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Intercultural Practice and Equity · Foundations
Disability as identity and culture, what self-advocates mean by access and interdependence, and how a deficit frame shows up in the words a public program uses about people.
40–45 minutes · 4 lessons · Voluntary learning
Disability is a medical fact and an eligibility category in our records. It is also an identity, a history and a culture, and that second description changes what careful public-administration work looks like.
Nothing about us without us is a working rule, not a slogan. Access is a shared design task. Interdependence is the ordinary human condition, not a failure of independence.
The same program, the same person and the same sentence read very differently depending on the frame underneath them. Four frames show up in public-administration writing, and the choice between them is usually unconscious.
The practical tool for this module: a short review you can run on one real program description, with a way to separate wording you can change from wording the law fixes.
Choose one program description, web page, notice or contract paragraph you touch, run the wording review in the last lesson, and take one change to the person who owns the text.
Disability is usually filed in state government as a medical fact and an eligibility category. Many disabled people describe it differently: as an identity, a history and a culture, with its own language, art, humor and hard-won politics. This module looks at what changes in public-administration work when both descriptions are on the table. You will meet disability culture, the self-advocacy movement, access and interdependence as community practices rather than individual favors, and the difference between a deficit frame and a rights-based frame. The last lesson gives you a wording review you can run on a real program description. Nothing here is scored, and nothing you write is recorded.
Keep the legal term. Change the description. Ask the people it describes.
Keep the frames and the wording review in reach while you draft or review a program description, a notice, a report narrative, a slide or a scope of work.
Run the five-pass wording review on one description you touch, and send the marked version to the person who owns it with a date attached.
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
Minnesota's advisory council on disability policy, access and rights, including guidance for state agencies and public bodies.
Federal information and technical assistance on the Americans with Disabilities Act, including the obligations of state and local government programs.
The factsheet behind this module's wording lists, including person-first and identity-first preferences and the advice to ask rather than assume. ADA Knowledge Translation Center, 2018 edition.
Minnesota's documented history of institutions, the rights movement and community living, used for this module's account of where deficit language came from.
The disability-led source for the disability justice principles named in Lesson 3, including intersectionality, leadership of those most impacted, interdependence and collective access.
A Minnesota self-advocacy organization run by and for people with disabilities; background for this module's description of self-advocacy as a movement and a source of expertise.
DHS policy material on person-centered practices, informed choice and supported decision-making referenced in Lesson 2.
The instructional design reference for this curriculum: multiple ways to engage, culturally responsive content, and accessible materials by default.