With the school year coming to an end, now is a great time for school administrators to start brainstorming ways to improve for next year. As experts on Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant access, EZ-ACCESS is here to offer advice on different ways to promote disability inclusion through school accessibility solutions.
Read Up on Disability Inclusion
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), “Including people with disabilities in everyday activities and encouraging them to have roles similar to their peers who do not have a disability is disability inclusion. This involves more than simply encouraging people; it requires making sure adequate policies and practices are in effect in a community or organization.”
This means that individuals with disabilities (such as students, teachers, and staff) should have the same opportunities to health education, counseling, and work that everyone else has. Barriers to these opportunities should be identified and eliminated so all individuals have the chance to participate in everyday activities to the best of their ability. Let’s go through any barriers to inclusion that may be present at your school and identify how to eliminate them.
Identify Barriers to Inclusion
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines barriers as, “Factors in a person’s environment that, through their absence or presence, limit functioning and create disability.”
Types of barriers include:
- Stereotypes or prejudices
- Communication
- Physical
- Policy
- Programmatic
- Social barriers
Examples of these may include: a lack of ramp access to a portable classroom (physical barrier), a lack of braille or screen readers (communication barrier) in school hallways, and the separation of students with different abilities (social barrier). For a comprehensive list of common barriers, visit this CDC page.
Eliminate Barriers to Inclusion
With barriers to disability inclusion identified, you can now take action to eliminate them. One of the easiest ways to eliminate barriers is with school accessibility solutions. When there are no physical barriers to access, this allows students and staff of all abilities to socialize and participate in the same programs together.
At EZ-ACCESS we have solutions for:
- School building access
- Stadium access
- Portable classroom access
- Graduation stage access
In most school accessibility discussions, we start with our TITAN™ Code Compliant Modular Access System, which is our all-aluminum, cost-effective and durably designed ramp system that can be configured to fit just about any entrance. The system can easily be customized to fit the unique needs of every school to ensure individuals of all abilities have safe access.
See why the TITAN is the best option for school accessibility here or give our Customer Service team a call to talk custom configurations.