My friend Bill Peace (“Bad Cripple”) takes up the issue of school sports programs which are now required to make modifications for students with disabilities following a ruling by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
Bill is a trenchant analyst of the odd, and often uncomfortable dynamics that accompany the issue of inclusion. He writes:
At a practical level, I cannot foresee schools being willing to spend money on adaptive sports equipment. For instance, many schools in Vermont have ski teams. Will a school be required to purchase a mono ski for students with disabilities that express a strong desire to join the ski team? A mono ski rig costs many thousands of dollars. Will a school be willing to rent a mono ski for the season? Will school districts pay to have its athletic teachers be trained in adaptive sports? The resounding answer to these questions is no. When my son attended public school I was stunned at the degree of hostility I encountered. Any request I made in terms of wheelchair access was met with a firm and not so polite no. Reasonable accommodations at the university level are equally problematic.
I too have wondered how this will be implemented since the ruling was issued. Like Bill and thousands of other people with disabilities I know first hand how little “inclusion” there really is in public schools and post-secondary institutions. People with disabilities are all too often included in classrooms or educational activities merely on sufferance. And sufferance is the polite word.
One may say it takes a constellation of nails to build a house. It takes a constellation of laws and active will to build accessibility. The former we have, the latter is still all too often in short supply.
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