Skills building seminar: Designing accessible environments for disabled people for training, expression of views & co-working
Authors:   Organised by: EHESP French School of Public Health Chair persons: William Sherlaw - France, Marie Cuenot - France
Published: November 2019

Objectives

We will actively explore ways of building bridges between people with disabilities and the non-disabled community. We aim to show an inclusive society will necessitate significant changes in ways of working with people with disability.

Organization

The workshop is divided into 2 parts. In Part 1 through two 15 minute presentations we offer illustrations of participatory practice with people with disabilities and families taken from different, but allied sectors. Presentation 1: ParticipaTIC is an accessible transnational on-line training platform for disabled persons organization leaders. Specifically we will address how challenges of designing an accessible platform were met while highlighting outstanding tensions between on-line accessibility and other dimensions of digital design. Such issues are relevant not just to on-line instruction, but also to creating a truly inclusive society. Presentation 2: This describes how the European Academy of Childhood Disability has picked up the gauntlet of including families and organized a special 3 hour family session at their annual conference in Paris. Focus group style activities have been designed to a) enable the expression of families with respect to what matters for the happiness and well-being of their children with disability b) enhance the participation of families to improve knowledge, practice and understanding between families and health, social and educational professionals. Building on the Part 1 presentations, Part 2 of the workshop will involve a skills building activity (50 mins). This has been extensively used in disability and discrimination training at EHESP with master students, and civil servants. It uses role-play to raise awareness of the rights and needs of people with disabilities. Participants draw plans for redesigning hospital car parking to take into account the needs of all people that use the hospital. (This may be considered as a microcosm of society.) In a first phase (20 mins) groups of 6-10 participants brainstorm. Certain participants are then asked to step into the shoes of disabled people and work with others to produce plans. (20 mins) Feedback is offered on the process and the plan. (10 mins) In conclusion (10 mins), participants will briefly be asked to suggest improvements for the accessibility of a scientific conference such as EUPHA. Conclusion: Fully inclusive practice may be in tension with taken-for-granted habits. The extent of adaptations necessary may be surprising to non-disabled people. They go beyond using sign-language, induction loops, braille, and speech synthesis. They also include Easy to Read & Understand for people with intellectual disabilities. Beyond such adjustments challenges for including people with disabilities within training, meetings, and participatory fora are raised. We suggest that our 3 examples illustrate the challenge facing society and social services in co-designing truly inclusive practice and environments.

Key messages

Through placing people in the shoes of people with disabilities, participants will come to learn that inclusion also impacts on the very process of consultation and participation. Inclusion will involve creating accessible and participatory environments in order to offer equal opportunities for learning and participation adapted to different groups and capacities.