Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language and ideas 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.

Nisha at bell bajao: Regulation of Disabled Women’s Sexuality

The pressure to ignore the bodily experiences for a collective voice to locate and challenge the barriers “out there” has made disability theorists and activists collude with “the idea that the ‘typical’ disabled person is a young man in a wheelchair who is fit, never ill, and whose only needs concern a physically accessible environment.”[14] This collusion has led to the sidelining of disabled women, non-visible impairments, intellectual impairments, elderly with chronic conditions[15], and disabiliy’s interaction with gender and other social, cultural oppressions[16]. Further, it has ended up contributing to the disappearance of the embodied experiences from most disability literature[17]. […]

The social norm of sexuality which is based on being “able-bodied” and the material situations of disabled women as “asexual objects” creates “rolelessness” – “social invisibility and this cancellation of femininity” prompts some disabled women to claim essential femininity which culture denies them[25]. This may give the impression that most disabled women have freedom from the standards set by the patriarchal male gaze and that they are in a position to develop and lead happy alternative lifestyles. In reality, imagining them as “antithesis of the normative woman”[26] adds to their disadvantage of being women.

Lisa I. Iezzoni and Laurence J. Ronan at the Annals of Internal Medicine: Disability Legacy of the Haitian Earthquake

Even before the earthquake struck, Haiti had few rehabilitation professionals and little capacity to manufacture essential assistive technologies, including prostheses and wheelchairs. While international organizations are assisting to fill these gaps, ultimately rehabilitation programs and assistive technologies will need to fit the specific demands of Haiti’s culture and rugged natural physical environments. As Haiti rebuilds its public and private spaces, ensuring accessibility to persons with disabilities will be critical.

About.com: Wheelchair-Using Child Actor Sought for NBC Pilot

If you’ve been unhappy with a character who uses a wheelchair being played by an actor who doesn’t on Glee, here’s some promising news: An open online casting call has gone out for a child actor who uses a wheelchair to play the son of Paul Reiser (pictured) in a pilot for NBC. The casting call, seeking performers age 10-13, describes the character as “sweet, funny, really smart and upbeat. He loves sports, music, and everyone he meets — especially adults. Inquisitive and with a mind like a steel trap, he remembers everything — which can be good or bad! He can easily get anxious and sometimes gets a bit obsessively focused on things. And oh, he has used a wheelchair since birth.” Not quite sure how you use a wheelchair at birth, but I applaud the intention.

NSW Human Services: Community garden for people with a disability

A community garden at Macleay Valley Community Care Centre is proving its value to people with a disability. Not only does the garden offer a place for them to enjoy or simply relax, it also provides them with fruit and vegetables.[…]

The project involved erecting a fence around the garden, screening under an existing deck, laying concrete paths and removing existing diseased trees. Six planting troughs were concreted into an area that is wheelchair accessible and garden beds are at a suitable height so they can be easily reached by older citizens and people with a disability.

World Health Organisation: Marking International Women’s Day [podcast transcript]

Veronica Riemer: Women are also facing discrimination in their opportunities for education. Bliss Temple from North Carolina in the USA, is a medical student who uses a wheelchair because of her disability. She talks to us about the challenges she has faced in taking forward her studies.

Bliss Temple: When I went to apply to medical school, because of my disability, I knew that it was unchartered territory. So I applied very widely to 28 different schools. About a third of them rejected me out of hand and said “you are too disabled; we won’t even consider your application”. It ended up that I did get accepted in several places and at the school that I chose, Duke University, I was the first person who was a wheelchair user. I think the first with what many people would classically think of as a disability; although there have been people with mental health problems.

Veronica Riemer: Bliss tells us why it is important for persons with disabilities to be accepted for medical training.

Bliss Temple: The world of medicine can really use people with disabilities. We are health care consumers of course and it is really important that we have more providers that understand the experience of having a disability.

The Wichita Eagle: Disability advocates ask court to halt cuts

A petition filed Friday by InterHab, an association for developmental disability service providers, seeks a temporary restraining order and asks that $10 million cut by the [Kansas] governor and Legislature be returned.

The cuts mean services for Topeka advocate Nancy Spano’s daughter Heather have been greatly scaled back. Heather is 24, but health problems and severe developmental disabilities mean she functions more like a 5- or 8-year-old child. Spano said her daughter needs round-the-clock care and help with basic hygiene. After the cuts, Heather was left alone at night and had no staff for help on the weekends. She frequently called her parents at all hours of the night, frightened.

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language and ideas 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.

Ally at Every Crooked Step Forward: Well, there goes that plan.

