I chose to illustrate the point of whether the “access of people with disabilities” has received proper attention in my Glossary Entry with Prezi presentation. Since, I used the data analysis method to prove the point, it would be much clearer for the readers to read the charts and graphs from the website rather I explained them in text modes. Also, I included the video of the senator’s speech about ADA, which inspired me when I viewed it, to give the readers some valuable information about the topic.

I think this kind of multimodal remediation is really helpful. It helps me to validate something hard to explain simply in words. And also, showing the resources directly from the websites, books, video or public speeches could also strengthen the points I argued and make them more conceivable. However, as the first I have ever made a prezi presentation, I think I still have a lot to improve in my presentation, like the overall structural design, color and font selections. I will spend more time on prezi, trying to explore all the functions and improve my presentation.

 

‘The sessions’ is probably the most powerful movie I have ever seen. The movie depicts a story from the most personal perspective, the sexuality, of a person with disability. From the narration of Mark, I really like this man who spent most of his life in an iron lung as I could feel his sense of humor and his aspiration of doing those what he never did but normal people take for granted, like sex. When the movie is mainly talk about the spiritual and mental strength of human beings, a small point really left deep impression on me. When Cheryl, the sex surrogate, took off the clothes of Mark in the therapy session, which caused Mark great pain, she faltered. She went into the bathroom, looked at herself in the mirror and breathed deeply. She was so struggling upon whether she should carry on the session with this severely disabled man. She preserved, maybe unwillingly, and she refused to talk anything private about herself during that session. But soon it turned out that they developed romantic feelings for each other when they got to know each other better. During the fourth session, (maybe the third), Cheryl shared her personal story in her childhood when lying in bed with Mark. Have you ever thought of falling in love with a person with disability? However, almost all the women who were close to Mark loved this humorous and romantic man. Holding a thought that people with disability are different from us, most people are not willing to get to know them. But, regardless of their biomedical limitations, they are nothing different from normal people, maybe even more humorous, and more capable of writing romantic poems, like Mark. So if we pay more attention to them, we will find them lovely and of course, make them feel warm in our common world. 

After researching on the Internet, I find that nowadays people do become more aware of people with disability and their accessibility in the US, especially after the ADA (“American with the Disability Act”) [1]was carried out in 1990. The Act benefited them by giving them more access to the public entities and opportunities like education and employment. Moreover, John Kerry, pointed out that other countries should also focused more on the access for people with disability, such as the construction of special facilities in the public area, since one of his friend with disability needed to size up the questions like “Would his wheelchair fit through the hotel doorway? Would the bathrooms be accessible?”[2] when he visited South Africa to watch the World Cup. However, some people are concerned whether the ADA do create more access for the people with disability. On an online debate about the “ADA”[3], someone who is against the law argued that employment among people with disability dropped 10.9%, 5 years after the ACT went in to effect. He pointed out that people with disability could get the job because of their capability. However, when the ACT was carried out, an employer would think like he will be sued if he doesn’t accommodate that person which made him feels weird. The interesting point he made just recalled me when my professor talked about the demand theory on an Econ class, he said that the government’s control of the house price might not benefit the buyers since people are less willing to sell their house due to the low price and there might be a supply shortage.  So when there is no doubt that most people agree we should create more access to people with disability, the real question is how we could achieve the goal and examine which is truly beneficial. 


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990


[2] http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/07/21/secretary-of-state-kerry-disabities-treaty-column/2573513/


[3] http://www.debate.org/debates/Americans-with-Disabilites-Act/1/

From both the corpus and the google Ngram website, we could see that the usage of the word access remained at a relatively low level from 1800s to 1960s but increased sharply since that turning point and even excessed that of the word opportunity, which is always a high-frequently-used work, in the late 1980s. However, considering the fact that the civil rights movement began at the mid-1950s, which made people think more about the equal rights and access to the public resources, and the word access itself could cover a wide variety of aspects, we could not simply deduce that the society has paid more attention on the access of the people with disability. Nonetheless, when attaching the collocates as ‘disabled’ or ‘handicapped’ to search, I figured out that the societies and writers did focus more on the people with disability and their rights in the news reports and literature workings since the 1980s. With the more attention put on the people with disabilities and more people willing to get to know them, I believe their social status and living conditions could improve greatly. 

