd be
able to do that.  I also don't think they'd be able to email anything
we send to them to distribute, and they would never give the list
email to a single student.  We'd want to make sure it was accessible
to everyone but even OrgSync can be challenging to use for
screenreaders (including those who use them for reading and not
necessarily vision-related disabilities).

Have any of you started up a club like this successfully?  Is it
something that was worth the process?  Any ideas?

-- 
Kaiti