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Universal Design
Feb. 14th, 2011 01:23 pmI have been pondering this for a while, and trying to articulate my thoughts well enough to write an LJ post about it, and I'm still not sure I'm quite there. But a discussion of anti-gay bullying that kind of went off the rails in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
maevele's facebook got me thinking about this again, so I'm going to try to pound these thoughts into some sort of sense.
At WisCon a few years ago, I tracked down a volunteer from the Accessibility Committee to thank her for some of the signage that had been put up to help people with mobility impairments. I don't have a mobility impairment, but it had made things easier for me and I really liked it.
"The term for that is 'universal design,'" the volunteer said. "Because when you do things right, you can create spaces that are better for everyone."
If you've ever pressed a "door open" button with your butt because your hands were full, you've experienced how this can work. If you've ever pushed a stroller up a wheelchair ramp or down a curb cut, you've experienced this. If you've turned on closed captioning because you wanted to catch dialog you couldn't understand. If you've slipped in a hotel shower and found a grab bar right where you needed it.
I think the concept of universal design can be extended to more than space and architecture. When we design our communities to protect those who are especially vulnerable, we create a better world for everyone.
Here's an example of what I mean. Kiera's school (which Molly also used to attend) is about 20% Muslim. Most of the Somali immigrant girls wear a hijab. Some also wear a tunic-like loose shirt over a long skirt, while others wear the hijab with blue jeans and sweaters -- it varies by family (and sometimes by day. I swear there's a girl in Kiera's class who wears a long skirt four days a week but is allowed casual Fridays when she can come to school in jeans.)
It would be profoundly unacceptable to the adults at the school for a Somali girl to be teased about her hijab. The way they create this safety is that any teasing over clothing (at least in the younger grades; I have less contact with the older kids) is completely unacceptable. Adults are alert to it and nip it in the bud, and this is so knit into the culture of the school that so far as I can tell, it pretty much just doesn't happen. (I volunteer there weekly, so I overhear a fair amount.)
The result is that one particularly vulnerable group is kept safe, but everyone benefits. The poor kids are not teased about wearing old or unstylish clothes. My kids with their eccentric fashion tastes are not teased for them. (Kiera likes to wear dresses with pants underneath, because she hates tights but likes dresses. When Molly was at this school she occasionally wore head-to-toe orange. Neither has ever been teased for these choices.) There was a first grade boy a few years ago who wore an adult-sized faux fur leopard print coat and so far as I could tell, attracted no comments on it. (I don't know if this was gender variance, eccentric fashion taste, poverty, or the natural consequence of losing the coat his parents bought him in the fall. But, he seemed to really like the coat.)
So, here is my point. To create a barrier-free world, we don't just declare a no-barriers policy. We focus on the groups that are going to have the most trouble with barriers, and design for them first. By the same token, to create bully-free schools, we focus on the kids who are going to be most vulnerable (which will vary by school; I think in MANY schools this would be gay, trans, and non-gender-conforming kids, but this is not always going to be true) and figure out what it will take to keep them safe. If adults pay attention to what kids are saying to each other, if kids believe that if they ask for help they will get it, if bullying is dealt with quickly and without excuses, this benefits everyone.
(As a tangent, when I say that I think bullying should be dealt with quickly and without excuses, I also think it should be dealt with without overreaction. I am not a fan of zero tolerance policies, which all too often wind up causing kids to be suspended or expelled for minor offenses. Sometimes swiftly dealing with bullies just means telling them to knock it the hell off. When Molly was in second grade, she spent a month or so being bullied on the bus; she didn't tell me what was going on. One afternoon, another girl who got off at the same stop told me. I called the school immediately. The next morning the vice principal pulled the bully out of her classroom, sat her down, and told her to leave Molly alone. That was all it took. One of the BIGGEST barriers to creating a better world is this weird, apathetic attitude that some adults have about their own power to fix this stuff. For heaven's sake, people. Most schools have a million rules that the adults enforce without even thinking about it. No running in the halls. Wash your hands after you pee. Wipe your feet. No tank tops or short shorts. Sneakers required in gym class. If you can make generations of surly uncooperative reluctant children memorize 7x6, you can certainly make them not torment their peers if this is something you care about.)
maevele's facebook got me thinking about this again, so I'm going to try to pound these thoughts into some sort of sense.At WisCon a few years ago, I tracked down a volunteer from the Accessibility Committee to thank her for some of the signage that had been put up to help people with mobility impairments. I don't have a mobility impairment, but it had made things easier for me and I really liked it.
