This assignment requires short-term low contact with the community in place we might visit during our ordinary day. Students should expect to wear a mask indoors as required by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and maintain social distance at all times. For students with high-risk status or concerns, please contact me for an alternate version of this assignment.
Purpose
The purpose of this assignment is to provide students the opportunity to identify one public accommodation or service in the urban community that people with disabilities may or may wish to access, identify problems of access and utilization by people with a range of disabilities and propose a solution
Knowledge and Skills
The civic learning assignment is designed to allow students to extend classroom knowledge into real world, community based applications, and to apply problem-solving and research strategies to civic issues. For people with disabilities, the exercise of two fundamental rights: the right to equal access and the right to equal opportunity, depend heavily on the willingness of the greater community to make itself open and accessible to them. This fundamental social justice issue will be explored through this assignment.
This assignment will allow you to apply the following skills in a real-world, social justice application in the community.
* Explain and analyze legal mandates requiring reasonable accommodations needed by people with disabilities in daily living, the workplace, public services, public accommodations and education.
* Describe universal design and its impact on the access to public accommodations, including theaters, amusement parks, public buildings, hotels, restaurants and other facilities accessible by people with disabilities.
The Problem
The Americans with Disabilities Act (P.L. 101-336) prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities in access to all public accommodations. Public accommodations include most places of lodging (such as inns and hotels), recreation, transportation, education, and dining, along with stores, care providers, and places of public displays. The problem arises when small business owners who may not be well versed in the mandates of the law or aware of the needs of a range of people with disabilities fail to make their businesses fully accessible. Among the issues that arise are, but not limited to:
* Lack of employee sensitivity to disability and/or training to serve customers with disabilities
* Discriminatory practices that discourage patronage by customers or clients with disabilities
* Failure to make facilities accessible to people who are blind, deaf or use wheelchairs
* Lack of or insufficient disabled parking
* Failure to accommodate service animals, or to differentiate between service and so-called “emotional support” animals
Small businesses, such as stores, restaurants and offices often depend on a small number of employees and are more likely to be family owned/operated. Unlike larger businesses that have an office that handles issues of equity and diversity, small businesses must seek out training regarding how to accommodate customers/clients with disabilities that may or may not be readily available to them. Consequently, they make be under-prepared to provide the accommodations their customers/clients need, be more likely to lose their business, and be more vulnerable to legal action.
Each student will identify one small, local business (shop, restaurant or office) or small branch of a chain business that they will study for the purposes of this assignment. You will quietly observe, and analyze the accessibility strengths and issues present for five areas of disability: mobility, vision, hearing, learning and cognition. Students are not expected to question employees or business owners, which can be difficult and uncomfortable, but are free to do so at your own level of comfort. If you can, discreetly take photographs.
Guidelines
You may not use three facilities for this assignment: the sites you used for the disability walks, or any governmental office or site. This is about the ordinary small businesses or offices that both adults and children with disabilities will access on a daily basis. The second and third disability walk fieldwork will support this assignment, and give you insights you will need to complete the project.
Your project will be completed in five steps:
1. Select a public facility, service, business or accommodation where you believe or are aware people with disabilities may have issues of equal access and need for reasonable accommodations. This might be the local fitness club, a public library, the Metro train service, a chain hotel (such as Holiday Inn Express), a restaurant or theater, or a neighborhood store. You have plenty of latitude in your choice. Be prepared to defend your choice, and to make a visit to your site. Caution! Have a back-up just in case your first choice doesn’t work out. Do some preliminary research about your site online: review the business’s website to see if/how the business accommodates customers/clients with disabilities as well as how the site addresses accessibility, then see what positives and negatives you can find by doing a simple Google or Yelp search. You do more in-depth research later.
2. Visit your site, bringing the Accessibility Checklist with you. Analyze accessibility and needed accommodations for people with a range of disabilities. Check locations such as counters, restrooms, doorways, parking, tables and chairs, etc. Pay attention to employee interactions and attitudes. If you feel brave, ask about accommodations (for example, does a restaurant have a braille menu, or does a hotel provide accessible rooms?) Take notes and pictures and pick up literature as you observe. Remember to consider five areas of disability: mobility, vision, hearing, learning and cognition. This process is about a lot more than mobility. How will people who are blind or hearing-impaired access the site? What about people with reading disabilities who cannot read signs?
