Tuesday, September 20, 2011

What is Inclusion?



by Lauren Kreutzer

Recently as I was digging through an old file box, I came across a Department of Developmental Disabilities (DDD) Certification I earned in 2005. It said I’d successfully completed a five-hour training course called “Inclusion.”I had to think about this course named inclusion. Anything and anyone could be included, so why was this an important topic for a nursing assistant to learn? It seemed vague, but then I began to remember what “Inclusion” meant in the context of disabilities.

Inclusion is a philosophy based on integrating people with disabilities, regardless of their limitations. Rather than being allowed to do something by people who don’t have disabilities, the idea of inclusion reflects the belief that it is a right of all people to be included. Bill Kiernan, Director of the Institute for Community Inclusion (ICI) at University of Massachusetts, Boston, explains the plight of inclusion:

“For over forty years, our focus has been to figure out ways people with disabilities can participate in everyday activities and all aspects of the community…There is still the perception out there that people with disabilities cannot work, cannot move on to higher education, and in general are limited in their activities.”

http://www.communityinclusion.org/project.php?project_id=35]

The issue of inclusion revolves around making things accessible to those who have disabilities. Simply putting an option out there doesn’t mean it can be utilized by everyone. Taking steps to make sure people with disabilities can access opportunities fairly is key to making inclusion work. This can mean adding assistive technologies, expanding upon current community resources or any other way of making a goal reachable for people of all abilities.

Society isn’t comprised of just one type of person- that’s the gist of inclusion. Everyone deserves a fair go of it, and it’s our job as communities to make sure that opportunities are available to everyone, regardless of the ways in which they might go about finding the means to their ends. It’s a good thing to keep in mind as we create, build and design educational infrastructures, architecture, transportation systems and the like. The question is: Is this accessible to as many people as it can be? If not, how could it be?