Area elementary students will learn what it feels like to be disabled through a Learning About Disabilities Program in DeKalb.

A service of the Disabilities Access Network of the Family Service Agency of DeKalb County, the program reaches out to fourth-grade students.

Program Education Coordinator Jan Mize said the program gives students a broader understanding of disabilities.

“(The program) focuses on what people with disabilities can do, rather than what they can’t do,” she said. “(We) concentrate on how people are alike, rather than how they’re not.”

The program focuses on five disabilities: vision, hearing, physical, developmental/learning disabilities and special medical conditions.

“Special conditions,” such as epilepsy, asthma and diabetes are unnoticeable to the average person, Mize said.

“We try to simulate what it might feel like to have a disability,” she said.

Mize said education is the first step to gaining the acceptance mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“You can mandate things, but you can’t change people’s attitudes without education,” she stated.

The program has received national, state and local recognition, including the 1987 Governor’s Hometown Award.

It also took home the 1988 National Organization on Disability Community Partnership award for “excellence in programming, volunteerism and contributing to the betterment of society.”

Mize said a group of women began the program about 11 years ago to give children a greater sensitivity toward the needs of disabled people.

“The volunteers keep coming back. It’s very meaningful to them personally,” she said.

About 140 volunteers visit DeKalb schools each year. New volunteers must train fifteen hours at the Huntley Middle School in DeKalb.

Once trained, volunteers visit an assigned team of students two times a month from January until May.

For more information about the program call 758-8616.