3. Do a broad-based analysis of your site, using the evidence from your research and your site visit. What accommodations are provided, how do people with disabilities access the site, and what attitudes about disability are present in the layout of your site? What do workers and users at the site know about how people with disabilities access their facilities and services? What are the site’s strengths and weaknesses? What are major accessibility issues, and what are less problematic? What does the site do well, and what messages does its policies send to customers/clients with disabilities? Address the five required areas of disability in your analysis.
4. Research the legal mandates for service provision, history of the site, past complaints and other issues relating to the provision of accommodations and access to the site you visited. You may need to use library databases and newspaper archives to research your facility. This won’t necessarily all be online. Based on your research, what is the history of your site? Consider: what does ADA require and what is provided? How does California and city law support the mandates of ADA? What are the implications, both social and civic to the legal mandates and the provision of services by the facility you visited?
5. Propose changes needed to make the facility you visited fully accessible, and provide a rationale for your solution. How will the changes you propose improve both access to people with disabilities and the quality of their lives? What barriers (money, but what else?) might limit the potential to make the changes you propose?
Paper
To report your research, findings and recommendations, you will write a roughly 1250 to 1500 word paper, including an introduction and conclusion, and organized around the steps above, presenting, analyzing and proposing a solution to the issues related to the site you visited. Your paper should include the following:
* Describe the site you visited, its location and the problem(s) you encountered in depth. Discuss the site’s strengths, and the results of your research in your discussion. Integrate labeled color photographs, roughly the size of a 3×5” file card, to support your description. Discuss what you found when you visited the location.
* Describe the problem(s) people with disabilities may encounter when accessing the location, and how they impact their a) experience at the location; and b) rights of equal access and equal opportunity. Discuss how the site supports access and inclusion of customers/clients with disabilities.
* Discuss the underlying legal and policy research you were required to do. What do state and federal law require your site to do to make it and its facilities accessible?
* Propose 3-5 detailed recommendations designed to address, and ideally solve, the problem you have identified. Number and provide a rationale for each recommendation, addressing how it will impact people with disabilities’s equal access and equal opportunity rights as well as their affective experience at the site. This is the “meat” of your paper and will demonstrate how well you have processed the research and evidence gathering you have done.
* Conclude with a summary and a 2-3 paragraph reflection on the assignment, what you experienced and what you learned about people with disabilities’ access to the placed in the community we go with such ease.
Your paper is not a judgment; it is designed to report, analyze and problem-solve. Please avoid judgmental language throughout.
Submission Format
You will submit your paper on Canvas as a .pdf document. Papers must be uploaded to Canvas using the Submit Assignment box. Papers that are e-mailed, submitted as Canvas message attachments, or attached to assignment comment boxes will not be accepted.
Document Formatting
* Begin your paper with a title page in APA format (see the sample in the syllabus). Insert a page break at the end of your title page. Include a title on the first page.
* Include a title on the first page. Use headings to label major sections of your paper.
* Pages are numbered in the upper right-hand corner of each page.
* Use 1” margins and be double-spaced evenly (no additional spaces between paragraphs or sections).
* Include labeled color photos and other evidence of the issue you have identified in other parts of your paper as needed.
Uploading your Paper
* Click Submit Assignment in the upper right to choose the upload type for your assignment.
* Scroll down to the File Upload box. Click Choose File. You will be prompted to find and attach your paper.
* When your paper is attached, click Submit Assignment to complete the submission.
Time Frame
You should expect to devote 8-10 hours over the course of several weeks to this assignment, which will include time to: a) visit your site; b) do the required research including consulting with the Education Librarian, and; c) write your paper.
Criteria for Success
This assignment is worth 20 points. Points will be assigned based on the following:
* Completeness and thoroughness of the paper, including all required components.
* Completion of all required tasks (visit, research, analysis).
* Attention to all required areas of disability.
* Careful, thorough research on the site and issues relating to access
* Discussion of legal requirements affecting the issues arising from your site visit and research
* Use of standard English, and careful attention to required page formatting, grammar, spelling, capitalization, punctuation, etc.
