ED&I Hub | Diversity Fellow Project, Angélica Martínez Pérez

What Should I Know About Assistive Technology?

Project Narrative

1. Please describe your activities during your Fellowship experience. Describe your final capstone project(s).
In my project, I decided to tackle existent language gaps in the Latino community. In the US, Assistive Technology (AT) resources are mainly found in English; however, Chicago has a large Latino population that is not proficient in English. In collaboration with the Assistive Technology Unit (ATU) at University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC) and The Autism Program of Illinois (TAP), we started to develop bilingual (Spanish and English) visual supports to help people with disabilities and their families. We choose the bilingual route because, usually, children know both English and Spanish while their parents feel more comfortable with Spanish. In addition to developing visual supports, we developed a Bilingual Assistive Technology resource guide and translated our clinic’s website to Spanish.

2. Who did your project inform, help, influence or impact? (UCEDD, individual, community, state) How?
My project aimed impact the lives of people with disabilities (PWD) and their families in Latino communities. The Latino community is at a great disadvantage when trying to find resources due language barriers. We developed bilingual materials in effort to make Assistive Technology resources and services more accessible for Latino communities and promote empowerment.

3. Why did you choose to work on that project(s)?
I have a background in Biological Sciences and Public Health. Over my years of research, I have noticed how underrepresented Latinos are as an ethnic group. These moments taught me, that as a Latina myself, it is part of my responsibility to help other Latinos obtain the resources and services needed in order to live a good quality of life. This is what drove me to work on this project. Creating materials available in my community of interested preferred language could provide them access to resources and in turn, increase their quality of life.

4. What did you gain from being a Diversity Fellow?
Being a Diversity Fellow provided me with the opportunity to network with wonderful people that guided me with their experiences into developing a successful Make & Take workshop and shaping the ideas of what I wanted to do in my project. It allowed me to gain more confidence, leadership, and communication skills taking me out of my comfort zone by challenging me in every step of my project.

5. How will this experience impact your education or career decisions?
This experience provided me with the opportunity of taking more of an advocate role. During my project, I was able to see how language barriers is a significant factor diminishing access and usage of resources that PWD may benefit from. Thanks to my experiences as a UCEDD Fellow, I learned how essential it is to include your community of interest in everything you do because they are ones with the lived experiences that could shape the project. Moreover, developing Spanish/English material and a Spanish/English Toolkit sparked the idea of creating a brochure to distribute among the University of Illinois Hospital System waiting rooms in order to disseminate knowledge, in English and Spanish, in order to provide PWD and their families access to resources.

6. What are your future goals? Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?
My first goal is to finish my Ph.D. I aim to work on a dissertation project that would benefit the community instead of academia alone. I want to be able to make ATknown as a resource the PWD and parents could use and take advantage of. My main goal here is to advocate for AT services to be more accessible for minority communities.

In five years, I see myself working in academia, advocating for PWD and their families in minority communities to have access to adequate resources in order to live a safe, independent, self-sufficient, and empowered lives. Moreover, I plan to be involved in curriculum development in order to integrate disciplines that could benefit from each other such as Disability Studies and Public Health.

I was always aware of the naturally occurring injustice of one child’s life over another, but my fellowship has shown me that I can actually do something about this. It has infused an abiding, irrepressible desire in me to advocate for every child. This has become my life’s purpose.

7. What recommendations do you have for other Fellows?
1. Do not be disappointed if something does not turn out as planned.

2. Everything you do counts. Everything you do is important. It does not matter how small you think your idea/plan is, it can have a huge impact and ripple effects in the disabled community.

3. Never give up, always keep striving.