Beyond an urban problem: Building accessibility and inclusive education for people with disabilities

Abstract

This work is aimed at the problem of accessibility to education for people with disabilities. It focuses on the architectural or building dimension, while other aspects of access to education are not addressed in this article. It is proposed, on the one hand, to describe the situation of schools in the city of La Plata in terms of building accessibility and human rights standards, taking as a starting point a survey carried out in 2012/2013 by the Legal Clinic of Human Rights and Disability, an extension program belonging to the Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences (UNLP). On the other hand, present various dimensions and possible analytical tools to think about the problem of accessibility to inclusive education for people with disabilities. Consequently, some relationships of this problem with other axes or processes such as social movements and identities, spaces and public policies will be exhibited, which open multiple questions and preliminary lines of analysis. It is about the dispute over material space, its interpretations and representations. Physical or building accessibility then means a struggle also for a reinterpretation of the school space and education. Dissident corporalities in schools highlight tensions and contradictions of this normalized space and allow (re) thinking of new spaces that facilitate other ways of linking and pedagogy, in this case, inclusive of diversity.