We, as members of the disabled community, do not need you to represent us, artistically or otherwise. We need to be given the opportunity to represent ourselves. We do not exist to provide you something interesting to look at, dissect, discuss, or parody. We do not exist to provide you with thinking points or talking points. We are not a theme. We are not the gun on the wall. We are not here to make a point to you about the preciousness of life, the resiliency of the human spirit, or even how fucking weird the world can be. Our lives are not made meaningful by enriching or educating you. We do not need you to make our lives meaningful.

newsflash in accessibility_fail: Mt. Holyoke College fails [more in comments at link, and at Dog in the Dorm]

To make a long, painful story very short, she’s had a shocking, nightmarish experience at Mount Holyoke, which you would expect to be a liberal, supportive environment since it’s a women’s college. She was led to believe everything would be in place for her arrival and that disability services there were top notch. However, it’s been a nightmare. She was unable to eat in the cafeteria the first two months of school because the student workers told her she couldn’t bring a dog in. Disability services told her they weren’t sure what they could do, because not all student workers might understand an email saying they couldn’t refuse her service. She was given a room on a third floor that her scooter wouldn’t fit in, and when she complained she was told to leave her expensive piece of medical equipment in the lobby. When they finally moved her to a new dorm room, she had to go across campus to shower in her old dorm because they didn’t install grab bars in her shower.

Stephen Kuusisto at Planet of the Blind: Disability and Its Discontents

Most of this blog’s readers are familiar with this puzzle, many of them are, like me, living that puzzle. Many of them are alertly, day by day building lives of evident accomplishments with or in spite of disabilities; many are still misunderstood when they’re on street. “How do you know when you dog has made a poopy?” asks a woman. And one wants to say, “Well I have an advanced degree Madame.” Mostly one winces. Moreover, one says something benign: “They teach you about that at the Guide Dog School”.

The Vancouver Sun: No sugar-coating for disability exhibit

For disability rights activist Catherine Frazee, the personal overlaps with the political even when she doesn’t intend it. That happened with Frazee’s recent journey to Vancouver from Toronto for Out From Under, a unique exhibition on the social history of disability in Canada.[…]

The only option for her was to take the train. Frazee was willing to make sacrifices to travel out west, such as sleeping in her electric wheelchair. She can’t be separated from her wheelchair, which is uniquely customized to her body’s needs. At times, for example, she has to tilt it slightly back to help with her breathing. When she contacted Via Rail, she was told that she and her wheelchair had to travel separately. […]

From Toronto, Frazee and Seeley drove south to Chicago where they got on a train that had a railcar with an accessible room. They travelled across the U.S. to Seattle, where they rented a van with a ramp and drove north to Vancouver. The irony of not being able to cross the country for a disability exhibition during the Winter Paralympic Games wasn’t lost on Frazee, one of the country’s most articulate advocates for the rights of the disabled.

tonic: Nonprofit Sends Heavy-Duty Wheelchairs to Haiti

Whirlwind Wheelchair International is sending 350 specially designed extra-durable wheelchairs to Haiti to help those who need them most.

Have you seen the movie Murderball? The Internet Movie Database calls it, “a film about paraplegics who play full-contact rugby in Mad Max-style wheelchairs.” While rugby and extreme sports have little to do with Haiti at the moment, wheelchairs sure do, especially “Mad Max-style” ones. In a situation where towns are covered in rubble and many people have severe injuries from the recent earthquakes, there’s a desperate need for low-cost, durable wheelchairs.

Oregon Live: Multiple sclerosis turns the tables on Portland oncologist, as patients become caregivers

Patients, who typically expect doctors to be invincible and need them to be on top of their game, had to know, too. Word spread swiftly.

One patient in the throes of treatment texted Webster, asking how she was. Webster remembers replying: “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back.” The woman, adamant that sometimes — even in the stoic world of medicine — the tables turn, wrote, “No. We get to worry about you, too.” […]

She lived in a three-story townhouse, and just managing the stairs would be a hefty challenge. She’d need rides to doctor and therapy appointments, not to mention assistance with routine household tasks, especially during the hours when her partner, another busy physician, wasn’t around to help.

As patients offered to assist, Webster wrestled with the question: Was it OK to let them?

Since I couldn’t do a Rec Reading yesterday – my spoons were needed elsewhere – here’s a bumper edition for today.

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language and ideas 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.

Thedeviante at The Deviated Norm: Today In: Things Any Disability Rights Activist Could Tell You

So, people are nosy assholes. Well, let me amend that. Many people think that your body (or your loved one’s body) is totally their business, the second that you (or your loved one) have something that sets you apart from “normal.”

Things that set you apart from “normal” include: being pregnant, having a visible disability, having an invisible disability (and telling people about it), being mentally ill (and telling people about it), being fat, oh, and getting one of the “big” sicks (including our good friend cancer).

Let me tell you a little story.

Nicholas Patrick in The Age: Australias disability laws need critical review

For some four million Australians and their families, a threadbare patchwork of state and federal laws, often ignored international conventions and, an all round lack of understanding make life more challenging than it already is. What’s needed is a complete review of the existing legal framework to ensure that people with disability live lives of dignity and can realise their potential to fully participate in Australian society.

Much newsprint and digital space has been devoted to such issues as wheelchair access on domestic and international flights, mental health in the Northern Territory, and, on Four Corners recently, the dire state of government support for parents of children with disabilities. Other cases, gaining less media attention, such as access to education and electoral rights for voters, are progressing through the courts.

