Monthly Archives: January 2010

Disability & Fiction: After the Dragon by Sarah Monette

media and pop culture

Sarah Monette wrote a short story for Dragon Magazine called After the Dragon.

After the dragon, she lay in the white on white hospital room and wanted to die.

The counselor came and talked about stages of grief and group therapy, her speech so rehearsed Megan could hear the grooves in the vinyl; Megan turned the ruined side of her face toward her and said, “Do you have a group for this?”

She felt the moment when the counselor dropped the ball, didn’t have a pre-processed answer, when just for a second she was a real person, and then she picked it up again and gave Megan an answer she didn’t even hear.

The doctors talked about reconstructive surgery and skin grafts, and Megan agreed with them because it was easier than listening. It didn’t matter; they could not restore the hand that had seared and twisted and melted in the dragon’s heat. They could not restore the breast rent and ruined by the dragon’s claws. They couldn’t stop the fevers that racked her, one opportunistic infection after another like the aftershocks of an earthquake. Her risk of thirteen different kinds of cancer had skyrocketed, and osteoporosis had already started in the affected arm and shoulder.

They could not erase the dragon from her body, and she hated them for it.

Confession: I think I met Sarah Monette at WisCon last year.

I think this is an interesting story about disability. Unlike so many others I’ve read, it assumes the main character, Megan, is a complete human being and doesn’t need to go through something in order to become complete. It centers Megan in the story, not the reactions of her friends and family, while at the same time making it clear that not everyone can cope with a sudden dramatic change in ability status. It doesn’t present this as a story where Megan learns a Very Special Lesson, or is a Very Special Lesson for others.

I’m in a household where disability has been a component since I started it, so I’m not as familiar with the Stages Of Grief that can come from a sudden and traumatic change in ability status. To me, it all reads true.

I admit, I was dreading reading this when I realised it was going to be about disability and recovering from trauma, but I’m glad that I did. I think it’s a good short story, and I like how disability just is in it.

After the Dragon.

Recommended Reading for January 31st

recommended reading

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post. I attempt to provide extra warnings for material like extreme violence/rape; however, your triggers/issues may vary, so please read with care.

Las Vegas Sun: Deaf students learn about a college option just for them

Janeth Gastelum, a student, signs a question to representative from Gallaudet University

Image caption: Janeth Gastelum, a Liberty senior, asks a question Thursday during a presentation by a representative from Gallaudet University, an undergraduate liberal arts university in Washington, D.C., for deaf and hard of hearing students.

At Liberty High School this week, the queries came in rapid succession for Nick Gould, a recent graduate of Gallaudet University, the world’s first higher education institution for the deaf: How big is the college? How many dorms? Are there varsity sports? What about scholarships?

Gould, who travels the country on behalf of his Washington, D.C., alma mater, answered in sign language. […]

Gould said Gallaudet “is a place where we can thrive with our deafness, instead of running around it. I don’t think any other university in the world offers that.”

Asperger Square 8: Curing Autism

What I am wanting to say here is twofold. Sometimes the cure is worse than what one is seeking to alleviate. Alcohol allowed more words to flow, but the words were not good ones. They no more represented my true self than my silence had.

jonquil at Rosemary for Remembrance: Nothing was learned [post includes warning: ” triggery for cancer survivors I MEAN IT “]

This is the classic teaching case for engineering risk. Anybody associated with medical devices ought to have heard about it. The lessons learned were clear-cut, one of the most significant being that any such device ought to have a mechanical, non-software-controlled, interlock to prevent its operation with no shields in place.

hkfreeman at The Living Artist: Quick Rant

Stop telling me to go see Avatar in IMAX/3D. […] Think about that next time you ooh and ahh over some new technology. Is it new technology for everyone? Or just those privileged with a culturally approved set of sensory organs?

KTVU.com: Judge Rules Disabled Can Use Devices During Bar Exam

A federal judge in San Francisco ordered a national bar exam organization Friday to provide technological aids requested by a blind law school graduate who plans to take the test next month.[…]

[Stephanie Enyart] said that in order to read material on a computer effectively, she needs a combination of magnified text and a software program that reads portions of the text aloud.

