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Jacqueline Kish, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Rehabilitation and Outcomes Research, says that her area of expertise – accessible transportation – isn’t one people think about until they have to.
Lack of access to transportation is a nation-wide issue, affecting people in urban, rural and suburban environments. Although the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed in 1990, ostensibly guaranteeing access to transportation for all, Kish says more change is needed for people with disabilities to experience true community inclusion.
“It’s not that people can’t get on the bus,” she said. “It’s more about the other conditions in which they are taking transit. Maybe the sidewalk is broken, or there is no clearance for the ramp to deploy. And that’s just talking about wheelchair users.”
After earning her master’s degree in occupational therapy from Tufts University in 2009, Kish worked with people with newly-acquired disabilities in outpatient day rehabilitation in Chicago at Swedish Hospital.
She noticed that her clients were consistently late or unable to attend appointments because of transportation problems despite Chicago having a robust public transportation system. After taking a course in participatory action research approaches, she decided to pursue a PhD in disability studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. There she learned about the social model of disability, which says that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their disability. Kish says this idea that social environments are disabling was transformative for her.
“Ableism plays into various contexts, including transportation,” she said. “The ADA assures access to public transportation, but it still isn’t enough for people to consistently get to where they need to go when they want to go there, and on time.” Kish acknowledges that while improvements are being made to Chicago train stations, over 25% aren’t accessible.
As part of her graduate work in 2021, Kish took Chicago Transportation Authority buses and trains with people with disabilities. She asked participants to take pictures of things that helped, hindered, or simply affected their travel.
The results showed that environmental factors beyond the built environment, like the bus or sidewalk, greatly impacted travel. Things like other rider or driver attitudes and personal safety affected people’s ability to get to where they wanted to go.
Through conversations and in reviewing the photos they took, Kish says participants “talked about the fact that the accommodations they’ve needed for a really long time are finally happening for some of them due to COVID-19,” Kish said. “Things like increased cleaning and decreased crowding. People indicated that they loved wearing their masks on public transit; they felt safer.” She thinks that people with disabilities have expertise in adapting to illness, experience in collective care and had potential to lead the public response implementing safety measures during the pandemic.
Listening to people with disabilities and valuing their input comes naturally to Kish. Her younger sister has Down syndrome and mobility issues. The two are very close.
Kish grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and regularly attended her sister’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meetings. She said growing up with her sister was part of the reason the social model of disability made so much sense to her.
“I had grown up with people asking me what she wanted to order at a restaurant,” Kish said. “She’d turn to me and say, ‘Why are they doing that to me?’ I’d have to tell her, ‘You can order for yourself.’ But I’d grown up anticipating her access needs because of the way she was treated.”
When she is not working, Kish enjoys gardening, cooking, and swimming. She took up rock-climbing during the worst of the Covid pandemic and she has kept it up. She loves the challenge of climbing and has even taken a few rock-climbing trips, including to Devil’s Lake in Wisconsin and Red River Gorge in Kentucky.
Kish would like to work on a participatory-action research project where she would be an equal partner with members of the disability community to conduct research on social determinants of health like housing, environmental safety and food security, in addition to transportation. She believes that at its best, “research can be a tool for social change.”