Celebrating Disability Advocacy Week
Posted March 11, 2025 in Featured News, JMU Libraries News
Join us in celebrating Disability Advocacy Week (March 31-April 4, 2025), organized every year by JMU’s Office of Disability Services! Check out the resources below for opportunities to learn, celebrate, and advocate for disability, accessibility, and belonging in higher education.
Disability Advocacy in Film
Check out My Beautiful Stutter, Anita, Let Me Be Me, and other films on Kanopy, an award-winning video streaming service providing access to more than 30,000 independent and documentary films, available to you for free as a member of the JMU community.
A New Book Display
Unlearning Ableism Together is our newest book display, now online and in JMU Libraries Express. Selected by the Office of Disability Services in honor of Disability Advocacy Week 2025, the resources in this display focus on ableism, belonging, stories of disability, and history of disability.
Research Guide
The Disability Studies Research Guide supports JMU students and faculty interested in disability studies research, including in the Disability Studies minor program.
Accessibility Resources from JMU Libraries
You can convert documents into alternate formats, such as digital Braille, MOBI, EPUB, and audio with SensusAccess. You can also use it to translate documents to another language. Members of the JMU community who are blind or qualify for print disability services through JMU’s Office of Disability Services can get an accessible copy of any book in the HathiTrust collection. Learn more on our Accessibility page.
Our Self-Paced Course on Universal Design for Learning
Staff and faculty can learn about universal design for learning (UDL) in our award-winning self-paced Canvas course. It takes about 2-4 hours to complete in Canvas. After the course, you’ll be equipped to create a syllabus that works for screen readers, an image-rich course in Canvas that is still meaningful to people with diverse needs, instructional videos with captions, and more! Sign up now or learn more: Learning Access through Universal Design (LAUD).
JMU Events
The Office of Disability Services has organized an impressive lineup of events for Disability Advocacy Week this year, including a Special Olympics speaker, a faculty workshop on creating accessible materials with MS Office, wheelchair basketball, and much more!
Contact
If you have ideas for making JMU Libraries more accessible, please send us a message.