The California State Bar agreed to allow her to use the technology combination for a portion of the exam, but the National Conference of Bar Examiners refused to allow her to use it for two other sections controlled by the national group. The group contended that Enyart’s plan would endanger security of the material and that other accommodations it offered would meet the requirements of the U.S. Americans with Disabilities Act.

The adaptations offered by the conference included a human reader, a scribe to write down her answers and/or magnified text.[…]

Outside of court, Enyart said, “I’m glad I now have the luxury of just worrying about the bar exam itself”.

Miami Herald: Disabled teen’s dad wins fight over diaper costs

This week, a federal judge ruled that, for Florida children like Sharett [age 17], diapers are a medical necessity — not a “convenience” — and ordered the state Agency for Health Care Administration to pay for them. The ruling could affect thousands of sick or disabled children throughout the state. […]

Smith, of Miami, is raising Sharett and two other young children on about $1,000 a month in Social Security disability and survivor’s benefits. His wife of 26 years died of a brain tumor. The $200 to $300 he spent each month for diapers for Sharett represented 20 percent or more of his budget.

Recommended Reading for January 30th

recommended reading

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post. I attempt to provide extra warnings for certain material present in articles, but your triggers/issues may vary.

blind man at work in call centreThe Big Picture: At Work, Part II, Photo 24

Photo caption: A visually impaired man works at a hi-tech call center in Moscow, Russia on December 18, 2009. Once encouraged to take dreary factory-line jobs making electric plugs and curlers, blind people in Moscow now have a new option: working at a hi-tech call center. The center in northern Moscow employs almost 1,000 blind and visually impaired people, a bold experiment in a nation where people with disabilities can struggle to find interesting jobs – or indeed any job at all.

Photo description: The photo shows a man in profile, wearing large headphones, leaning close to three or four flat screen monitors. He seems to be typing. The monitor displays four words in very large font. The room is dim, so the man is seen in silhouette.

IP at Modus dopens: De-centering non-disability

At my university, certain kinds of reasonable adjustments are considered reasonably “standard” for disabled students. These are things like getting extra time on exams, or having your classes specially timetabled in accessible buildings.

Wait a minute, did I just say “extra time”? “Specially”? Compared to what?

Ricky Buchanan at ATMac: Accessibility and the iPad: First Impressions

So what’s new with the iPad which is relevant to assistive technology and use by people with disabilities?

Size!

The iPad is bigger. I know this is obvious, but the implications are that people motor control problems such as cerebral palsy may be able to use this device more easily than the smaller ones, as less very fine motor control is needed for many tasks.

[Also covered: External keyboard, Speakers, Simple interface, and the existing iPhone accessibility features.]

PortlyDyke at Shakesville: Watch Your Mouth – Part 3: Use Your Big-Kid Thesaurus

[…] — but there is one thing I deeply dislike — [Rachel Maddow’s] continuing use of the words “lame” and “lame-itude” as an idiom for “bad”. I even wrote to her about it (gently, civilly).

At first, I thought my reaction to her use of this term was me “just” being offended by the ablism demonstrated (which would have been enough) — but I realized later that another thing that grated on me was that she seemed to me to be using this ablist term in order to sound cool. There is just something about the emphasis she uses when she says it that rings to me of the 11th-grader who’s trying to get in with the popular kids. It seems out of place in the midst of her usual Rhodes-Scholar presentation, and it jars the hell out of me every single time. I want to say to her: “Rachel, you’re the first out news-lesbian headlining her own show on a major network. You’re cool enough already.”

Access for All: Nothing about us without us: the European parliament drives forward disability rights

On 27 January 2009, the renewed Disability Intergroup of the European Parliament and the European Disability Forum toasted the New Year in Brussels at a very well-attended event. The new President of the Intergroup – for the first time a person with a disability himself, – and the disability movement presented the Disability Pact to a hundred of activists and 20 MEPs from various political groups and nationalities.

stevefromsacto at calitics: How Low We Have Sunk

A homecare provider from San Diego told legislators yesterday how she and her client–a quadriplegic Vietnam veteran–were threatened and harrassed by a fraud investigator from the state.

