Kelcey Thornton

Major: Music Education

Subplan/Concentration: Vocal

Minor: Interdisciplinary Disability Studies

Advisor: Philip Edelman

Reply to question: How have the IDS courses shaped your perspective of disability?

IDS classes have helped me to understand how people with disabilities view the world and how they have to navigate it. Our society isn’t built to be fully accessible for anyone with disabilities. IDS classes have also shown me how we can adapt different types of accessibility so everyone is able to do tasks they wouldn’t have been able to do without the adaptation. There is so much technology that can help people with disabilities that just need to be applied to our society. One example that stuck with me from class was that when people go shopping in any popular shopping city, most if not all of the shops are up a step or two from the sidewalk. People with mobility issues would never be able to enter the store because they aren’t able to get up the steps, whether that be because they’re in a wheelchair or use crutches or aren’t able to move their legs in that way. Because of this example that I learned about in class, I now think about things like that when out in public because you never realize how inaccessible the world is.