Disabled Law Students Association
About
DLSA aims to eliminate the stigma of disability within the legal profession and foster an environment where law students and lawyers can easily obtain the accommodations necessary to achieve career success, provide current and future law students with opportunities to learn more about the laws affecting individuals with disabilities, and connect law students with community outreach projects and legal placements that positively impact the lives of individuals with disabilities in Arizona.
DLSA will work to combat ableism and stigma as it impacts the experience of Arizona State University students, staff, faculty, and administration in addition to our surrounding community and social spheres. By ableism we mean “the process of favoring, fetishizing, and building the world around a mostly imagined, idealized body while discriminating against those videos perceived to move, see, hear, process, operate, look, or need differently from that vision” (Taussig, 2020, 10).
Visible and Invisible Disabilities
Beyond combating ableism, we aim to actively foster inclusion and community for students with disabilities through programming, support, and advocacy.
Our shorthand use of disability includes, but is not limited to visible and/or invisible physical, intellectual, psychiatric, behavioral, developmental, sensory, visual, hearing and learning disabilities, impairments, conditions, and differences regardless of medical diagnosis, documentation, or public disclosure.
Accessibility has many personal and systemic interpretations. Examples of accessibility include safe physical entry/exit options to buildings, accommodations like interpreters at events, and the right to culturally responsive healthcare. DLSA responds to accessibility - barriers to accessibility and progressive visions of accessibility - as it is variously defined by our community.