Jonah Wright attended Global Inclusion 2022 Diversity Abroad’s 10th annual conference in San Francisco. Photo by Jonah Wright
After graduating from high school, Jonah Wright took her first solo trip, receiving a scholarship to attend the National Federation of the Blind conference in Orlando, Fla. The experience showed her the challenges of travel for people like her who are blind or have low vision, and sparked her passion for disability advocacy.
A 2020 Mercer University Psychology graduate and current Fellowship and Scholarship Coordinator, she is working to raise awareness of disability rights and hopes to help Mercer University become a pioneer among universities through unique programs.
After enrolling at Mercer University, Wright visited Washington, DC many times and helped promote the Accessible Instructional Materials in Higher Education Act, which was passed in 2018 and focuses on providing timely instructional materials to blind college students.
“I started networking with other blind leaders and learning about my possibilities,” she said. “It was like a new world had opened up. I began to realize that even on a campus like Mercer, which is much more accessible than other universities, there are still a lot of accessibility issues. If no one else is doing this, it’s on me.”
During her time abroad, Wright expanded her advocacy work and learned about disability laws and policies in other countries. She participated in a Mercer on Mission trip to South Africa, spent a summer in Sweden on a Gilman Scholarship exchange program, and spent a semester as a Global Leader Scholar at the University of Essex in the UK. After graduating, she earned a Master’s in Comparative Social Policy and Welfare from the University of Tampere in Finland on a Fulbright Scholarship.
She also gained valuable experience working in the Human Rights Action Unit of the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, and Strasbourg, France.
“This allowed me to expand my own advocacy work while also exposing me to international policy and advocacy work. I felt empowered to speak up and demand access for myself and others,” she said.
Pictured is Jonah Wright in Budva, Montenegro. Photo by Jonah Wright
Wright is involved with the National Federation of the Blind and the National Association of Blind Students, serving as vice president of the student division, chair of the community service division, chair of the legislative advocacy committee, and media liaison.
She also mentors high school and university students and works with several international organizations, including the Finnish organization Abilis.
Wright is working to revive and expand the peer mentorship program she founded while a student at Mercer University. In 2017, with support from Mercer University’s Visionary Student Panel mini-grant program, she launched ABLE Mercer, which pairs upperclassmen with disabilities with freshmen with disabilities.
The program was successful and grew during its pilot years, but was put on hiatus after Wright graduated. Now, Wright and the students in her INT 201: Building Community course are building the foundation for a “bigger, better ABLE Mercer,” she said. In addition to reinstating peer mentoring, another goal is to create a training curriculum for faculty and staff to better accommodate students with disabilities in their classes.
This is Wright’s second semester teaching the INT 201 course, which he built from the ground up and is themed around “demystifying disability,” but it is the first time that it has incorporated a service-learning component.
Wright said the disability community is not talked about often and most people don’t know about the disability rights movement. Students in her class read first-hand accounts of the lives of people with various disabilities, discuss portrayals and misrepresentations of people with disabilities in Hollywood and the media, and learn how they can become advocates themselves.
“Through this course, I want to shine a light on the disability community,” Wright said. “I’m teaching them about the role they play in making Mercer University and the world accessible to people with disabilities. When I teach this and I arm them with this knowledge, I can see a light bulb go on in their head.”
Jonah Wright is on display at the Keukenhof in Lisse, Netherlands.
Johnna Wright photographed in Macon. Photo by Johnna Wright.
Earlier this semester, Wright’s students conducted guided interviews with students, faculty and staff to gauge their perceptions of disability on campus and areas that need improvement. Now, they are analyzing that qualitative data. Later this spring, the class will hold a town hall meeting on campus to brainstorm ideas for making the college more accessible to Marcelian students. This work will continue in Wright’s INT 201 course in the fall semester.
Wright hopes that once ABLE Mercer is rebuilt, it will become a model to be tried at other universities and even other countries.
“I aim to create conditions that allow Mercer University to be a pioneer among universities in the areas of disability rights and accessibility,” she said. “I’m excited to give back to the Mercer University community that helped shape who I am today, which I believe should be the case everywhere. Every student with a disability deserves equal access. They have the right to an equal start with their able-bodied peers.”
Wright also wants universities to make social justice and disability rights mandatory courses in their curricula.
“Because I was the only one in my class and in my school who was visually impaired, it created a rift that probably wouldn’t have existed if education had been involved. (We) need to start having those conversations early and keep them going,” she said.
In the summer of 2025, she will lead a Mercer on Mission trip to Nepal that will focus on teaching independent living skills to the visually impaired in addition to providing English lessons, and she hopes students from a variety of majors will participate.
Another long-term goal for Wright is to earn a doctorate in higher education leadership from Mercer University and write a thesis on her advocacy work.
Jonah Wright sits in the cockpit of a plane with two pilots while traveling overseas. Photo by Jonah Wright
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