[nfbwatlk] FW: How Disability Simulations Promote Damaging Stereotypes

Wed Oct 23 00:10:15 UTC 2013

This is very well written.  Thanks for passing it along, Mike.

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbwatlk [mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Mello,
Michael (DSB)
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2013 4:08 PM
To: nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org
Subject: [nfbwatlk] FW: How Disability Simulations Promote Damaging
Stereotypes

Good afternoon,
I thought this topic would be an interesting discussion for our list.
Thanks.

Michael J. Mello | Adaptive Technology Specialist Washington State
Department of Services for the Blind
Direct: 206-906-5552
Toll Free: 800-552-7103
Mobile: 206-605-7332
Fax: 206-721-4103
Michael.Mello at dsb.wa.gov
3411 South Alaska Street
Seattle, WA 98118

-----Original Message-----
From: Adreon, Mark (DSB)
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2013 2:49 PM
To: DSB DL Vocational Rehab Group
Cc: MacKillop, Michael (DSB); Adreon, Mark (DSB)
Subject: FW: How Disability Simulations Promote Damaging Stereotypes

Please read the information  below as this has been an area of concern for a
while now and might deserve some DSB conversation.

Even if we agree upon a disclaimer, it might support a stronger perspective
without supporting false assumptions.

Mark Adreon 

Program and Employment Specialist 

3411 South Alaska St.

Seattle, WA   98118

206.906.5502

mark.adreon at dsb.wa.gov Check our web site at :       www.dsb.wa.gov 

From: Olson, Toby (ESD) [mailto:TOlson2 at ESD.WA.GOV]
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2013 11:54 AM
To: GCDE-INFO at LISTSERV.WA.GOV
Subject: How Disability Simulations Promote Damaging Stereotypes

How Disability Simulations Promote Damaging Stereotypes

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month and Disability
History Month here in Washington State. Disability awareness events held in
October often include disability simulation exercises, in which participants
who don't have a disability will spend some time using a wheelchair, or
wearing a blindfold. More sophisticated exercises might also include
headphones with white noise generators to simulate a hearing loss, or boxes
in which participants can attempt to perform tasks while watching their
hands reflected by a series of mirrors to provide a sense of the effects of
a specific learning disability. 

While these exercises are popular and can help the participants to become
more aware of some of the environmental barriers people with disabilities
encounter, many people with disabilities and disability organizations are
concerned that they create an inaccurate perception of the experience of
living with a disability. The fear is that simulations actually reinforce
the inaccurate negative stereotypes that often limit opportunities for
people with disabilities in education and employment.

If you participate in a simulation, what you experience will not be at all
like a slice from the life of a person who has lived with that disability
for any time. The difference will not be because you'll know that you'll be
taking off the blindfold or walking away from the wheelchair at the end. The
difference will be because, without any of the coping skills and techniques
people with disabilities create and master throughout their lives, the best
you will be able to manage will be to emulate the experience of being the
single most hapless, incompetent individual with that particular disability
on the face of the planet.

Participants in disability simulations experience their adopted disabilities
as a series of discoveries of things they can't do. They can leave the
exercise imagining an unbroken string of those discoveries stretching out
for a lifetime. Those who have had a disability all our lives haven't
experienced our disabilities that way. For those who have acquired a
disability, that experience is usually a relatively brief transition phase.
The long term experience of living with a disability is more aptly
characterized as adapting, adjusting and developing new ways to do things
when the usual ways don't work. It is more commonly the active pursuit of an
expanding life, not mourning for a contracting one.

I have heard simulations compared to putting on blackface, but disability
simulations have nothing to do with the contempt and ridicule that were the
essence of the minstrel shows. Most people in the disability community
appreciate that simulations represent a sincere interest in improving
understanding and a willingness to put time and effort toward that goal.
Still, we cannot help but be concerned that participants who leave a
simulation imagining life with a disability as an endlessly shrinking spiral
of frustration and loss might be even less comfortable associating with
people who have disabilities than they were before. Those whose take away
from the exercise is frustration at the inability to complete simple daily
activities, could, as a result, be less able to recognize the substantive
contributions a job applicant with a disability is ready make to their
organization's bottom line. 

If there is one thing about the experience of disability that everyone needs
to understand, it is that the chronic unemployment and resulting poverty
that are far too common among working-age people with disabilities are not
natural consequences of disability. The best exercise for improving
awareness on that issue is the one where we all recruit, hire and work
alongside people who have disabilities. That exercise has the added benefit
of allowing us to discover what people who have so much experience devising
innovative, practical solutions to unusual problems can add to our
organizations' strengths.          

Toby Olson

Toby Olson, MPA

Executive Secretary

Governor's Committee on Disability Issues and Employment

360-725-9547

tolson2 at esd.wa.gov

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