Access is:
- Designing programs and services to ensure that all writers feel welcome and supported here
- Intersectional and changing
- A form of disability justice and restorative justice
Disability Justice is:
- Recognizing that disability comes in many different forms
- Respecting each person’s right to self-determination
- Centering the voices and experiences of the disability community
We do this by:
- Building partnerships in our communities to continually learn together
- Working to eliminate barriers to access in our programming and services
- Being open to what our writers say they need
Our Commitments
The Writing Center at Michigan State University is committed to fostering the work of access.
- We define access as considering, engaging, designing, and planning programs and services with the diverse, intersectional, and changing access needs of writers in mind
- We believe access is a form of disability justice as well as a form of restorative justice
- We recognize that disability comes in many forms, both visible and invisible, structural (created by institutions or environments), and temporary (some illnesses, for example)
- We respect each person’s right to self-determination within both the writing community and the disability community
- We will build partnerships both within our university community and beyond it to continually learn and engage the changing, evolving access needs of writers
- We will work to eliminate barriers to access in our programming and will educate others in our community to do the same
- We will dedicate ourselves to the training and knowledge necessary to provide support for the access needs of writers
- We will center the voices, experiences, and needs of disabled persons in our programming, training, and hiring practices
We will advocate with and for disabled writers in their pursuit of writing support.
Our Challenges, Our Intentions
The Writing Center at Michigan State University is committed to serving writers with disabilities and to accommodating the access needs of writers, of our staff, and of those who attend our programming.
While we do not claim to be experts and while we are not the university’s formal accommodation office (that’s the Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities), we promise to work in good faith to create a staff, a Writing Center, and programming that considers, and whenever possible, addresses the access needs of all.
To inquire about possible disability accommodations while visiting The Writing Center, please email us.
*Please see our References for Further Reading list. To contribute to this growing list, please contact writing@msu.edu.