Add an "A" for accessibility
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About This Saving Land
It's been my experience that rarely is disability and accessibility part of the diversity, equity, inclusion and justice (DEIJ) conversation, which I find a little intriguing because disability is a part of all human existence. Regardless of your race, your religion, your gender identity even your political preferences, disability touches all of humanity.
Bonnie Lewkowicz is director of Access Northern California for the Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program, where she runs the premier website for finding accessible outdoor adventures in the Bay Area. Explore accessnca.org for tools to help your land trust improve its accessibility. This column is an edited version of her presentation on a plenary panel at Rally in Portland, Oregon. Watch the full video.
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It's been my experience that rarely is disability and accessibility part of the diversity, equity, inclusion and justice (DEIJ) conversation, which I find a little intriguing because disability is a part of all human existence. Regardless of your race, your religion, your gender identity even your political preferences, disability touches all of humanity. And if you’re lucky to live into old age, while you may not consider it a disability, there’s a pretty good likelihood that you’re going to experience a decline in your hearing, your sight and your mobility, and you’ll be really appreciative of all of the accessibilities that people have fought hard to put into place.
So, in that vein, I would like to see us add an “A” for accessibility to this long acronym—DEIJA—because you can’t have diversity, equity, inclusion and justice if you don’t have accessibility. (I recommend pronouncing it “day-ja”—it’s a lot easier to say than “D-E-I-J-A.”)
We need to broaden our concept of what accessibility means. It’s more than just ramps into buildings or wider doorways. Disability covers a huge umbrella of experiences. Not just physical disabilities, but developmental disability, psychiatric, neurodiversity, blindness, deafness—it’s pretty big. Disability doesn’t discriminate—anyone can join the club at any time, but we don’t recommend it. And it also goes beyond accessibility. It is about inclusion. You can have access without inclusion, but you can’t have inclusion without access.
Without access
There is no Diversity, Equity, Inclusion or Justice
The easiest thing land trusts can do to be more inclusive is what I call “eliminating the information barrier.” Even 30 years after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, not everything is accessible, far from it, so we need to know information before we go. You can do some simple things to help that along. I think you would all agree that websites are the front doors to our organizations, and if you don’t have any information about what I can participate in, or if someone needs a sign-language interpreter for an event you’re having, how do they go about letting you know that they need that accommodation? Or if someone who is blind and uses a screen reader, are they even able to use your website? If you have trails, you can include information on your website about the trail surface, the width, the barriers, if there are benches along the route, etc. Some of these things are pretty simple.
The point is, you want people to feel connected, and they can’t feel connected if they don’t get to experience it. Accessibility isn’t a “one and done” topic, it’s an ongoing journey and it will never be perfect because humans aren’t perfect.