"The term for that is 'universal design,'" the volunteer said. "Because when you do things right, you can create spaces that are better for everyone."
If you've ever pressed a "door open" button with your butt because your hands were full, you've experienced how this can work. If you've ever pushed a stroller up a wheelchair ramp or down a curb cut, you've experienced this. If you've turned on closed captioning because you wanted to catch dialog you couldn't understand. If you've slipped in a hotel shower and found a grab bar right where you needed it.
I think the concept of universal design can be extended to more than space and architecture. When we design our communities to protect those who are especially vulnerable, we create a better world for everyone.
Here's an example of what I mean. Kiera's school (which Molly also used to attend) is about 20% Muslim. Most of the Somali immigrant girls wear a hijab. Some also wear a tunic-like loose shirt over a long skirt, while others wear the hijab with blue jeans and sweaters -- it varies by family (and sometimes by day. I swear there's a girl in Kiera's class who wears a long skirt four days a week but is allowed casual Fridays when she can come to school in jeans.)
It would be profoundly unacceptable to the adults at the school for a Somali girl to be teased about her hijab. The way they create this safety is that any teasing over clothing (at least in the younger grades; I have less contact with the older kids) is completely unacceptable. Adults are alert to it and nip it in the bud, and this is so knit into the culture of the school that so far as I can tell, it pretty much just doesn't happen. (I volunteer there weekly, so I overhear a fair amount.)
The result is that one particularly vulnerable group is kept safe, but everyone benefits. The poor kids are not teased about wearing old or unstylish clothes. My kids with their eccentric fashion tastes are not teased for them. (Kiera likes to wear dresses with pants underneath, because she hates tights but likes dresses. When Molly was at this school she occasionally wore head-to-toe orange. Neither has ever been teased for these choices.) There was a first grade boy a few years ago who wore an adult-sized faux fur leopard print coat and so far as I could tell, attracted no comments on it. (I don't know if this was gender variance, eccentric fashion taste, poverty, or the natural consequence of losing the coat his parents bought him in the fall. But, he seemed to really like the coat.)
So, here is my point. To create a barrier-free world, we don't just declare a no-barriers policy. We focus on the groups that are going to have the most trouble with barriers, and design for them first. By the same token, to create bully-free schools, we focus on the kids who are going to be most vulnerable (which will vary by school; I think in MANY schools this would be gay, trans, and non-gender-conforming kids, but this is not always going to be true) and figure out what it will take to keep them safe. If adults pay attention to what kids are saying to each other, if kids believe that if they ask for help they will get it, if bullying is dealt with quickly and without excuses, this benefits everyone.
(As a tangent, when I say that I think bullying should be dealt with quickly and without excuses, I also think it should be dealt with without overreaction. I am not a fan of zero tolerance policies, which all too often wind up causing kids to be suspended or expelled for minor offenses. Sometimes swiftly dealing with bullies just means telling them to knock it the hell off. When Molly was in second grade, she spent a month or so being bullied on the bus; she didn't tell me what was going on. One afternoon, another girl who got off at the same stop told me. I called the school immediately. The next morning the vice principal pulled the bully out of her classroom, sat her down, and told her to leave Molly alone. That was all it took. One of the BIGGEST barriers to creating a better world is this weird, apathetic attitude that some adults have about their own power to fix this stuff. For heaven's sake, people. Most schools have a million rules that the adults enforce without even thinking about it. No running in the halls. Wash your hands after you pee. Wipe your feet. No tank tops or short shorts. Sneakers required in gym class. If you can make generations of surly uncooperative reluctant children memorize 7x6, you can certainly make them not torment their peers if this is something you care about.)
