• What has it been like to learn at McMaster University while negotiating disability/ (in)accessibility? What specific experiences stand out to you?
• How have you been impacted by the barriers you have faced?
• What have you done to negotiate these barriers either individually and/or with others?
• What has respectful support looked and felt like, or what might this look and feel like?
• How have experiences with formal or informal groups of disabled students been meaningful to you?
• What has disabled student organizing or advocacy looked like and meant for you?
• What do you want the future of accessible and disability-inclusive teaching and learning to look like? What needs to change?
• What recommendations do you have for faculty, teaching assistants, and other educational staff?

Contributors took up this task in so many compelling ways, offering insights for how we should transform education to enhance accessibility and justice for disabled people.

Orientation to Dis/orientation

Disorientation:  

• a loss of one’s bearings or sense of direction, position, or relationship with one’s surroundings 
• a temporary or permanent state of confusion regarding place, time, or personal identity 
• a feeling of being confused about or not able to recognize where you are, where you are going, or what is happening; a feeling of not being able to think clearly 

Orientation:  

• the act or process of orienting or state of being oriented  
• an introduction, as to guide one in adjusting to new surroundings; training or preparation for a new job or activity 
• the ability to locate oneself in one’s environment with reference to time, place, people, attitudes, or a specific object 
• a usually general or lasting direction of thought, inclination, or interest; the particular thing that a person prefers, believes, thinks, or usually does; the act of directing your aims towards a particular thing (adapted from Cambridge, Merriam-Webster, and Oxford Dictionaries and Dictionary.com)  

We chose to title the zine Dis/orientation as this word holds multiple meanings: those of disorientation and orientation.  

The idea of disorientation calls attention to ways disabled students can lose our bearings as we work to navigate university life, particularly when faced by barriers of inaccessibility, discrimination, and exclusion.  

It also acknowledges how McMaster educators are seeking to find our way into more accessible teaching practices and may at times feel like we don’t have a sense of direction or like we aren’t quite sure what to do.

In response to these forms of difficulty and confusion, this zine aims to aid orientation:

• For students with disabilities, we hope the zine offers connections to disability community (past and present), eases feelings of shame and isolation, and trades tips for navigating disabled student life in support of greater belonging on campus.
• For educators, we hope the zine helps guide your accessibility work by deepening appreciation of the varied experiences and aspirations of disabled students, the barriers we face, and concrete steps you can take to create more welcoming and inclusive learning environments.

This dis/orientation is created through the following themes, illustrated here with teasers:

The Crucial Role of Disability Community

• “I would not be able to get through academia at ALL without disability community.” (Maccess Executive 2020/2021)
• “Now that I know that there is a group for those with disabilities out there, I do not feel so alone.” (Renee)

Effects of Stigma and Discrimination

• “…I have…submitted this piece under a pseudonym because, unfortunately, I worry about stigma surrounding what I have said impacting future employment. …I hope that [in the future], I can openly state any mental health things that are going on.” (Jess H.)

Addressing Barriers to Accessibility

• “I was unable to attend all but two Welcome Week events, one of which still caused me pain… we need to introduce accommodations for Welcome Week.” (Lisa Shen)

• “…I am somewhat fortunate now that all lectures are held via Zoom – meaning I can expand on my screen to my choosing and never have to feel ashamed in my home environment. I can adjust my lighting, seating position, screen position and size of my view.” (Nicole Rakowski)

Spectrum of Experiences with Educators

• “One negative experience I had as a disabled student occurred… [w]hen I spoke to my lab instructor about my labs [and] he begrudgingly accommodated me, and angrily told me that I could never miss a lab again… [In contrast,] One of my favourite professors at McMaster…asked me…how I was doing. I didn’t know professors did that…” (Joanne Lewis)

Advocating for Change

• “In my fourth year, I had a breakdown so severe I dropped my thesis and stayed for a week at a half-way house. …With one year left, it seemed there was nothing left to lose. … I contacted an instructor about creating an event where we could talk about what the students were going through…” (Luise Wolf)

Visions for Transformative Education

• “Can pedagogy be healing and stimulate transformation? To create deeper accessibility, I wonder about the urgent need for an educational space where our full selves can be integrated, maybe even witnessed.” (Michelle Sayles)

We seek to contribute to dis/orientation in two additional ways:

• Orientation: This zine builds off prior work by disabled students at McMaster to share our voices, including (but not limited to!) pieces printed in the Silhouette newspaper since at least the 1960s, other memoirs/narratives written by students and alumni with disabilities, the Hamilton Mad Students’ Collective’s 2014 zine on Mad student experiences, and Open ACCESSibility: An illustrated story of disability advocacy @McMaster (Sayles with de Bie, 2018). Part of orienting McMaster community members to accessible education is documenting, preserving, and sharing this long history of work so that it can be built upon – and guide our direction – rather than be forgotten.

• Disorientation: We long to support disorientation by changing up the format of communication and professional development in the university. What might ‘zines’ do that more conventional trainings, tip sheets, guidebooks, or academic papers on education research cannot? Inspired by a partnership between the teaching and learning centre and student union at the University of the Arts London to co-design zines to inform curriculum and education, we’re excited about the possibility of zines and other creative formats for enhancing inclusive excellence in teaching and learning.

As part of this dis/orientation, we invite you to share responses to the zine by emailing the McMaster Disability Zine Team at MacDisZn@mcmaster.ca. We aim to publish these throughout the zine as well as in a new section on educator/ally reflections.

Thanks for navigating accessibility in teaching and learning with us!

– The McMaster Disability Zine Team