During the course of this class, I learned a lot about community development and strategies needed in order to make sure that everyone feels welcome. People are unique and some individuals may require a bit more steps in order to be fully inclusive in their environment.
For individuals with disabilities, the Inclusive Recreation Resource Center is a strong resource as they educate and work towards making sure that recreational areas can be used by everyone, regardless of differences. The IRRC lists locations that have been properly assessed where individuals can see if that area accommodates individuals. In order to be qualified to assess recreational sites, one needs to undergo the Inclusion U training they have that explains the importance of inclusion as well as educates on how to use their tools to evaluate a recreational spot. It is a roughly 10 hour course that gets into extreme detail on what evaluators need to look for when assessing a location. To be quite honest, I never heard about this program prior to this course but I decided to go through the training process to become a Certified Inclusion Ambassador and I now have knowledge to determine if a site has the proper accessibility tools needed in order to be fully inclusive.
At this point in my life, I want to work in the hospitality business, specifically being a manager at the Disneyland Resort since that is where I am currently employed and choose to continue being at. Disney does everything in their power to be as inclusive as possible by providing as much as they can to assist all sorts of individuals. Just from my experience being at the parks, they have things such as mobility scooters, auditory devices, braille maps, sign language interpretation, etc. Interestingly enough, something that I wouldn’t have noticed prior to the Inclusion U training is that Disney utilizes person-first language. Person-first language is about changing how we describe individuals with disabilities by putting the person first with disabilities second (if needed to be placed there at all). On the disability website, Disney is utilizing that by using “Guest with Disabilities”, “Guests with Hearing disabilities”, etc, showing that they are taking extra steps to make sure that their language is inclusive as well. In general, Disney does an excellent job with not only including individuals with physical disabilities but also finding ways to practice social inclusion and just making sure that everyone has the ability to have a magical day at the parks. With now being a Certified Inclusion Ambassador, I want to make sure that Disney continues to not only practice their inclusion methods but I want to advocate for further practices as well. For example, it’s incredibly important to make sure that all staff are trained and equipped with the knowledge to include everyone. While there was brief training on the disability services when I was hired in, after taking the Inclusion U course, it really shed light that there needs to be more training to every single cast member about inclusion and what we can do as staff to make everyone feel welcome at the resort. Whether this be through more training or through providing group access to programs like Inclusion U, a big role that I want to play is to push for this awareness and push to make Disney’s inclusion strategies better. They’re already really well done but there can be more done to fix things and I want to use my training at Inclusion U to really make sure that physical access is possible and that employees are being trained to accommodate inclusion practices.
Overall, I’m glad that I took the Inclusion U course as I learned a lot and I’m even beginning to notice things that were taught in the class in my everyday life. The program boasts that individuals will possibly be ruined after taking the course since they’ll be more critical of recreational spots and I absolutely am seeing that now. I think the program is excellent and I encourage others to do it if they have the ability to do so. I'll end this by posting a link to a video that was shown through the training that I enjoyed and felt like it challenged my beliefs on individuals with disabilities. Check it out!