The Consumerist: Continental Gate Agent Tells Passenger She Thinks Her Mental Illness Is Fake [includes description of anxiety attack]

She gets on the phone with reservations and looks at my papers – and then has the audacity to say that my doctor’s note looks like a fake and, since it was dated in December, it must be an old note and, therefore, not applicable anymore. She asks me what my disability is, since it’s not apparent to her, which, according to the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), she can not technically ask. She mentions to the reservations desk, in a low voice that I was not suppose to hear, that she doubts my disability.

Dear Imprudence: Oh No, It’s the Pronunciation Police!

Dear Imprudence, language, normality, representations, shaming, social attitudes, , , , ,

The following appeared in Slate’s “Dear Prudence” advice column chat-room supplement fairly recently:

Chicago: We have a close friend who is prone to embarrassing malapropisms that surpass even the best Norm Crosby bit. These are not innocent and simple mispronunciations—but ugly mangling of words including misuse and lack of understanding of the meaning of some words. I know that many words have multiple pronunciations and meanings, but this is beyond brutal. Some of them are funny, some are faux pas that make you wince and want to help. We used to try to help by repeating the word correctly in conversation after she had mangled it. No success. We have tried the direct approach—like a teacher—but this was rebuffed. We never did any of this in public but in private, away from others. And we picked our spots—only bringing up the worst cases. But she takes offense and continues mispronouncing words and inserting them in conversation where they don’t belong. Recently, my wife used the word adept, and now our friend mispronounces it and uses it like apt. It is like she has her own language. My wife has stopped trying to correct her. Her husband is no help and does the same thing on a smaller scale. I refuse to throw in the towel as I can’t understand why anyone would not want to expand their vocabulary—correctly. I would want to know if I was saying tenor for tenure and FOIL-AGE for any of the many accepted versions of foliage. We are 57 and of sound mind. She does not have a hearing problem.

There are so many problems here, I don’t even know where to begin. This “friend” is SO EMBARRASSING, nor does she take kindly to being corrected by her “well-meaning” pals who think her misuse of language is just terrible! Horrors!

One part that strikes me as uniquely troubling is this: “We are 57 and sound of mind.” Yes, because being 57 is supposed to automatically mean that one becomes not sound-of-mind? Soundness of mind, additionally, is one of those things where the meaning changes depending upon whom you talk to. Combined with the letter-writer’s utterly condescending attitude toward his “friend,” this sounds suspiciously like a trope that has been leveled for ages at PWDs, mostly by the temporarily abled who are so concerned about their welfare: If you’d just take my advice/listen to me/let me HELP you, you would get better. As has been proven time and time again, this is rarely true.

Now let’s look at the columnist’s response:

Emily Yoffe: Your friend probably has some sort of language processing disorder (there was speculation that the George Bush’s malapropisms, “I know you want to put food on your family,” etc., might have come from such a disorder), and all the schoolmarmish corrections in the world won’t “cure” her. It’s good you mention Norm Crosby, because he built an entire career on amusingly mangling language. I don’t know why you consider being with your friend “brutal.” It sounds as if you usually understand what she means, and when you don’t, you can ask for more context. Trying to keep a straight face seems like the biggest problem you face in socializing with her. So just be compassionate and let it go, and when you get in the car, you can laugh at her best neologisms.

Shockingly, I don’t totally hate this advice, despite Yoffe’s ill-fated attempts at snark/humor. She brings up an excellent point: If these “well-meaning” grammar cops think that being around this person (whom they call a friend) is such a trial, then why would they continue to be around this individual? To bolster their own sense of superiority? To show off their class privilege to this “friend” in the most ridiculous way possible? I have some issues with the “just laugh at her when she’s not around” suggestion, which seems almost needlessly rude–laughing at someone’s disability, furthermore, (which they often cannot control) is generally considered impolite for a reason.

But what the hell do I know? I’m just a person with several disabilities; if I’m lucky, perhaps a well-meaning TAB is writing a hand-wringing, oh-so-concerned letter to an advice columnist about me right this very second.

Chatterday! Open Thread.

chatterday

two baby platypiThis is our weekly Chatterday! open thread. Use this open thread to talk amongst yourselves: feel free to share a link, have a vent, or spread some joy.

