An essential facet of Sweetland’s accessibility improvement project is our Student Advisory Board (SAB). Formed at the outset of our renewed accessibility efforts in the fall of 2022, this board is composed of students who help guide our accessibility improvements from their lived experience of disability. We are pleased to announce that this year, Sweetland has committed to maintaining the SAB as a standing committee in order to ensure that our future access work will remain continual, ever-evolving, and grounded in disabled wisdom and insight.
Since its inception, the SAB has undertaken an array of projects including: performing accessibility audits of digital and physical spaces; updating language surrounding disability and accommodations on our intake forms and website to be more sensitive and welcoming; creating a dedicated page of the website for accessibility information; developing and delivering a professional development training to Writing Workshop consultants; and developing qualitative research for publication. This year, the SAB will renew its accessibility audits (first performed two years ago) and expand its attention beyond consultation to increase accessibility in Sweetland’s Minor in Writing Program.
This semester, we have hired the largest board to date at five students, and received our highest-ever number of applications. We are also glad to have made steps towards a more diverse SAB. Historically, social and sensory disabilities have been well-represented on the board, as have women and queer folks, but we envision a board that speaks to as broad a range of identities as possible. We are pursuing this more diverse board by encouraging applications from people with physical disabilities, people of color, and graduate students. As this board continues to mature and expand its sphere of influence, we look forward to the ways it will further Sweetland’s mission of “counteracting both individual and structural oppression in order to create a safer, more just university for all students.”
