Accessibility? Nay! Accsuckability

Adam Russell Johnson, an alum of CU Boulder’s Department of Theater and Dance, is a disability rights activist who is using his theater skills in a one man show to communicate what it’s like to be someone who is mobility challenged. He told KGNU’s Nicole Cheng that Accessibility? Nay! Accsuckability aims to use interactive techniques like role playing. “I”m going to start off with a little monologue thing that I’ve written that details what I’ve been through in Boulder and throughout my life and then we’re going to play some games and some role-play and look at situations that we all might have faced around disability and what we could have done better, and what was good and what was bad and how we can grow.”

Johnson says that every day experiences that seem inconsequential can add up to make things difficult for people living with disabilities. “It’s like the little stuff…it’s not like the big injustice, my car’s not getting towed every day…but there are really high curbs and no curb cut out and I have to figure out the trajectory and the trigonometry of that situation to be able to get over the curb and get somewhere safely. Or if I’m invited to someone’s house and I find out they have stairs and just navigating that. Just small little annoyances over time. It’s every now and then, it’s not an every day thing, it’s there just enough to remind that it’s there, it reminds me that I have work to do in this world, in Boulder, to change people’s hearts and their minds.”