What have you been reading or watching lately (remembering spoiler warnings)? What are you proud of this week? What’s made your teeth itch? What’s going on in your part of the world? Feel free to add your own images. (Anna insists that these should only be of ponies, but I insist that very small primates, camelids, critters from the weasel family, smooching giraffes, and cupcakes are also acceptable.) Just whack in a bare link to a webpage, please – admin needs to deal with the HTML code side of things.

Today’s chatterday backcloth comes via The Daily Squee.

A Letter for your Toolbox: How to ask for transcripts and subtitles

accessibility, media and pop culture

A while back, I talked about how to make your blog more accessible, and brought up the issues of transcription.

Transcription is damned hard work to do properly, which leaves a lot of people in bind. It’s time consuming, it can be difficult, it can cause pain, and this doesn’t even get into stuff like how some people with disabilities just can’t provide transcriptions, for whatever reasons.

So, what do we do with content like that, especially now that things like vlogs and videos are becoming more and more a part of the blogosphere?

I think this is something we need to spread around a lot more.

Often, people who create vlogs will have a script they are working with. I suspect that many of them could be talked into doing stuff like providing a transcript or even including subtitles for their videos. But the difficult thing is, how do we ask? How do we suggest that they do more?

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big fan of letters, and have written a few in my life. I know what the big challenging bit of letter-writing can be: where do you start?

So, here is something I’ve drafted up. I’ve sent it once so far, so I can’t tell you what the success rate is, but feel free to use it, adapt it to your purposes, and send it along to people who’s vlog content you would like to see have a transcription and/or subtitling.

Personalise it to your heart’s content, and ignore/add things as you see fit, and don’t fret about crediting me in any way.

It’s a tool in our toolbox to encourage wider web-accessibility. The more uses we get out of it, the better!

Dear [Person]

My name is [Anna], and I’m a big fan of your vlogs/videos [Here I listed two videos I really liked].

I would like to link them [on my blog, www.disabledfeminsts.com], but I have some difficulties.

I’m a proponent of increased web accessibility for people with a variety of disabilities. Part of this means including transcriptions of video content when I link things. This is so that people with a variety of needs, such as people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, have auditory processing disorders, or have other disabilities which make watching video content difficult, can still get the content of the video. It is also useful for people who are not native English speakers, and people who, for whatever reason, cannot have the speakers of their computers turned on. Providing transcriptions allows all sorts of people the opportunity to get the content from your videos who might otherwise not be able to.

I think your blogs/videos are great, but whenever I want to link them, I have to make a decision: Do I have the time/energy to transcribe this video so that everyone can get the content? If I don’t, do I link it anyway, and hope someone else will come along and provide a transcript for me? Or is it just easier over all to not link your videos?

Obviously, your videos are very popular, and you’re not hurting for viewers because I don’t link them on my site. But I do think you’re missing an opportunity to have even more people access your content.

I suspect that you script your videos in advance. Would it be possible for you to provide a transcript on your YouTube page, or in your blog, for new videos? As well, YouTube allows you to upload captioning on video content. They provide information on how to do that here: http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=100077

I know that creating video content is time-consuming, and I really respect the work you’ve done. Providing a transcript and subtitling would be a great way of allowing more people to access your content, which would be win-win for everyone.

Thank you for your time!

[Me!]

If you have success with a version of this letter, let me know!

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: A Discussion That Always Happens From Outside

books, media and pop culture, , , , , ,

My addiction to YA literature has moved on to another series. I decided to check out Ann Brahsares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Aside from the fact that I am going to really milk this series for review fodder, I really enjoyed it, for many reasons.

Seldom do I find stories written by women that tell women’s stories that I think get so much right. Here, we have the stories of four young women, Bridget, Carmen, Lena, and Tibby, who have grown up together, and for the first time are going to spend a summer apart. Young women who have grown so much a part of each other and have formed such a tight bond, a sisterhood that forged long before the eponymous pants found their way into Carmen’s closet from the thrift store, must branch out and discover how to be whole women by themselves.

And that is a story that I don’t get to read often in popular young adult fiction.

I fell in love with this book just a little bit… more than a little bit.

Which is why it pains me just a little bit to write what I am going to write.

