Recommended Reading for Monday, June 7, 2010

A yellow button reading 'people want jobs: employment equity now!
Description: Bright yellow button: Disabled People Want Jobs! Employment Equity Now!

PSA: Opt-Out Required to Prevent Your Yahoo! Mail Contacts From Being Used for Social Network

Earlier this week, Yahoo! announced a plan to try to leverage its Yahoo! Mail users’ contacts into a social network of friends who will receive your Yahoo! Updates. Once the most visited website in the world, Yahoo! now ranks fourth worldwide, reaching about a quarter of all Internet users each day. Like Google Buzz’s ill-fated launch using Gmail contacts, Yahoo! wants to jump start its social networking plans with the hundreds of millions of people who already use its email and messenger services.

While Yahoo! made some effort to avoid the worst aspects of the Facebook and Google Buzz privacy controversies, ultimately the plan conflicts with two principles of the EFF Bill of Privacy Rights for social network users. The program will begin a roll out next week, and Yahoo! users need to opt out if they do not wish to participate.

Prayer will not cure my blindness

In the last two months I have been approached not once, but twice by young men who want to cure my blindness by praying for me. I must first tell you that as a non-believer, this made me very uncomfortable. To be nice I allowed the prayers to take place. Both times the young man was surprised that my blindness had not been miraculously cured.

Princess in the City [Please note comment rules before commenting at Seeking Avalon]

And just as I was beginning to understand the level of boredom and lack of focus that might lead individuals to think getting drunk is an amazing idea – It occurred to me, that Sex and the City is a 21st century fairytale.

To be specific, a 21st Century Fairy Tale for white, cis, het, currently able bodied western, North American, Christian leaning/familiar women.

Should disability be funny?

Should we laugh at disability? I’d like to make myself clear… I believe teasing, taunting and mean spirited gestures have NO place in our world. But is there such thing as “good clean funny”? Sarah Palin was outraged at Family Guy when the character Chris dated a girl with Down Syndrome, but Andrea Friedman, the actress who voiced the girl has Down Syndrome herself and is an advocate for people with disabilities. Friedman said herself she felt a good sense of humor is healthy and that she positively portrayed a person with a disability.

You can’t come in if you are a wheelchair user!

We parked up and had a look about and decide on somewhere to eat, I couldnt find a dropped curb so my OH and the lad went in first and were being show to a table and the chairs were being pulled out for them by a waiter when I entered, the manager told me I couldnt go in because they didnt have room for wheelchairs but Im welcome to sit outside!

I ask him why I couldnt go in, we dont allow wheelchairs he said, I asked why again, we dont have much room , I asked if he knew that was illegal and he said so what and I lost my temper after about 5 minutes of disableist insults, he said my Oh and lad were welcome but unless I could walk to the table I wasnt and either I sat outside or we all do we wernt welcome.

Headlines:

US: L.A. Unified to shutter 200 classes, campus for disabled students: The schoolchildren will be transferred to other classes, sometimes meaning longer commutes to other schools. It’s part of the beleaguered district’s attempts to deal with a $640-million deficit.

The Philippines: DepEd laments failure of House to ratify Special Education Act The Department of Education (DepEd) expressed its disappointment on Saturday after the House of Representatives failed to ratify the Special Education Act of 2010 due to lack of quorum during its last day of session last Friday.

Canada: Margaret Trudeau open about disorders Margaret Trudeau does not seem like someone who suffers from bipolar disorder, as she jokes candidly about dinners at 24 Sussex Dr., and speaks openly about meeting Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and their life together.

US: E.C. Glass Graduating Senior Sees Past Her Disability Yes, this article is as bad as you think it is. The witty pun is totally because she is blind, and it’s so amazing that a blind person is graduating from high school. But I include it because people don’t really seem to think these articles exist.