While this month is really dedicated to raising disability employment awareness, the hope is that it has given us all an opportunity to think about disability in more profound ways. Here are additional resources to help us do more to consider disability at a deeper level, if we choose:
- An entertaining (and short) video on being appropriately sensitive toward peopled with disabilities, offered by the District of Columbia Office of Disability Rights.
- An op-ed on caring for patients with disabilities within the clinical pharmacy setting.
- The 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act was celebrated last year, in part for putting into place disability as a protected category against discrimination. In review, The Takeaway (a radio broadcast) spoke with experts to identify how public spaces have become and have failed to become more accessible spaces.
- Normalizing the experiences of people with disabilities, the Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities has aggregated a number of firsthand accounts of living with cognitive and developmental disabilities from local communities on their homepage and throughout their site. In particular, they've produced a number of (again, short) vignettes of persons with disabilities regarding their vision of what it means to have that disability.
- The state, through a coalition of agencies, has aggregated a number of resources, organized by topic, for those living with all types of disabilities. Whether personally interested in finding assistance, interested in helping friends or family who need assistance, or wanting to advocate for others, those resources can hopefully be found here.
- For more infrequently told stories of people living with disabilities, including a number of stories intersecting other affinity groups with ability, the Disability Social History Project is an excellent conduit to other resources.
Any individual in our college community who identifies as a person experiencing disabilities is welcome to join the College of Pharmacy affinity group. This group, and all college affinity groups, are designed to bring together groups of people with similar backgrounds or identities which may serve as barriers to inclusion or success, to discuss their shared experiences and advocate for institutional change. The College of Pharmacy also has an ally group to support the affinity groups and advocate for a more equitable and inclusive college culture. Follow the links to learn more.