Three of the four girls goes away from home to stretch her wings in situations that are so poignant that I felt the need to hide my face behind my book and bury my tears in the pages. Of the four of them, Tibby alone remains in Washington, D.C. for the summer, getting a summer job, dreading being home without her friends. During her shift at the department store Tibby begins an at first reluctant relationship with a twelve year old girl named Bailey, who passes out in the middle of the antiperspirant display that Tibby had built. Through a series of events that leads Tibby to Bailey’s bedside both at the hospital and at her home, it is revealed that Bailey has leukemia.

We pretty much know what happens to kids with cancer in books like this.

Bailey serves as a vehicle to help Tibby learn to see past appearances as they make a documentary together, or the “suckumentary” as Tibby likes to call it. First intended to be a slightly mocking film about people Tibby finds somewhat laughable, Bailey conducts interviews that help Tibby see these people for unique and wonderful people, each broken and needy like she herself is. Bailey is, of course, here to teach a Very Special Lesson to Tibby, who will then go on to learn so many wonderful lessons from it that she will pass on to her friends in the form of a message on the Pants.

Because naturally Bailey’s time runs out. Time, that thing that Bailey fears most, calls up on Bailey. And Tibby goes through a long and painful denial that she must call upon the Pants and her friend Carmen to help her overcome.

I must ask: Why do we always read of the story of Cancer Girl from the perspective of the healthy and able bodied outsider? I have read so many stories (My Sister’s Keeper, comes to mind, and although she doesn’t die, I know I have read others where the Kid with Cancer is meant to teach a lesson from outside the perspective), and have yet to find one that tells Bailey’s story. Bailey is brave, and good, and wonderful, and she has much to teach us, but does she not ever depart the world with any wisdom of her own? Is she only here to impart and never receive?

I hate that the Baileys of YA are only ever vehicles and never the main character. I hate that I have to read Bailey’s story from someone else’e eyes. It reminds me that the disabled and chronically ill are to be talked about, but not to. Our stories and lives are teaching tools, but not to be lived or experienced. We are to be silent.

Bailey’s story marred this otherwise exceptional book for me, and yes, I was delighted to also have Bailey be a young woman, another woman’s story, but she was just a window dressing, like Tibby’s guinea pig who also died.

Bailey lives on, though, in the Pants, and in Tibby’s first movie, and in the friendships she forged outside of her sisterhood when she needed to. I just wish that it didn’t take Bailey’s life and story to teach this Very Special Lesson.

Also worth noting, the author uses the word “lame” frequently, although I think it was only for two of the characters, as casual dialogue. It grated on me to no end. I wish it wasn’t so pervasive. This otherwise lovely novel that has strong feminist language and themes was kind of flawed by this.

Thank you, always, to Chally, for recommending this book to me. I am going to be reading the next in the series very soon. It seems that one of the girls deals very seriously with depression, and if this is a continuing theme, perhaps you will hear from me on that one too.

Recommended Reading for January 29th

recommended reading

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post. I attempt to provide extra warnings for certain material present in articles, but your triggers/issues may vary.

Elizabeth Switaj at Gender Across Borders: What does a (disabled) feminist [poet] look like?

For mainstream feminists who are looking to get a piece of the pie rather than to change it into something more nutritious, disability is the last thing they want to be associated with. To put it more generously, women often feel that in order to be treated as fully human let alone to succeed professionally they need to prove that they are more skilled and more generally able than men.

Our Bodies, Ourselves: Want to Participate in Updating “Our Bodies, Ourselves”?

Our Bodies Ourselves is seeking up to two dozen women to participate in an online discussion on sexual relationships.

tigtog at Hoyden About Town: And still they defend him

Much of the language that anti-vax advocates use about their children with autism is also breathtakingly negative. They are describing their own children, in public and often with the child right there beside them, as “soulless” and emotionally/physically destructive creatures who have ruined their dreams of a normal family life, as children who have had their “real self” kidnapped by autism.

Patrick Alan Coleman at Blogtown (The Portland Mercury): Breaking: Does Whole Foods’ New “No Fatties” Employee Incentive Program

We’ve received a call back from Amy Klare of BOLI who is still concerned, despite Whole Foods promise to look at disabled employees’ participation in the program, suggesting Whole Foods may still open themselves up to liability from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

“How are they going to evaluate how a person has a disability?” she asked. “How are they going to do determine that?”

