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This week introduces participants to the historical trajectory of the disability rights movement while immediately immersing them in the physical and systemic reality of the classroom environment. Rather than easing into the subject through passive lecture, participants confront missing structural supports right away, shifting their mindset from students learning about history to active agents making history.
Trace the shift from the medical and charitable models of disability to the social and civil rights models.
Examine the activist movements of the 1960s through the 1980s that laid the groundwork for the ADA.
Experience real-time environmental friction by auditing the classroom space and identifying omitted or obscured access features.
What is the difference between an environment that merely tolerates a disabled body and one that is genuinely built for autonomy?
When you encounter a space that lacks basic accommodations, what emotional or psychological labor is immediately required of you?
How does framing access as a civil rights issue—rather than a medical charity case—change how you view your own right to occupy space?
Participants conduct a silent, critical walkthrough of the classroom space. Without prior warning about what is missing, they must document every barrier, obstruction, or missing accommodation (such as seating arrangements, sightlines, sensory controls, or physical pathways) and immediately formulate their first spoken demands to alter the room before the session can proceed.
With the physical friction of the first week established, week two dives directly into the text, titles, and legal architecture of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Participants examine what the law actually promises, where its statutory loopholes lie, and why a piece of legislation passed over thirty years ago still requires constant enforcement and defense today.
Dissect Titles I through V of the ADA, understanding the distinct protections covering employment, public services, public accommodations, and telecommunications.
Analyze the political compromises, economic exemptions, and legal hurdles baked into the original drafting of the law.
Differentiate between legal compliance and actual accessibility in institutional and everyday settings.
How do legal definitions of disability in the ADA help or hinder self-advocacy in everyday life?
Why do institutions often treat ADA compliance as a ceiling rather than an absolute floor?
If a law exists on paper but requires intense individual labor to enforce, does it protect you equally?
Participants analyze real-world municipal or workplace scenarios where a facility is technically compliant with the letter of the ADA yet completely inaccessible in practice. Working in small groups, they draft a critique of the loophole and formulate a strategy to demand structural changes that go beyond bare minimum compliance.