Accessibility Committee

The DisAbility Section Accessibility Committee

Mission

The Accessibility Committee is dedicated to fostering full participation in APHA conference events for attendees with disabilities. Through collaboration with APHA, the Accessibility Committee works to remove barriers and promote understanding of the needs of people with disabilities. The Accessibility Committee seeks to ensure that the activities of the DisAbility Section are welcoming and supportive of attendees with disabilities and to promote disability awareness and sensitivity throughout the American Public Health Association.

The DisAbility Section Accessibility Committee has been actively promoting full participation in APHA annual meeting activities for people with disabilities since 2004. The Accessibility Committee began under the leadership of Dorothy (Dot) Nary to address disability-related barriers that were identified by conference attendees with disabilities.   

Committee Members

Gwyn Jones, Co-Chair

Kristine Mulhorn, Co-Chair

Stephen Gilson

Barth Riley

Marcie Goldstein

Lilah Katcher

Barbara Devore

Accomplishments

Working with the DisAbility Section Council and APHA leaders, the Accessibility Committee has instituted several practices to foster its goal of full participation within the DisAbility Section and throughout APHA. These efforts are on-going and depend heavily upon feedback from individuals with disabilities who attend DisAbility Section scientific sessions and meetings throughout APHA. Feedback from meeting attendees is responsible for several new initiatives.

• Stronger collaborative efforts with APHA to further progress toward full conference participation of meeting attendees with disabilities
• Disability-specific presenter guidelines and accessible PowerPoint template to assist presenters in creating an accessible oral presentation
• Disability-focused moderator guidelines to encourage disability accessible scientific sessions
• Development of poster presenter guidelines to facilitate preparation of posters that are disability accessible
• Implementation of an annual Accessibility Survey in collaboration with APHA to collect data on accessibility issues
• Development of a Conference Center Inventory for cities in which APHA holds its annual meetings to assist in addressing disability issues early in the conference planning process

Contact Us

People interested in learning more about the work of the Accessibility Committee, APHA members wanting to join the Accessibility Committee, or individuals wishing to provide feedback on their experiences with disability-related accessibility issues arising during annual meetings are encouraged to contact

Gwyn Jones at gbj4@cdc.gov

Kristine Mulhorn at knulhorn@umflint.edu

We want to know about the accessibility practices and policies that are working well, those that would work better with targeted changes, and problems with accessibility that are not being addressed.

For more information on APHA’s efforts to make its meetings disability accessible, click here for the APHA Accessibility pages.