ORONO – Two students and two professors from the University Maine Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies will be recognized at the annual meeting of the DisAbility Forum of the American Public Health Association on Dec. 10 in Philadelphia.

Undergraduates Brad Bosse and Ben Moreau will receive the Student Achievement Award for raising awareness about disability access issues in movie theaters.

Professors Liz DePoy and Stephen Gilson will receive the Alan Meyers Award for their contributions to disability in research, politics and teaching.

The UM Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies offers an academic program which advocates universal access to facilities and services as a way to reduce and eventually eliminate disabled people’s dependence on others.

The only undergraduates ever to receive the student achievement awards, Bosse and Moreau wrote a report in which they promoted the participation of people with disabilities in all types of recreational activities by examining access barriers in several Maine movie theaters and proposing solutions to management.

Their work was featured in a Bangor Daily News front-page story last spring that the DisAbility Forum cited in announcing the award.

Professors DePoy and Gilson, who run the center, said many people called after the article was published, generating a “rigorous discussion” about access for hard of hearing and deaf individuals in public facilities.

They said the award reflects not only the students’ excellent scholarly work, but also the importance of promoting social change by raising public awareness through the media.

DePoy and Gilson have made major contributions to research on disability and to disability theory in their book, “Rethinking Disability: Principles for Professional and Social Change,” published in 2004.

Active at both the community and the university levels, the professors give assignments requiring that students work with the campus to evaluate and improve access in buildings and on Web sites as well as at a variety of activities such as graduation ceremonies.

At the state level, Gilson was instrumental in Virginia in getting legislation on a “lemon law” for assistive technology.

Together, they have been developing the Access Project Initiative, a Web site to promote universal access to community resources, work opportunity and economic development.