The word ‘access’ is derived from the Middle French word ‘acces’ that means arrival, and from the Latin words accessus, meaning ‘an approach’, also from accedere, which means‘ to approach’. [i]In the modern English, people most commonly use the word as a noun to describe the entrance or approach to something, some place and somebody or a verb meaning ‘to obtain, acquire or to get hold of’. ‘Somebody has the access to’ simply means he or she has opportunity to make himself/ herself interact with someone or something. [ii]However, rather than simply meaning ‘availability’, when concerned in a more sensitive context like the political or social issues, ‘access’ could also imply  “the right or opportunity to benefit from or use a system or service”, [iii]like the social welfare system, voting rights, public worship, education or employment.  For instance, the leaders of the civil rights movement advocated that all men should have the same access to public resources as ‘all men are created equal’ （the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson) and having equal rights and opportunities.  




[i] https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/access


[ii] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=access


[iii] http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/1028#eid40086860

‘Access’ may refer to the opportunities and availability to certain subjects. People with disability, compared to the normal people, are always the disadvantaged group of the society and usually have less access and opportunities to most of public events, education, employments, etc.  However, in my own opinion, the problem is not due to their physical limitations or impairments, but rather how normal people and society view them. Their unequal access to the resources and opportunities simply results from the fact that the normal people think they are different and separate them as a special group of the society. Significant changes shall occur if people take disabled people seriously. For example, when the 2010 Expo was held in my hometown Shanghai, the government respected the equal access of people with disability to the pageant, and opened a priority lane at each pavilion for people with disability. To avoid lining up for hours, the healthy people, ironically, tried to claim themselves to be disabled. The biomedical limitations of the disabled people do exist. However, their condition could be much better and they could have more access to those the normal people take for granted but are currently unavailable to them if we take them equally and respect their rights.

My name is Xinyu ‘Kimi’ Cheng. I was born and grew up in Shanghai, China, a dynamic and diverse metropolitan city, which to a certain extent forms my personality as an open minded and outgoing person. I enjoy trying out new methods and perspectives to analyze and solve problems, and also dealing with all kinds of people from diverse backgrounds and building good relationships which could also give me more perspectives. 

I was brought up in a traditional Chinese family. However, unlike other Chinese kids who live with their parents until their marriage, I lived in a school dormitory and have lived on my own since the first time I entered primary school when I was seven years old. As a result, I developed my own values and beliefs. Unlike other kids who keep to do what their parents told them to do, I make my decisions independently, since I think the traditional values my parents told me could not always apply into all circumstances. 

I currently study at Emory University as a freshman. I am most interested in the finance industry, the mutative nature of which could enable me to encounter the latest development and technology, and employ my knowledge and skills to solve all kinds of riddles and puzzles. However, I decided to be a Math/Econ major here, since I noticed my father and his friends who work in the finance industry, I found that their work required analytical skills and managerial methods rather than intense finance knowledge. Thus, I think it’s more important for me to study the basic economic principles, knowing what kinds of domains and variables are going to affect the results when making a decision, and then apply the mathematical model and calculate each variable to make the final decision. Furthermore, these skills and abilities will not only help me to fulfill my career goals, but also benefit me in any situation I am placed in throughout my life.

In my spare time, I am a very sporty person. I watch and play all kinds of sports, soccer, basketball, snooker, you name it. Playing sports is not only a relaxation from the hard school working, but also I enjoy the competiveness side of sports and the teamwork. I enjoy the moment that my friends and I spent trying our best to compete against each other and share the victory together. 

That’s about me, Kimi. I am willing to learn about the world, gain different perspectives and hear from you.