Inclusivity
One of the only nice things that has come out of COVID is that for a brief period of time, the world became more inclusive. Instead of expecting all people to be able to read and hold paper books (and get to the library, etc), libraries increased their e-book license purchases, making library books more accessible to a larger portion of the population. Now there were paper books for the paper book crowd, and e-books for the non-paper book crowd.
Meetings and events went online, making it possible or easier for more people to attend and participate — not just people who did not want to risk COVID, but people with a lack of transportation options, people who were caregivers at home, people with health issues. Not every place could adjust and accommodate, but the places that could and did found themselves reaching new people or old people in different ways. Offering in-person and online options made it possible for people to choose the location that fit their needs.
In the last few months, many of those accommodations are going away, especially providing a Zoom option. I understand that the impulse is to get people to return to the building, and I’m sure for some people, it does force them to return if they still want to participate. But who do they lose in the push to get things back to the way they were? The people who are still unwilling to risk COVID as well as all of the ones who had barriers to begin with. It is hard to know an inclusive option exists and people aren’t using it anymore.
Just something I’m thinking about this weekend.
5 comments
I think about this a lot. Academic conferences are expensive and inaccessible for many scholars, not to mention terrible for the environment.
We managed to present papers for two years online and now no one wants to do it like that, and it’s so frustrating. And I say that as someone who treats conferences as a way to see my friends who live all over the country, so I love the in-person aspect. We should be doing this better.
It does seem that’s there’s been a bit of a culture change with external assessors for PhD dissertations, in that maybe it’s becoming normalized to have them be remote for the defence. So I guess that’s something?
I really agree with this. I would sometimes attend PTA meetings by zoom. I would never arrange childcare to attend a PTA meeting.
Working from home was also an amazing inclusive option for some people and I hate to see it taken away for no good reason. For an office job on a computer I really think working from home is a reasonable accommodation if it’s been working for everyone for two years.
I agree. I was thrilled to see the my daughters’ schools are both still offering in person and zoom conferences. I’m choosing to mask and go in person but I love that if I wasn’t able to arrange child care etc, I could still meet with my kids’ teachers. I wish more places would find a way to continue this inclusivity.
I’ve lost the option to vote – to participate in democracy. Town meeting is indoors, unmasked. Last year, a successful ADA complaint moved the meeting outside again, but this year, no one cares. “Covid is over”.
We had the opportunity to gain so much good out of the pandemic, but we threw it all away for nostalgia. We could have changed the way schools operate, how people work, how people access their doctors, and so much more, but people want so desperately for covid to never have existed that they refuse to see the opportunities we had.
This is a huge issue for us. Students are requesting zoom classes either for when they’re sick (when they really should be recovering not trying to keep up) or because they just don’t want to go to class, or because they have social anxiety. But if part of a residential college education is three dimensional participation, how can we say hybrid does the same thing? I think zoom has a time and propose but I’m not sure college is the right time or purpose…at least not the kind of education we offer.