She was also concerned that many of the health indicators, or bio-metrics as Whole Foods calls them, may not be as neutral as they seem to be. “This could also have a disproportionate affect on African Americans or other racial minorities,” she said, noting the prevalence of high blood pressure in African American communities.

Cold Snapdragon: What Disability Teaches

There are other things [disability] taught you as well. In relation to yourself. In relation to your family, your friends, and all those other acquaintances who populate your life.

The Border Watch: Community service recognised [editorial note: Heavily othering language. And how nice to know that PWD don’t have the “worries” of inaccessibility, discrimination, hate, poverty, abuse, rape and murder. Can I live in this world? ~L ]

But on Australia Day, Graham [Bignell] finally gave in and accepted the Australia Day Citizen of the Year Award? […]

Graham, who is also a carer for two people with disabilities, said he would continue to work with people with disabilities.

“It is the friendship. Life is great for them and they don’t have all the worries of life. It rubs off on you and you just feel so good in their company,” he said.

MK News: Oxygen in aeroplanes should be free as air

John Mugford, 58, from Emerson Valley, has enlisted the help of local MP Dr Phyllis Starkey to petition airline companies to stop preventing passengers from bringing their own oxygen cylinders on to planes and charging hundreds of pounds extra for them to use the oxygen that the airline provides. […]

He has added his voice to The British Lung Foundation’s ‘Oxygen on Planes’ campaign, which is encouraging other airlines to follow the example now being set by Thomson, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic in ensuring that people with a lung condition do not have to pay extra. […] “To refuse patients the right to carry medical equipment that has been certified as safe, and then to charge large sums for alternative provision, is outrageous.”

Open Letter to the Mainstream News Media

media and pop culture, social attitudes, , ,

Dear Reporter,

Hi, how are you? I am fine.

Okay, that’s a lie. I am not fine.

There’s a certain type of “news” article that drives me up the wall. The “feel good” story about how the poor pathetic cripple, whose life was horrible and bad, has now been SAVED! by something miraculous, by which we mean “something that would be common place if we lived in a world that wasn’t full of disability fail and discrimination” and also “something done by non-disabled people so we can all talk about how Good and Kind they are to the pathetic disabled person”.

Here’s an example: Legally Blind Man Gets First Job

Debbie and Russell Ward spent a whole evening crying in silence when they were told their four-year-old son would never see again.

Fifteen years later, their tears were ones of joy when they saw the look on Bobby’s face as he was told he had landed his first job.

The shy but proud 19-year-old worked his first shift at the new Supa IGA yesterday morning, where he will work in the produce section.

The article [do read the whole thing] describes how Bobby has multiple certifications that would make him qualified for a variety of jobs, but everyone should be Very! Happy! because look! The poor blind boy has a job. Isn’t it so awesome of the “new Supa IGA which opened yesterday morning” get this free publicity – I mean, give this nice young man a job?

The whole article is structured in such a condescending way, too. I mean, all due respect to Bobby’s parents – I still get teary whenever it hits me again that Don may never get his voice back [1. Side effect of the OMG! Cancer surgery. They removed his thyroid, and hurt his vocal cords. They may come back, but every day it seems less likely.], so I totally get the grieving period and how it can be a total blow to find out your life has been drastically changed – the article focuses a lot of attention on their grief, how their life was affected, and what they thought about everything.

Notice, please, that there’s not a single quote from Bobby himself. Just the Nice Sighted People who work so hard for him.

Look, Reporters: I get it. You want to tell a story that makes everyone feel good, and really digging into why Bobby couldn’t get a job he had qualifications for because of his disability wouldn’t really make anyone feel good at all. Prejudice rarely does.

But these sorts of stories fuel people’s pity. “Oh, how sad it must be to be blind! A world of darkness, of dependency, of not being able to drive a car! WOE. I’m so glad I’m not one of THEM. And I don’t know how I’d cope if my child were one of them. Oh, Bobby’s parents are so brave! And that nice man who gave him a job! So Nice!”

You can do better than this, really. I’ve seen you do better than this.

Do better, okay?

