Who has access to the university? In this course, you will consider how institutes of higher education have built barriers to access for disabled people and how disabled people have fought to remove them. Using Georgia Tech’s WOVEN curriculum, you will produce four artifacts aimed at identifying, discussing, and addressing many of those barriers at Georgia Tech. In so doing, you will develop skills in communication, rhetoric, and communication that will give you access to the conversations and work happening across the campus. Through this study, we will consider how scholars and activists have worked to change the conversation
about disability, how the legal system addresses barriers to access, and how those issues influence Georgia Tech’s physical, social, and intellectual environment. This course is affiliated with Georgia Tech's Serve-Learn-Sustain initiative. In addressing their theme of "Creating sustainable communities," we will engage in a critical study of the Kendeda Building, Georgia Tech’s Living Building-certified construction project, which is currently underway. In particularly, we will consider what disability activists and experts can contribute to conversations and practices of equitable, sustainable development. Along the way, we will hear from engineers, museum docents, and other professionals about how issues of accessibility and disability shape their work. Their insight and experience will both help you produce your artifacts and provide a broader sense of how questions of disability operate outside of our classroom.