ADACO - Allies for disability awareness community organizing

About Us

Historically, students with disabilities have been excluded from the realm of higher education (Konur, 2006). However, the population of college students with disabilities is steadily increasing, with the latest data estimating that approximately 11% of college students report having some type of disability (Horn & Nevill, 2006; Horn, Peter, & Rooney, 2002). Unfortunately, it is also estimated that students with disabilities have a disproportionally high dropout rate (84%) when compared with their non-disabled peers (Horn & Berktold, 1999). One commonly cited reason for this disparity is the frequent experience of isolation and harassment many students with disabilities face on campuses which are, in general, not responsive to their rights or needs (Konur, 2006; Dowrick, Anderson, Heyer, & Acosta, 2005). The Allies for Disability Awareness Community Organizing (ADACO) Project aims to combat this phenomenon by fostering a highly visible, highly supportive disability community on the University of Michigan campus.

The ADACO team’s efforts are guided by the “collaborative model” of community organizing (Mizrahi & Rosenthal, 2001), and largely focus on the creation of coalitions and allyships with pre-existing campus organizations. These allyships are formed with a variety of partners including student-run, university-run, and community-based organizations, e.g., the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities, the Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living, etc. as well as with non-disability related groups, e.g. the Graduate Employee Organization.

Each month, the ADACO team partners with a handful of these organizations to run a two-hour event focused on the intersection of disability and a topic of interest, for example: Cross-Cultural Perspectives of Disability. All events include the following five elements:

  1. Free admittance to UM students, faculty, and staff as well as members of the Ann Arbor and surrounding communities.
  2. Fun, hands-on, interactive activities, e.g. creating art, practicing meditation, etc. as well as thoughtful presentations and/or discussions
  3. Free, healthy food and drinks from local businesses
  4. Multiple considerations for accessibility, including:
    1. Space for wheelchair (and other mobility aid) maneuverability at event locations
    2. Copies of all event handouts in standard font, large-font, and Braille
    3. Employment of real-time captioning services (CART) for auditory components of each event
  5. Feedback forms so that we are able to measure our effectiveness and work towards making each event better and better