Abstract of I.E. Perlow lecture

WE ALL ARE PEOPLE-WITH-ACCESS-NEEDS

I.E. Perlow

Texas Woman's University, Doctoral Candidate, USA

Having access-needs rightfully is becoming appreciated as the crosscultural,

universal lifelong type of diversity of "doing it differently."

Medical and technological advances as well as civil rights legislation

have been instrumental in increasing class-members’ omnipresence.

Many more children with access-needs have been able to grow up to

be adults with productive social and professional lives. Due to global

aging, climate change and natural disasters, accidents and illness,

and crime, war and terrorism, "special-education-children" no longer

are alone in having recognized access-needs. As a result of the

Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, the United States is welcoming home tens

of thousands of veterans with newly acquired and often multiple

lifelong access issues. Thanks to the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, effective

2009, U.S. college campuses potentially are welcoming many more

veterans-with-access-needs, joining their civilian counterparts in faceto-

face and virtual classrooms. In recent years, considerable progress

has been made in improving class member inclusion and equity.

Nevertheless, it is suggested that one influential lurking variable of

interest continues to impede such progress: the array of uniformly

disparaging access-need [self]-descriptors which have cemented

literally disabling perceptions into society’s collective consciousness.

Words have consequences. The presenter, a lifelong class member,

proposes a call to action to the diverse communities of fellow people

with access-needs, institutional advocates, and the media to embrace

the power of positive language and to positively reframe and reclaim

the vocabulary of [people with] access issues that reflects and

reaffirms the truth of the universality of having access-needs. Change

the language, change the perception.