Although navigating life through a pandemic has been difficult, ever wonder what navigating life with disabilities is like? Want to support colleagues with different abilities, but felt uncomfortable asking how? This article contains five questions answered by those with physical, cognitive, or mental disabilities as they navigate daily life. The article highlights the pressures disabled individuals experience as they navigate mobility challenges in the world around them, respond to ableism, and share the impact of the disability on their daily existence. The article speaks to a person’s internal debate in seeking assistance and accommodations when needed. Lastly, stereotypes of “hard work” and “toughness” are addressed, which may be incorrectly related to “overcoming” the disability with the tradeoffs from stamina used for visible acknowledgement versus useful achievements.
Additional resource on ways to dismantle barriers for disabled faculty on campus.
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The ADVANCE Weekly Roundup is brought to you by ADVANCE at Michigan Tech, which is an NSF-funded initiative dedicated to improving faculty career success, retention, diversity, equity, and inclusion. These articles are available on the ADVANCE Newsblog (https://blogs.mtu.edu/advance/). To learn more about this week’s topic, our mission, programming efforts, and to check out our growing collection of resources, contact us at (advance-mtu@mtu.edu) or visit our website: www.mtu.edu/advance.