I travel a lot. Sorry for stating the obvious. What travel writer doesn't travel? Yet sometimes the obvious needs restating.
I travel for research and consulting a lot but my sometimes my best information comes from a global network of others with disabilities. My work depends on the generosity of others who are free to travel. And there's the rub. When their freedom is hindered, even when I am half a globe away, my freedom is also.
I did not attend the Shine UnConference last week at the Bargehouse on London’s Southbank. Neither did many others with ambulatory disabilities. Maybe because they knew it was not accessible.
This UnConference was designed by and for social entrepreneurs. The goal was for us to "connect, inform, and inspire" us. The problem was someone's definition of "us." Exclusion by design -- organizing an event to facilitate social transformation that does not accommodate a whole class of its own community -- is a fundamental betrayal of the event's reason for existing.
My colleague Eleanor Lisney did attend this UnConference. After noting that organizers attempted to mitigate architectural barriers of the inaccessible venue that they had chosen she muses:
I understood all that and while I appreciated the good stuff that was going on and the good intentions of all that social enterprising and talk of ethical higher ground, I was acutely aware that by having this in an inaccessible building, disabled people were written out of the equation - the acoustics would have made it very difficult for somebody who is hearing impaired too. I supposed I thought maybe so few disabled people are actually engaged in such dialogues - would they have accepted a venue if people of BME community were denied entry?
As she noted the venue was a historic building (built at the turn of the 19th century) that was made available at no charge. However, the fact that a renovation of the building won the Building of the Year Award for Urban Regeneration in 1997 and yet it remained inaccessible simply means that some social entrepreneurs in the neighborhood have acquiesced to an ongoing pattern of discrimination for more than 20 years.
I would have expected better of organizer and participants like Ashoka. Clearly, if they do have Fellows or staff with disabilities they are not being put in positions of authority sufficient to represent the community they are part of. If the temporarily able-bodied social entrepreneurial class in London had been onboard with the project of social inclusion and accessibility this post could have been about all the good accomplished at the Shine UnConference.
As it stands, I haven't a clue what was accomplished because "I" couldn't attend.
Posted by rollingrains at May 16, 2008 04:57 AM