My Commitment to Becoming an Accessibility Evangelist
Victor Santiago Pineda
Bioneers Executive Director Joshua Fouts in an introduction to one of the 2017 keynote speakers, Victor Piñeda.
“What’s the appropriate term for referencing the broader community of people who are disabled in one way or another?” my colleague asked me the other day. “Seems like ‘disabled community’ is not quite right.”
How would you have answered this question? Have you thought about what our relationship is with the word “disabled” and all of the values, implicit and explicit, that accompany it?
Fortunately, I knew *the* person to go to with this question (and you will too when you see him speak at Bioneers this October). I asked my old friend and colleague James Thurston who will be introducing his collaborator and Bioneers plenary keynote speaker accessibility rights activist Victor Piñeda at Bioneers on October 20-22.
James is the Vice President, Global Strategy and Development at G3ict, the Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies an NGO that works to facilitate and support the implementation of the dispositions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) related to the accessibility of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and assistive technologies.
Victor Piñeda is the President of World Enabled and of The Global Alliance on Accessible Technologies and Environments (GAATES), the leading international organization dedicated to the promotion of accessibility of the built and virtual environments.
In distilled terms, they are accessibility evangelists.
James and Victor travel around the world with their joint initiative, Smart Cities for All, meeting with municipal and civic leaders about digital inclusivity for all city residents, citizens and visitors. Together they have met with mayors and chief technology officers in Mexico, Brasil, Israel, India, Japan, and throughout the United States.
Their work is helping to raise the awareness of the importance of digital accessibility and inclusivity for all.
Possibly more significantly, they are working to change the narrative around the term and meaning of “disability”, which has become such a disempowering and polemic word in our society, often associated with other or less than.
Victor and James like to quote the words of Ambassador Luis Gallegos of Ecuador known to many as the “father of UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.”
“Ambassador Gallegos often says that being a person with a disability is the one minority group that we will all, if we live long enough, become a member of at some point in our life,” James told me. ”Either from aging (we all pick up impairments as we age and those affect how we use technology) or accidents, illnesses, wars, crime, etc.”
And that number is growing. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) approximately 15% of people on earth are people with a disability. Some quick math: that’s around one billion people.
There is still much work to be done to make the world aware of this issue. One of the points of entry is the workplace. James and his organization, G3ict, have launched a new campaign and web portal with a toolbox to help organizations, cities and countries incorporate accessibility and digital inclusivity policies and tools. It’s called BuyICT4all and includes resources in both Spanish and English. The portal includes a specific pathway to support people wanting to be evangelists in their own organizations.
So, what’s the appropriate term for referencing the broader community of people who are disabled in one way or another?
The answer was one that hit me viscerally and poignantly: “It’s persons with disabilities,” James told me. “Persons with disabilities are defined by their personhood, not their disability.”
That was enough to make me an accessibility evangelist.
I hope you’ll join Victor, James and the entire Bioneers community on October 20-22 at the 28th Bioneers and become part of the movement that we should all be championing: Accessibility for all.
Until then you can follow the work of James and Victor on Twitter.
See you in October!
Bioneers is upon us!
Content retrieved from: http://www.bioneers.org/commitment-becoming-accessibility-evangelist/%22.
Related Posts
Upcoming Events
SC4A VIDEOS
Defining and Measuring Inclusive Smart Cities
James Thurston's Interview on BBC Click Radio | January 23, 2019
Smart Cities for All in Mexico | James Thurston Speaks on the Digital inclusion Maturity Model
SC4A at SCEWC2018
SC4A at SCWEC2017
Message from Dr Victor Pineda for IDPD
Archives
- November 2020
- October 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017