Disability advocate Haben Girma shares her story with the Olin community

Olin welcomed author, keynote speaker, and human rights lawyer Haben Girma to the school in December.

Known as an advocate for disability justice and accessibility, Girma was named a White House Champion of Change by President Barack Obama in 2013. The World Health Organization appointed her commissioner of social connection, she has received the Helen Keller Achievement Award, and she was included on the 2016 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. She’s also the author of the book “Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law.”

To Girma, disability is an opportunity for innovation, and she travels the world teaching organizations the importance of inclusion.

“Disability is not something an individual overcomes,” she said. “I’m still disabled. I’m still deafblind. People with disabilities are successful when we develop alternative techniques and our communities choose inclusion.”

Her talk in December was part of Olin’s Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’s Diversity Perspective Series, which has recently included actress and transgender youth advocate Nicole Maines and Christine Chavez, granddaughter of Hugo Chavez and Natural Resources Conservation Service Public Affairs Outreach Coordinator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Girma spent some time talking about ableism, a set of beliefs and practices that treat disabled people as inferior to nondisabled people.

“I learned for me that deafblindness was not the barrier. The barrier was ableism,” she said. “So, when someone writes up a business plan and doesn’t include accessibility, that’s an example of ableism. When someone builds a website and doesn’t think about accessibility, that’s an example of ableism.”

She said that while some representatives of organizations have told her they didn’t mean to discriminate, unintentional ableism is still ableism.

“We want people to get in the habit of planning for accessibility. When you’re writing your business plan and you’re connecting with investors, reaching out to communities, plan for accessibility. It’s good business.”