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Departmental Accessibility Resource Coordinators

DARC Training

Departmental Accessibility Resource Coordinators (DARC) - Suggested Timeline for getting started with training:
  1. Initial Meeting/Lunch and Training – Toward the beginning of the semester.
  2. Following Lunch/Initial Meeting, and within one to two weeks, announce DARC role and availability to department/unit personnel. (Ideas e.g., flier, e-mail, meeting announcements, etc.)
  3. Disseminate!!   Insert yourself into departmental meeting agendas, with agreement of department/division director, on a regular basis to offer information regarding a resource, offer kudos to a department member executing a universal design idea into curriculum or space, do a brief activity, and/or provide updated handouts.
  4. Follow up with DARC Manager and website for updates and annual training. See Tools and Resources (hyperlink) for training materials.

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