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Striving for Inclusion

On the day the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed, Kerry Thompson, Ed.M.’08, remembers staying home from school. “Pay attention because this will change your life,” her mother told her.

Yet, as much as Thompson understands the ways in which ADA has impacted the lives of people with disabilities, there is still much more to be done. “Twenty-five years later, we are still fighting a good fight for inclusion,” she said recently to HGSE students as part of an event co-sponsored by the Office of Student Affairs and Access and Disability Services & International Higher Education and Disability.

Currently a program associate at the Disability Rights Fund and a Marshall Memorial Fellow (the leadership development program of the German Marshall Fund chooses only 75 fellows each year from 35 nations), Thompson — who was born with Usher Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes deaf blindness — shared her personal journey and spoke about her work advancing rights for people with disabilities around the world.

“Many [people with disabilities] don’t go on to college or have a job,” she said. “This is something I hope to change.”

Thompson’s own experience as a student has largely influenced her work today. Growing up in Louisiana, Thompson’s parents discovered she was deaf at the age of 2. Instead of sending Thompson to a school specializing in deaf children more than 100 miles away, they opted to educate her close by. But even that decision was wrought with challenges, as Thompson described being automatically enrolled in special education classes. By age 6, Thompson tired of special education, which she described as being at the time a practice of “putting a bunch of kids with disabilities in a room.” With the support of her parents, Thompson enrolled in regular classes. Yet, when her third-grade teacher advocated for Thompson as a “smart” student who needed to be further challenged in the gifted program, the principal declined the request.

This would not be one of the only circumstances where Thompson faced discrimination based on her disability. Instead throughout the course of her life, Thompson regularly faced discrimination and a lack of support. Despite hopes of becoming a pediatric cardiologist, she was told that medical school would never accept her due to deafness, so Thompson studied accounting instead. And, while working a temporary position using accounting skills, Thompson couldn’t land an administrative job. The reason? An employer didn’t think she could answer a phone.

Frustrated, Thompson decided to leave Louisiana on the flip of a coin. Armed with a quarter, she tossed it in the air – it’s landing to determine whether to move to Boston or New York. Boston won.

“I’d never been north of Shreveport,” she said. “I’d never seen snow.” But Thompson knew she needed to experience life somewhere else.

After working at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Thompson noticed the ongoing challenges of people with disabilities in healthcare, including the frequent inability to access an interpreter. During this time, she helped develop Text4Deaf, a communication tool that helps deaf or hearing-impaired people to interact better.

When she arrived at HGSE, Thompson was struck by the diversity of the students, as well as their shared interest in improving the world. While at the Ed School, Thompson delved into research examining whether students with disabilities were challenged beyond the basics in school. She discovered that, although schools claimed to have advanced study options available to students with disabilities, many still could not provide the numbers of enrolled students with disabilities, a disconnect that was difficult to explain.

“Many times students with disabilities are protected and told not to do too much,” Thompson said, noting students are often taught to keep expectations low. The result is that students with disabilities aren’t being properly prepared to enter the workforce or world. Additionally, the world’s workforce is equally unprepared to receive people with disabilities. “The workforce needs to be more open to hiring people with disabilities,” she said. “Students with disabilities need to know they can become an engineer or lawyer…. It’s a human rights issue.”

Since leaving the Ed School, Thompson continues to dedicate her efforts to understanding how disabilities are integrated into the world. As the first deaf Marshall Memorial Fellow, she recently visited Europe and met with prominent decision makers, including members of Parliament. During the tour, she also had opportunity to see how accessible many European cities are, which varied tremendously.

Still, the striving for inclusion of people with disabilities in the world through treaties like the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which aims to promote the rights and dignity of all people with disabilities gives Thompson hope for the future.

“So many people think disability is a medical issue and we need to be corrected,” she said. “Disability is a social construct. If everyone in this room knew sign language, my deafness wouldn’t be a disability in this room. But because almost no one knows sign language then I have the disability in the room. Am I the problem? Not really…. You change the environment completely the disability disappears.”

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