Disability rights lawyer Haben Girma will give the keynote at the World Canals Conference in Buffalo this weekend. Her talk will focus on making outdoor spaces more accessible for people with disabilities.
Girma is the first Deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law School. She says she grew up encouraged to try activities like skiing, kayaking and rafting.
Girma says many parks and recreational spaces still have barriers. This can include paths or facilities that are not wheelchair accessible, websites that screen readers cannot read properly and staff who are not trained on disability or service animals. She says making these changes can help create outdoor spaces that are welcoming and enjoyable for everyone.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript from a contractor that may be updated over time to be more accurate.
Emyle Watkins: Hi, I am Emyle Watkins, and this is the Disabilities Beat.
Starting on Sunday, the World Canals Conference will be hosted right here in Buffalo. Now you might be asking, what does this have to do with disability?
Well, I spoke with Haben Girma ahead of the conference about her keynote, which will focus on how we can make outdoor recreational spaces more accessible. Girma, a disability rights lawyer and the first Deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School, shares why this issue matters to her.
Just a note, I spoke with her through a speech-to-Braille interpreter, so interpretation pauses have been removed and the conversation edited for length and clarity.
Haben Girma: I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I was very blessed to be surrounded by people who wanted to make the outdoors accessible. Before I even knew about skiing with disabilities, I had teachers telling me, want to try skiing? Let's go skiing. And they introduced me to adaptive skiing. It's been similar with waterways. So people would tell me, of course blind people can kayak. Here's how we do it. Of course we can do river rafting and surfing. Here's how we do it. So I had access to that kind of community very early on, and that helped me develop the confidence to realize this is possible. And then I found that not every community is like that.
Emyle Watkins: When you think of parks and waterways and recreational areas, especially as a disability rights lawyer, what are some of the major barriers that come to mind for people's access?
Haben Girma: I can list so many. So for starters, there's physical access, and there have been lawsuits by different disability rights organizations to get more parks to have wheelchair accessible paths, viewpoints, bathrooms. Recreational spaces should be accessible for everyone. So there's the physical accessibility part. There's digital accessibility. The websites tied to these parks that give you information about maps, points of interest, hours, safety, all of that should be accessible.
A lot of blind people use the internet independently. And if a website is designed for screen reader compatibility, then blind people can browse the website and know, okay, the park opens at this time, and these are the points of interest. These are the trees that I might be able to smell when I'm at the park, and these are the accessible programs that I should know about at the park. So the websites should be accessible.
And then there's people. The people involved with the park, staff at the park should have training on accessibility. I have a seeing eye dog, and I have been to parks where staff come to me and say, "You need to leave. You can't have dogs in here." And I explain to them it's a seeing eye dog. It's wearing a seeing eye harness. And sometimes it takes a lot of advocacy to get them to understand that. And other times they're like, oops, sorry, we didn't realize that. So there needs to be training for staff who work at these recreational areas.
Emyle Watkins: I would love to hear what people can expect from your keynote talk. I know on the website it mentions how designing for inclusion can create richer, more resilient communities for everyone. Maybe could you talk briefly about what people can expect from your talk?
Haben Girma: I will be offering examples from around the world on how we can make canalside spaces and recreational areas more accessible for people with disabilities. It's about training and physical access, as we said, but that's also just the beginning. There's so much more. Ultimately, it's about creating spaces where people want to go because it's delightful and enjoyable, and communities of people with disabilities and non-disabled people will want to come together.
Emyle Watkins: You can listen to the Disabilities Beat segment on demand, view a transcript and plain language description for every episode on our website at btpm.org. I'm Emyle Watkins. Thanks for listening.