Yet, for all the very real pain and injustice these stories draw on, they are only mountain peaks of public awareness. The state of legal rights for people with disability are, in fact, far worse than even these very serious cases might suggest.

Sarah Burnside at Challenging The Market: Sarah Burnside on market logic and welfare reform

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott drew media attention recently for proposing a “welfare crackdown”, to include compulsory work-for-the-dole schemes and higher threshold for eligibility for disability pensions. With respect to the latter, Abbott proposed a review by the National Audit Office to determine more stringent eligibility rules for the disability pension and suggested that recipients with “less serious medical conditions” be required to undergo annual medical reassessments and sit two interviews each year to “encourage them into employment”. Currently, 700,000 Australians receive the disability pension. Abbott estimates that around one-third of these people have conditions he would class as “less serious”. […]

Second, Abbott’s classification of muscular-skeletal and psychological/psychiatric disabilities as the categories within which “less serious” conditions might be found seems opportunistic. Muscular-skeletal conditions may involve chronic pain which is inherently difficult for external parties to perceive. Similarly, psychological or psychiatric illness is not readily identifiable by bureaucrats seeking to limit entitlements to government benefits.

The nomination of these categories suggests a certain lack of sophistication – if someone’s not in a wheelchair or holding a cane, they must be capable of work.

CBC News: Canada ratifies UN treaty for disabled rights

Canada has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on the eve of the Paralympic Games in Vancouver.[…]

However, the convention is about much more than adding wheelchair ramps. It shifts the focus from institutionalizing those with disabilities to housing them in the community and allowing disabled people to challenge in Canadian courts, laws or policies that contravene the international law.

However, the signing did not go ahead without a glitch. The location of the news conference had to be hastily changed when organizers realized the original room was not wheelchair accessible.

NPR: Google Launches Closed Captioning For YouTube [Transcript included]

Google this week introduced closed captioning for the deaf on its YouTube video site. Ken Harrenstien, the lead engineer behind Google’s automatic captioning technology, says that as a deaf person he lobbied his bosses for years to introduce the technology.

WorldNewsVine: Disabled Nigerians Demand Their Rights to Vote

People with disabilities are proposing the creation of the National Commission for Persons with Disabilities Bill in the National Assembly of Nigeria. The proposal has been submitted and under consideration with the Federal Government of Nigeria for almost 4 years, yet nothing has been done by the lawmakers so far.

Speaking on stigma and discrimination against women with disabilities, the National Financial Secretary of Persons with Disability, Miss Bilkisu Ado Zango said that as long as the males in Nigeria are concerned “disabled women are corpses and the living have nothing do with the dead”.

“Women with disabilities face tipple the challenges men with the same conditions experience in Nigeria with regard to education and employment. The society in Northern Nigeria believes that women in general do not need to be educated. Disabled women seeking recognition; therefore might seem an impossible task; however, we believe that we will be able to break through.”

Wired: DARPA Pushes for Fail-Proof Prosthetics

DARPA, the military’s risk-taking research agency, is launching the next phase of its Revolutionizing Prosthetics program, which was started in 2000 with the goal of creating a fully-functioning, neurally-controlled human limb within five years.

BBC: DVD offers crime prevention advice for deaf people

The DVD was devised by Kevin Childs from Gwent Police, who had spent time working with deaf people in the area. He teamed up with the British Deaf Association and made the film featuring two deaf lead characters in various crime prevention scenarios. The film will now be distributed to forces throughout the UK.

Insp Childs said after working with local community groups he had concluded the main challenges were a lack of suitably accessible crime prevention literature and lack of engagement with, and access to, police officers. The DVD offers a variety of visual aid options for users which can be switched on and off as needed, including signing, subtitles in a variety of languages and a facility for lip reading.

ruthtamari at Life Changes: Personal Leadership & Being the Difference

My dream and vision for Toronto, Canada is that the city will be accessible by anyone who uses a wheelchair, scooter, walker, crutches, cane or assistive device. Every curb, entrance, washroom, subway, bus, theatre, restaurant and building would be accessible by everyone. Wouldn’t that be an amazing city to live in? One thing that is sure to promote healthy living, healthy aging, healthy communities and inclusion is having access to whatever you want to do and wherever you choose to go.

SF State University News: Anita Silvers honored for lifetime achievement

Anita Silvers, professor and chair of the Philosophy Department and a nationally recognized advocate for disability rights, was awarded the 2010 Quinn Prize from the American Philosophical Association (APA). […] Disabled by polio as a child, Silvers is a leading advocate for equality for persons with disabilities. Her papers and books have contributed to the legal interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, enacted in 1990. Her groundbreaking and acclaimed monograph, “Disability. Difference. Discrimination: Formal Justice” (1998) is widely cited in legal affairs. “Americans with Disabilities” (2000), which she co-edited with Leslie Pickering Francis, anthologizes essays by other leading philosophers, as well as legal theorists, bioethicists and policymakers on the moral foundations of disability law and policy.