Campus Organization Aims to Connect Faculty, Staff to Disability Resources
“If we as a society recognized the value that [people with disabilities] have because of the limitations they were born with –– if we recognized the critical thinking and problem solving skills that they have had to develop –– the need for access would disappear overnight.” — George Turner, Division of Student Affairs
By Kate Duby
The Razorback Reporter
George Turner was born paralyzed from the waist down, but he taught himself to walk by the time he was 5 years old. He uses a wheelchair to navigate the UA campus, where he works in the Division of Student Affairs.
Since Turner arrived at the UofA 10 years ago as a student, he has seen accessibility improve greatly. He thinks the university has grown in acknowledging the need for accessibility, and officials have gone out of their way to meet his needs, he said.
Turner now serves as staff adviser for AccessABLE, the UofA’s first disability resource group for faculty and staff, which met for the first time in October.
What began as a project in one graduate student’s service learning class evolved into AccessABLE.
Co-founder Kelly Dundon, who is getting her master’s degree in social work, noticed that while the UA campus offers many resources for students with disabilities, it offers few for faculty and staff, she said.
“We found that there are more resources for other, sort of, identity or diversity groups, but there wasn’t really a collective group of individuals when it came to the topic of disability,” Dundon said.
The group, which meets the first day of every month, aims to create a centralized body that engages in disability education, Dundon said.
“When we founded this group,” Dundon said, “we knew that our expertise started and ended with bringing people into the same space.”
Rather than being an advocacy group, AccessABLE serves as a platform for connecting members to available resources and starting a discussion on disability education.
Dundon and classmates Gonzalo Camp and Adam Laffiteau, co-founders of AccessABLE, organized an event for disability education and advocacy for their service learning project in the spring, Dundon said. The event featured a short film and a panel of four speakers who offered perspective on disability and shared their experiences.
Building from the momentum of the event, Dundon and her co-founders began partnering with the UA Office of Diversity and Inclusion to create AccessABLE, she said.
Turner thinks AccessABLE allows people with varying needs to connect with resources more easily, he said. He looks forward to seeing how the program will grow and in what direction the founders will take it in the future.
Turner also thinks the general demand for accessibility would decrease if more attitudes shifted to understand that people with disabilities have value to offer because of the limitations they were born with, he said.
“If we recognized the critical thinking and problem-solving skills that they have had to develop, the need for access would disappear overnight,” Turner said.
Turner thinks many qualified people are overlooked for job opportunities because of their disabilities, he said. He has seen it become a pattern in hiring practices, and he thinks that although employers might list a multitude of other reasons someone is disqualified, it speaks to a greater bias.
University employees seeking workplace accommodations can initiate the process by sending a request to their dean, department head, director or supervisor, or by contacting the ADA Coordinator in the Office of Equal Opportunity and Compliance (OEOC).
The OEOC provides information on accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and regulates accommodations for university employees.
