Aligning Vision: Issues Facing Disability Accommodation in the Forensics Space

Despite many steps to improve equity and accessibility, there are still many problems that I have picked up on both from other competitors' experiences and my own.One of the substantial problems I have been attempting to combat is how norms of public speaking were not formed with individuals with disabilities in mind and thus have led to disparities where aspects of disability (particularly those that are invisible) are devalued in judging and thus hinder competitiveness in closer rounds.The aspects I address are how tics, stutters, trouble with eye contact, audio-processing struggles, and many more are viewed as negative in the light of current forensics norms (mostly speech, but also debate).The answer to this by coaches, to no fault of their own, has been rigorous attempts at erasure of these aspects of disability despite it being a part of us that isn't erasable.I've noticed this over the years with how consistent eye contact was next to impossible due to my mind urging me to dart my eyes, and I only recently discovered it likely has a connection to my ADHD.Upon discovering this, I've been able to view in hindsight how this has been present throughout my entire forensics career.In high school, I drifted toward humorous interpretation.An event that has eye levels, looking direction, and countless other factors to attempt to differentiate characters and tell the story.Every tournament had a new set of "work on eye contact/levels/placement," ballots showing, by usual standards, it was a "bad habit."This led to many of my practices for interpretation events consisting of going through more and more strategies to try and hide my darting eyes.This hasn't done much more than give an ill-fitting mask to try to conform, which is seen through in conditions where these strategies don't work.For interpretation events, the worst scenario for me is when someone sits in a chair where my sight line is, leading to inconsistent focal points and more stress within my performance as I notice eye darting happening.For speech events like impromptu, extemporaneous speaking, etc., the worst scenario is a room with only one judge and no audience, where shifting eye contact between sides of the room doesn't work.This often leads to the infamous comment "Try not to stare at people that don't exist, really lock in eye contact to me."Additionally, I often say I don't do platform speeches like Persuade, CA, or Informative because I don't have anything that big to tell, which is half the truth.The other half of the truth, though, is that these events have concrete, solidified norms of cadence, eye contact, and movements that, for me to replicate in my past experiences in oratory, is more of a practice in mental torment than empowering.The same problems