October is worldwide Disability Awareness Month, and Tech’s Student Disability Services office hosted events throughout week to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
George Stern, a senior journalism student who is blind, gave a speech called “Context of Disabilities” before the annual deaf bingo event Tuesday night.
Natalie Morales/ TheHub@TTU
He started by asking the audience to name disabilities. They responded with blindness, deafness, post-traumatic stress disorder, and Down syndrome.
Stern retorted that being short, linguistically challenged, vegetarian or afraid of the dark could also be considered disabilities.
“The list that I just created on the spot is not something that all people think of as disabilities,” Stern said.
He said most people do not notice disabilities in people they know closely because they are so embedded in their lives and context that they do not think of them as disabled.
“Disability isn’t something that most people think they have experience with,” Stern said. “But if you actually talk to them and get them to think a little… turns out they have some experience with someone who we call disabled whether it be grandma who’s a little bit deaf or an uncle who’s blind in one eye.”
Natalie Morales/ TheHub@TTU
It is a paradox that people need to be made aware of something that is often already part of their lives, Stern added.
James Whitfield, assistant director of student disability services and interpreter coordinator, said his office reached out to disabled people this week via social media and word of mouth. It also gave out wristbands saying #TTUDAW15, which stands for Texas Tech University Disability Awareness Week 2015.
Students or professors who posted on social media a picture wearing the bracelet were entered into a drawing for a football signed by Kliff Kingsbury. The winner will be announced tonight, Oct. 30, at 5 pm.
Stern said he hopes audiences take something from discussions of disabilities.
“Whenever I speak at events like this, I always kind of hope that it won’t be a one time thing,” Stern said. “It won’t be a ‘Ah, I came and saw the blind guy speak’. … I always hope that it will bleed into ‘normal life’—whatever they took from here, learned from here, will be more broadly applicable.”
He reminds people that just because he is blind, doesn’t mean he is completely disabled.
Added Stern: “I guarantee you, with or without my dog, I will be able to find my way.”
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