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Departmental Accessibility Resource Coordinators
Campus Organization
Each campus that chooses to adopt and develop a DARC network will have a different organization, population and structure. If there are departments, DARC may be the appropriate or chosen acronym. If there are other units at the bottom of the organizational chart, this can be adapted accordingly. The most important feature is to reflect the infusion approach, ensuring that information regarding accessibility and universal design is reaching all levels of the organizational chart - from the grassroots bottom branches, divisions, departments or units of the campus to the uppermost administration.
It took me several years of struggling with the heavy door to my building, sometimes having to wait until a person stronger came along, to realize that the door was an accessibility problem, not only for me, but for others as well. And I did not notice, until one of my students pointed it out, that the lack of signs that could be read from a distance at my university forced people with mobility impairments to expend a lot of energy unnecessarily, searching for rooms and offices. Although I have encountered this difficulty myself on days when walking was exhausting to me, I interpreted it, automatically, as a problem arising from my illness (as I did with the door), rather than as a problem arising from the built environment having been created for too narrow a range of people and situations.
Susan Wendell, author of
The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability
