Accessibility, diversity and disability dolls spark conversations in the classroom

Celebrating diversity comes in all shapes and sizes, just like the disability dolls at an 'I Can Too' presentation at St. Andrew's Elementary School.

Ashley Martin-Hanlon, communications co-ordinator for Easter Seals, visits classrooms for her presentationwith the disability dolls.

"We cover physical, sensory, and invisible disabilities I do a little bit of teaching around what Easter Seals is and what disability means," Martin-Hanlon said.

"The dolls are really the stars of the presentation.There's a doll with each type of disability in the that we talk about so there's dolls with physical disabilities, dolls with sensory disabilities, and one doll with an invisible disability."

This year's presentations were also the launch of a new interactive character project each class gets a character on card stock to take back to their classroom.

Each character represents a different type of disability, and they're there to remind the class to think differently about how to accommodate those with different abilities.

"We're hoping that they'll do everything that the class does," Martin-Hanlon said.

"We're hoping that they'll go on field trips, and we're hoping that they'll go to the lunchroom, and we're hoping that they might go home with some students but we want students to be thinking about what would be necessary to make that possible."

The characters are designed to make students think critically about things like where would be practical for a classmate in a wheelchair to sit or how would they get access to their house at home.

"We want them to be thinking about disability past this 45-minute presentation," Martin-Hanlon said.

The card stock characters are Martin-Hanlon's brainchild she came up with the concept so that she could leave reminders for students behind after her presentations.

"I really hated having to pack up the dolls after 45 minutes and leave so I wanted something that could remain in the classroom and continue the conversation," she said.