Catherine Leigh Graham, MEBME
The APHA Annual Meeting in Denver is quickly approaching. Marking the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act this year, in conjunction with the APHA Annual Meeting theme of Social Justice has brought many accessibility issues to light. While APHA has made progress throughout the years, the Disability Section’s Accessibility Committee is continuing to work with APHA to increase their overall conference accessibility.
We continue our attempts to foster collaboration between the deaf and hard-of-hearing community and APHA. It is crucial for attendees with hearing impairments be able to experience all aspects of the conference from session presentations to the Public Health Expo to the Mix & Mingle Lounge in order to get equal benefit from attending as other participants. This will require changes to include the utilization of sign language interpreters. Many other large conferences have already completed the leg work to figure out how to accomplish this. Our hope is to relay this information to APHA and let them contact local support for each conference.
The Film Festival was held for the first time in 10 years at the meeting in Philadelphia. It was a big hit showcasing films and videos of interest to public health professionals. We want to ensure that all future media presented is accessible to all. Some ways film and video accessibility can be increased are through open captioning or having photo descriptions included. We have been in contact with the organizers of the Film Festival for 2010 so that some accessibility changes can be implemented in Denver. We are hopeful that the policy can be added for the 2011 Film Festival that will require open captioning and picture description in all future media presented at APHA.
One last issue that we are working with APHA administration on is the new Section Pavillion. This is going to be a fantastic new area where all of the Section Booths will reside. Our goal is to ensure that all booths, not just the Disability Section booth, are accessible to everyone. We realize that having a disability does not necessarily correlate with which Section booths a person may want to visit. All of the booths should be welcoming and accessible to all attendees.
Looking forward to seeing everyone in Denver!