Anna Rutz, Representative for Students with Disabilities at AMU, became the first person in Poland to receive the Willy Aastrup Award for Lifetime Achievement in Accessibility.
The award is a medal with the image of Willy Aastrup, a Danish philosopher and long-time director of the Center for Advice and Support at Aarhus University, who has supported the community of people involved in accessibility processes at Polish universities for almost two decades with his knowledge and experience.
The award is given for a lifetime's work on accessibility, but in particular for:
- consistency in creating and developing effective educational support programs for people with disabilities and diverse needs,
- an unyielding stance in the fight against all barriers, and especially for opposing stereotypes related to disability, those still present in academia and those that operate in society,
- for taking up the subject of intersectional discrimination - based on disability, gender and non-heteronormative sexual orientation, and for having the courage to stand up for the rights of those repeatedly discriminated against,
- for fidelity to the ideals enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the modern human rights-based approach to disability,
- Finally, for her peculiar poetics of life and work, so characteristic of her, denying the stereotypes associated with disability and emanating this attitude to other people.
Fot. Edyta Szalacha