Students, faculty, and other members of the community packed Carleton’s Bell Theatre Oct. 27 as Rick Hansen spoke about how to cope in a world that still needs to learn to accommodate people with disabilities.
Hansen, a celebrated Canadian Paralympian, urged the audience — which included Carleton president Roseann Runte and Mayor Jim Watson — to break out of their comfort zone and to challenge traditional beliefs about disabilities around them.
“Maybe you can think about it in your real life and stop talking about [how] maybe one day a cure for spinal cord injuries [will happen], and actually inspire and challenge scientists around the world to make it happen,” Hansen said.
Hansen is travelling across the country to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his Man in Motion tour. In his wheelchair, Hansen toured 34 countries in 26 months to raise awareness about spinal cord injuries.
He spoke to the crowd following a town hall meeting on Carleton’s Research, Education, Accessibility Design (READ) Institute initiative, which strives to develop solutions to the challenges facing the disabled community. The institute is developing disability studies courses focused on design, which they hope to begin offering in 2012.
Hansen acknowledged the improvements Canada has made in accessibility for people with disabilities since his Man in Motion Tour ended in 1987.
“Attitudes of people with disabilities [then] were negative, stereotypical and often limiting,” he said. “We’ve seen a tremendous amount of progress that gives us a sense of hope that we’re moving in the right direction but we do have a long way to go.”
The READ Institute offers the next step in the evolution of disability awareness and will also offer the chance for the school to become more inclusive of students who have disabilities, Hansen said.
“To think about new ways to educate and to serve and to be able to create and craft a society that we believe is appropriate to be truly inclusive . . . the READ Institute offers that,” Hansen said.
The next step, he said, should involve reaching out to other institutions and other areas of learning.
Dean Mellway, the disability co-ordinator for the Paul Menton Centre and one of the administrators behind the initiative, said he feels Hansen’s presence at the meeting will help raise awareness in the community for the project.
“You’re never going to find a person who’s done more or who can share his message as well as [Hansen],” Mellway said.
Mellway said he believes Carleton has done well to embrace accessibility for students, but admitted there are still challenges.
“Even though we’re considered the most accessible university in Canada, we’re a long way from accessible,” Mellway said. “There are classrooms that you can only sit at the back to watch and if you want to be the presenter, you can’t take part.”
Edward Ndopu, an international student and a co-ordinator for the Carleton Disability Awareness Centre (CDAC), said he believes the READ initiative will bring the awareness Mellway said was needed.
“I see the READ initiative as putting disability at the forefront of the university’s agenda, not just looking at disability on the periphery but really making it part and parcel of making it part of the university’s vision,” Ndopu said.
Ontario plans on having an accessible province by 2025, according to the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration. This will include universities making their facilities and services more accessible to students with disabilities.
