By: Nicholas Shinghal
This year, I had the opportunity to experience Disability Pride Week as an undergraduate student who is still relatively new to the disability allyship space. I have explored allyship over the past two years as a Front-End Web Accessibility Engineer, where I remediate UCLA’s many websites and digital materials, and as the undergraduate student representative in UCLA Committee on Disability (UCOD), where I advocate alongside numerous campus partners for changes to better our community for persons with disabilities. In these roles, I have learned a great deal about what it means to be an ally and how I can contribute to this space. I have grown passionate about several areas within this broad field of advocacy, such as adaptive sports and recreation, as a result of my interactions with Paralympians and those seeking to promote adaptive sports on campus. However, interacting with Disability Pride Week this year, both as a part of the organization that planned it in UCOD and attending the events themselves, has expanded my view of my own allyship and how I can contribute to this space in two main ways.
Firstly, my experiences with Disability Pride Week this year have made me feel more like a member of the disability advocacy community here at UCLA. As I stated, I have been part of this space for two years now, however, participating in these events in a live capacity changed my view of myself and my role within this community. At the kickoff event, I had the chance to be a resource for my undergraduate peers, sharing my thoughts and experiences as an ally to educate about the disability space. I truly enjoyed being seen as a member of this disability advocacy community, and the conversations I had with students who were interested in this space were incredibly insightful and reaffirmed my belief that I have something unique as an ally to contribute. Additionally, at the open UCOD meeting, I put out a call for support, asking my fellow committee members for disability advocacy organizations that they are involved with as potential partners for a business club I help lead. Having this network of passionate people who are connected within this advocacy space and being able to turn to them for support when I want to get more involved reaffirmed that I have a place within this community.
Secondly, Disability Pride Week this year reaffirmed my belief that allyship means continual learning from my peers. Attending the event with Chuck Aoki, I appreciated the chance to learn from the perspective of a Paralympian with such unique experiences at many levels of this advocacy space. As a lover of sports, I appreciated the opportunity to get the viewpoint of such an accomplished athlete on issues of athletic accessibility and adaptive recreation, as well as the landscape of sports as a whole. As someone who has only entered the advocacy space relatively recently compared to many of the peers I work alongside, I understand that I am in a unique position to constantly broaden my perspective through experiences like this. This position can often be daunting, as occasionally I feel that I do not know enough to provide my opinion or to offer my viewpoint, but events like this and Disability Pride Week as whole make me feel more ready to share my perspective. I feel that many undergraduate students also face this barrier; in my conversations with my clubmates and friends about disability advocacy, many people feel strongly about these topics and wish to contribute, but do not feel qualified to contribute or want to overpower the voices of disabled members of the campus community. I feel that events like this, focused on engagement and education, help break down this participation stigma and help more undergraduates join this discussion.
I feel that going forward, I would love to explore more ways for us to reach undergraduates and encourage them to contribute their perspectives on topics beyond sports within the disability advocacy space. I am grateful for my experiences as part of this community, in Disability Pride Week and beyond, and I continue to look for new ways to bring more people into this space so that they can learn and benefit from this environment as much as I have.
Originally Posted: 24 October 2024