Hugs & Kisses,

Anna

Recommended Reading for January 28th

recommended reading

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post. I attempt to provide extra warnings for certain material present in articles, but your triggers/issues may vary.

two sled hockey playersThe Big Picture: Fire and Ice

Image caption: “Sled hockey player Nikko Landeros, of Berthoud, Colorado (right), takes part in a scrimmage with Tyler Carron in the Boulder Valley YMCA in Lafayette Colorado on January 2nd, 2010. Three years ago, high school wrestlers Landeros and Carron lost their legs when they were hit by a car while changing a flat tire. It didn’t take long for Landeros to pick up sled hockey, and he’ll be competing in Vancouver in the Paralympics. Carron is on the junior national team.”

Image description: “Two sled hockey players on the ice on low, metal, skateboard-sized sleds. Their gloved hands hold metal poles used to steer and to strike the puck. Both wear helmets. Landeros wears a Colorado Avalanche jersey and Carron a white USA jersey. Both men intently look at and seem to move toward the puck in the ice between them.”

Cat in a Dog’s World: Book Review Series: The Ethics of Autism

But I have to say that I find these kinds of questions incredibly irritating and dehumanizing. Autistic people do not need non-autistic people (using simplistic schematics of autism devised by other non-autistic people) to theorize in order to recognize our humanity or membership to “the moral community” […] Why is our personhood and right to autonomy up for debate?

Even if Barnbaum does have some (peculiar) kind of pro-neurodiversity sentiment, her project seems to be entirely misconceived. She starts with presumptions which treat autistic people and non-autistic people as beings from separate planets, are overly simplistic, and are silencing of autistic voices.

Prof Susurro: Want Ad For Feminist Revolution Pt. I

During that meeting, she disclosed that, like me, she has a hidden disability that in no way impacts her ability to do the job for which she was hired. […]

By the time she reached home, her offer of hire had been rescinded on the basis that she might “put youth in danger” and “serious concerns about her ability to come to work on time.” My friend was dumb-founded and has been silently weighing her options all the while feeling completely dehumanized by an all white, all female, “feminist”, “social justice”, agency who didn’t skip a beat in hiring a white able-bodied female to replace her.

LWN.net: LCA: HackAbility

Bright purple hair seems certain to make Liz Henry distinct from the crowd, but it’s another attribute that she came to linux.conf.au 2010 to talk about: her wheelchair. […]

Disability-friendly software, too, is not an easy hack; accessibility tends to be treated as a last-minute add-on. Web site accessibility, too, is often an afterthought, and tends to be user-focused. This approach tends to lead to sub-standard solutions, but it also fails to lead to a free, do-it-yourself culture. We need good accessibility for developers too. […]

As an example of good and bad ways of doing things, Liz contrasted the Free Wheelchair Mission and Whirlwind Wheelchair International. The former makes dirt-cheap wheelchairs out of lawn chairs and bicycle wheels, then ships them by the container load to poor countries. It seems like a good idea, but dumping all those cheap chairs devastates any local market that may have developed. When the chairs break (which tends to happen soon), there’s nobody left to help keep them going. Whirlwind, instead, is focused on partnering with local industry and sharing information, creating a more hackable solution with more people to hack on it.

Patricia E Bauer: Shriver to Emanuel: Let’s work together to end ‘R-word’

In the wake of a news report that the White House chief of staff used the words “f–g retarded” in a strategy session, Special Olympics chairman Timothy Shriver called on Rahm Emanuel to join his campaign to stamp out the “R-word.”

Shriver’s letter to Emanuel [PDF], released today, said the terms “retard” and “retarded” perpetuate stereotypes and stigma against people with intellectual disabilities, and are “just as painful as any number of racial or ethnic slurs, jokes or taunts that society has committed to eradicating from our lexicon.”

The Irish Times: Half of all adults with a disability have trouble coping with daily tasks – study

More than half of all adults living with a disability say they have experienced difficulties going shopping, getting away for a holiday, taking part in community life and socialising in public venues, according to a new study. […]

While some adults with a disability said they had made improvements to their home to help assist them carry out tasks on their own, 52 per cent of adults in private households said a lack of money meant they were unable to adapt their homes.