Resources for Accessible Classrooms

BCRW—a collection of students, researchers, professors, activists, and the intellectually curious—is dedicated to enacting the feminist philosophies that compel our research, publications, events, and activism in Barnard and Columbia classrooms. A key and invaluable aspect of engaging feminist pedagogies is striving for accessibility of the classroom and education spaces. In the hope of making Barnard and Columbia classrooms more accessible for queer and trans people, people with disabilities, first generation students, undocumented students, and all of our community members, we’ve rounded up a brief collection of resources for students and educators to utilize and share.First off, our own Offices of Disability Services at Columbia and Barnard host a wealth of services and resources for students with disabilities seeking accessibility and accommodation. The Barnard ODS website, for instance, has information on how to register a disability with ODS, networks and services of peer support, information about the truly invaluable Project OWL: Options in Writing & Learning, a jointly developed and sponsored project by ODS and the Barnard Writing Fellows, necessary information for faculty members, and an extensive list of online external resources. Many U.S. colleges and universities put together practical guides and tip-sheets for faculty and classroom facilitators on how to make classrooms accessible. Here’s a few of the best we found:

• “Top Ten Tips for Professors: Making the Classroom More Accessible and Inclusive,” Dartmouth’s Office of Disability Services
• “A Brief Guide to Accessibility in the Classroom” (with handy graphics!), the University of Washington School of Social Work
• “Creating an Accessible Classroom,” a detailed resource from the Services for Students with Disabilities, University of Texas at Austin

Here’s a few academic (but highly readable) essays and essay collections about disability, accessibility, and trans issues to inform and provoke.

• Dean Spade, law professor, writer, activist and frequent BCRW collaborator, wrote the informative and engaging essay “Some Very Basic Tips for Making Higher Education More Accessible to Trans Students and Rethinking How We Talk about Gendered Bodies” for Radical Teacher. 
• Keywords for Disability Studies, an anthology aiming to bring “the debates that have often remained internal to disability studies into a wider field of critical discourse.” You can access a selection of 9 essays from the anthology, as well as a complete works cited, online.
• “Becoming Visible: Lessons in Disability” by Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Linda Feldmeier White, Patricia A. Dunn, Barbara A. Heifferon and Johnson Cheu calls for an increased awareness of disability in composition studies, and tackles the challenges and possibilities of intersecting disability with other disciplines, namely composition studies.

Columbia’s First-Generation, Low-Income Partnership (FLIP) describes itself as a “student organization aimed at creating safe spaces for those who identify as first-generation and/or low-income.” FLIP is working on a textbook library and bi-weekly dialogues. Reach FLIP at flipcolumbia@gmail.com. The Columbia Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) hosts a broad range of resources and programming for students of color on Columbia’s campus, and for students looking to support an inclusive university environment. OMA provides and supports programming and services in such areas as critical intellectual inquiry, mentoring, advocacy, social justice, leadership development and training, diversity development and training, etc. Interested in continuing the broad conversation about accessibility at Columbia/Barnard? There are several peer-led education and discussion-based groups around campus.

• AllSex (formerly know as CU FemSex) is a “peer-facilitated, semester-long discussion group dedicated to the empowerment and fulfillment of the sexual self.” AllSex meets twice a week, for two hours each session.
• ROOTEd (Respecting Ourselves and Others Through Education) is “dedicated to facilitating respectful informed discussions about diversity in the United States with regards to power and privilege issues.” ROOTEd creates and facilitates dialogues on race, class, gender, allyship, and more for all members of the Columbia/Barnard community. Find them on Facebook.
• The Collective Advocacy Project, a subgroup of the Barnard Writing and Speaking Fellows, is launching a discussion series at Well-Woman this fall.  CAP’s series will be a space for peer-directed personal and political expression in the service of self-care and student well-being.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Do you have a resource you want to share with the Columbia/Barnard community? Add it in the comments! http://www.tb-credit.ru/news.html http://www.tb-credit.ru/return.html