By Tess Carichner
As a nursing major who has a lifetime of experience and participation in the disability community, integrating my disability cultural values into my college transition and general life work has always been important to me. I lead a group called Disability Justice @ Michigan and work in the Digital Accessible Futures Lab, which is part of the larger DISCO network. Through connecting with other students on campus who are d/Deaf, chronically ill, neurodivergent, and disabled, I realized that our shared cultural knowledge is vital to accessing college, both in an educational and social sense. I remembered being a freshman and struggling to find disability-focused spaces and people who shared similar experiences to me. Last year, I was the lead editor for the first anthology documenting stories of students with disabilities at University of Michigan. Accessing Disability Culture (ADC) is an open-access collection of essays, poetry, photography, digital art, and more, created by disabled, chronically ill, d/Deaf, neurodivergent students. As a way to highlight our community’s work, I applied to the BLI Leadership Grant to fund our opening event, which was a fully accessible gathering with food, speakers, a virtual option, closed captioning, and a gallery walk of the contributions.
A Reflection on BLI Leadership Teaching
Both students who contributed to the anthology, as well as members of DAF worked in many of the leadership domains of BLI. Through an extensive editing process, we practiced the competency of feedback. Because this is the first resource of its kind at UofM, resilience was practiced while navigating a decentralized disability landscape. Action, of course, was a vital piece of this project. Upon observing the gap in representation, months of planning and coordinating actions culminated in the project. After completing this project, I feel more confident in my ability to lead months-long projects, communicate about sensitive topics, and organize within the community. Marketing, grant writing, and event planning skills are all transferable to future endeavors in the mission to highlight topics of disability equity, representation, and culture.
About Accessing Disability Culture
Students from a range of academic disciplines and degree levels, from advanced practice nursing doctoral students to freshman LSA students contributed to the anthology. Pieces highlight a variety of issues, positionalities, and opinions – showcasing the diverse and intersectional nature of the disability community. Below are some of the visual works from the anthology, which were presented at the opening event.
Scatterbrain (by Abbie Stochmal) is a digital art depiction of the creator’s experience with ADHD. To read more, visit the anthology link to Abbie’s work. A visual description for the work is available at the link as well.
Peninnah Posey’s submission included a whole comic collection about her lifelong experience with seizures. This single page depicts just one of the several pages of content available with image descriptions on her artist page, linked here.
Charlie Reynolds, who contributes three beautiful pieces to the anthology, opens the anthology with his piece, The Unnatural Conversion of Energy, a collection of photographs capturing a seizure. For more information and an image description, please visit his artist page linked here.
