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Can you see us? We can hear you: Unpacking the realities of the blind experience at CU Boulder.

Handouts Media

Presented at 9:15am in Cotton Creek II on Thursday, November 15, 2018.

#17343

Speaker(s)

Kevin Darcy, CU Boulder

Session Details

Length of Session: 1-hr
Format: Lecture
Expertise Level: All Levels
Type of session: General Conference

Summary

This research seeks to illuminate how objective ADA policies and academic accommodations are experienced by blind students at CU Boulder.

Abstract

This research seeks to illuminate how objective ADA policies and academic accommodations are experienced by blind students at CU Boulder. We bring the literature on disability studies into conversation with critical medical anthropology, which builds on Murphy’s (1987) autoethnography. We use multi-sited ethnography (Marcus 1998) by “following the process” by which accessibility, broadly conceived, is implemented across the technological, academic, and social realms. The research reveals that, although there are many groups working on accessibility related issues, communication between groups breaks down in key places. A perceived and actual lack of resources and training is, in part, responsible for the breakdown across groups. Although our results are unique to the CU Boulder campus, our research design and methods are generalizable across similar academic settings.