We Belong On The Stage
At a recent conference about supporting individuals with developmental disabilities to live in the community, seven people with disabilities presented on Supported Decision Making. However, the room they were assigned to had a stage that was only accessible by stairs.
5 out of 7 of the individuals can’t climb stairs or have difficulty doing so, making it impossible to get on the stage, including one person using a power wheelchair. The presenters felt like this was a major oversight and apparent ableism. This caused stress and threw off their presentation.
The conference did an application process in which presenters were required to send to the planners a picture and a short bio, and it was clearly visible in the photos sent that most of the individuals in the group would need wheelchair access to the stage to do the presentation. . The conference should have asked all presenters for their accessibility needs.
If not for to two people lifting the table onto the floor for the individuals to sit behind, the attendees would not have been able to know that they were even the presenters at all, rather than being attendees for the presentation. Still, many people could not see the presenters on the ground and it still disrupted the flow of the presentation. They even had to have the sound engineer assist them to access the computer and get the PowerPoint to work properly during the middle of the presentation because the computer was on the inaccessible stage.
Finally, it seems that there was no plan to make the stages accessible, only to remove them. This type of ableism, which keeps people with disabilities from the accommodations they need, is common at many conferences and events. Individuals with disabilities have the right to the same features and amenities as everyone else, regardless of accommodations required.
The bottom line is that when people with disabilities are speaking,
**We belong on the stage**.
To show our support for accessibility for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, we have created this icon. The image depicts one individual in a wheelchair on a ramp, and one individual standing behind them, using a railing. Both individuals are going up the ramp to a platform where the words “I BELONG ON THE STAGE” are written in white against a dark green background.
You are free to use the logo for anything that you would like. Downloading it is easy! All you have to do is right click on the logo if you are on a computer or hold your finger over the image to make a small menu appear. Then, you just select “save image as”, and pick where you want to save it.