The Equity and Inclusion in Housing and Design project is driven by the lived and living experiences of community members. What follows is an abridged compilation of writings authored by Dr. Mark Iantkow, an accessibility expert who has written extensively about inclusive design. Mark has an eye condition that has led to his vision gradually decreasing over time. In this excerpt, he explores how people with disabilities have been perceived in, and adapted to, their times. Mark reflects on his mother’s experiences, his own, and explores how shifts that are happening globally could impact Generation Z’s struggle for inclusion and equity.
Dr. Mark Iantkow smiles at the camera. He is seated and wearing a suit jacket and collared shirt.
The world we live within, we being “people with disabilities,” has evolved significantly over the past 100 years or so. How my own Mother – who retained my same eye condition – lived and functioned during the modern era (the early part of the 20th century) was considerably different from how I functioned as a child and how I matured into adulthood in our Western world in the latter part of that same century, through the postmodern era.
The nature of being for people with disabilities during the modern age was different from today (and yet, there are exceptions to that statement). During the early part of the 20th century, people with disabilities were to be seen but not heard, and they often actually lived or at least were “sent away” to institutional settings. My mother broke the mould in her own time and was a terrific mentor for me. Having a visible disability was not tolerated at the time. You may even recall how the eugenics movement was raising its head in the early part of the last century, and it was considered quite appropriate to conceptualize how our society might “clean up the gene pool.” These attitudes meant that Mom and her Jericho Hill School for the Deaf and the Blind colleagues often existed in a very sublimated manner, not emphasizing their disability, and coping, covering, or even ignoring much of their being in the days of my mother’s youth. Perhaps a symbol of those times relates to the classification of people with disabilities: either you had a visible disability, or you did not, and if you retained an invisible disability, you hid it as much as possible to avoid discrimination or scrutiny.
I arrived in this world shortly after WWII, at the birth of the post-modern age. Those were times of aspiration and even revolution, as people with varied disabilities were rebelling against institutionalization. I continually reflect on the Independent Living (IL) movement that was sparked in the early 1960s, and how my parents insisted I remain in my own community for my schooling, rather than being sent to a boarding school, which had previously been the norm. We, as people with varied disabilities, were coming into our own, for we were finally being recognized as a valid part of our society. This was not to say those old stereotypes and forms of ableist bigotry were completely washed away. Even one of the closest institutions with which both my mother and I were immersed– The Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) – was indeed an “institution” and had its progressive advantages, but the organization retained its own “residences” and sheltered workshops (the latter evolving from the “workhouses” of the early modern era, the Industrial Revolution).
Even though I stress those rather revolutionary and transformational experiences of people with disabilities during those postmodern years, I suggest we are now in another era: the metamodern, characterized by an oscillation between of post-modern, modern, and traditionalist thought. Though written in the early-modern era, Dickens’ words from A Tale of Two Cities could describe our metamodern era: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.” Our metamodern era rests in a dyadic balance; our current era brings with it some exciting potentials, but also some possible threats. Generation Z – as they mature into adulthood – will function quite differently than I or my mother did in the 20th century. In other words, our true ‘nature of being’ in our current era has evolved into something different, even than just a few years ago. But with these new days, there comes a risk of repeating history – we may be in the “best of times, but also in the worst of times” when it comes to our existence and societal functioning of our peoples with varied disabilities.
Let’s face it, even since my completion of my last degree in 2015, the world has changed dramatically. We have become immersed in our first global pandemic since the early 20th century, in global climate shifts, in major geopolitical turmoil, in massive migration shifts, in the development of potentially revolutionary technologies such as artificial intelligence, and in unprecedented medical advancements. A symbol of our current era in relation to disability, perhaps, is the WHO International Classification of functionality, Disability and Health (ICF) which has more of a social base, rather than a biomedical base. Yet, in this burgeoning new era I can see us sliding backwards a bit toward “re-institutionalization”, which may partly explain why our disability populations are stressing our human rights, and protective legislation for people with disabilities, like the Accessible Canada Act legislation, and the private members bill for a “Barrier-free Alberta” that was presented in our Alberta Legislature in Fall 2024.
I am optimistic about our future of people with disabilities, and yet we will have to face unprecedented pressures in our overall society alongside our able-bodied counterparts. Can we survive as a human species, never mind as a Canadian society, or never mind as a sector of our often-disenfranchised populations? Historically, our human species has survived many cataclysms, and I have full confidence we will survive these tumultuous times as well. And let’s make no mistake, the whole concept of diversity itself will be central within our survival – yes, and since people with disabilities are perhaps the most diverse of the most diverse, we will be a strong part of that!