This 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? Got any questions for your fellow FWD commenters?
A note to commenters: Please, as with other threads, keep the length of your comments down. A usual guideline, in the absence of extenuating circumstances, is to stick to around three pithy paragraphs or so, and to avoid making back-to-back comments.
Today’s chatterday backcloth, a baby pangolin, comes via The Daily Squee.
Ableist Word Profile is an ongoing FWD/Forward series in which we explore ableism and the way it manifests in language usage.
Here’s what this series is about: Examining word origins, the way in which ableism is unconsciously reinforced, the power that language has.
Here’s what this series is not about: Telling people which words they can use to define their own experiences, rejecting reclamatory word usage, telling people which words they can and cannot use.
You don’t necessarily have to agree that a particular profiled word or phrase is ableist; we ask you to think about the way in which the language that we use is influenced, both historically and currently, by ableist thought.
Please note that this post contains ableist language used for the purpose of discussion and criticism; you can get an idea from the title of the kind of ableist language which is going to be included in the discussion, and if that type of language is upsetting or triggering for you, you may want to skip this post.
A month and a half ago I wrote a fairly angry email to Ms Magazine blog [which you can read here – yes, I sent it to them, no, I never got a response]. While part of my ire was raised by the subject matter and the treatment of people with disabilities as unthinking pawns of the “religious right”, a significant portion was because of the casual use of “the disabled”.
The short form of why this is a problem: People with disabilities/the disabled are not a collective group that all agree on anything. Asking what “the disabled” want or “the disabled” are doing is exactly like asking what “women” want and what “women” are doing. Women are individuals. Some of them are women with disabilities! We don’t all want the same things, but grouping everyone under the same umbrella, as though we are a Collective rather than Individuals With Opinions and Needs is… well, it’s pretty damned ableist, as well as being arrogant, ignorant, and irritating.
Long Version:
We’re still living in a society that makes a lot of casual assumptions about people with disabilities and their experiences. When people start talking about “the disabled” they are generally about to launch into some sort of stereotype – “the disabled are the pawns of the religious right”, for example. This boils down a lot of complicated people – people who have a wide variety of needs, wants, opinions, thoughts, and experiences – into one homogeneous group.
This contributes to the de-humanization of disabled people. “The disabled” aren’t people, they’re a big collective noun who can’t be reasoned with, can’t be talked to, can’t be considered – they’re just to be placated, and dealt with, and put out of our minds as quickly as possible in case they sue us.
Saying “people with disabilities” or “disabled people” may seem like a pretty minor thing. It is, so it shouldn’t be that difficult. The reason for it, though, is that it can be that small reminder: that people with disabilities are people. That disabled people have opinions and thoughts and experiences and needs that are not universal to all people with disabilities. That we are, in fact, people, and it would be nice if we could be treated as such.
Language doesn’t change everything. It isn’t an end in and of itself. But it can be the first step in combating the sort of ableism that makes it okay for many people – including editors and writers for major and minor news sources – to dismiss us as pawns without thought.
~~~Discussion and Writing Group for Women of Color Living with Disabilities ~~~
We are two women of color* living with disabling chronic illness. We want to connect with others women of color who are living with disabilities in the greater Seattle area to talk and write about our experiences.
Being women and being people of color are only two aspects of our complex identities and we are excited to discover the parallels and diversity of our experiences. We welcome women of color of any:
-age
-sexual orientation or gender expression
-intellectual, mental or physical condition or illness that is disabling/significantly impacts your life
-race or mixed race/heritage, ethnicity, immigration status or nationality
-religion or spiritual practice or lack thereof
We hope to have our first meeting in June. If you are interested, contact us and introduce yourself. Also, let us know any needs you have regarding a meeting location. We’ll do our best to find a space accessible to everyone.
We can’t wait to meet you! Please forward to others you think might be interested.
Please contact us at: colorsofability@gmail.com
*Person of color is a term used in North America to describe a person whose identifies or is identified as non-white.
Building on what Chally talked about in her post about doing fine, I wanted to discuss some of the disability aspects of my recent semi-absence. Sometimes I feel like thinking about, reading about, writing about, arguing about, disability issues can become overwhelming for me. I feel that there are so many problems – ableist policies and laws and governments and businesses and people and attitudes and media portrayals and interactions and opinions and splainers. And a horrifyingly large number of instances of people with disabilities being abused and battered and humiliated and ignored and erased and dismissed. Each of those things seems like an immovable stone that fit together to form a wall that is beyond insurmountable.
Even thinking about everything that’s overwhelming feels overwhelming. (And this, of course, is part of the effect of the kyriarchy – to be so overwhelming and monolithic that it forces conformity, punishes people for differences like being a PWD, and places immense pressure on them to conform as much as possible to the norm.)
So when this happens, I notice myself avoiding disability related topics. I keep posts on disability issues unread until they start building up in Google Reader. I somehow don’t get around to reading that article or book on disability activism I had bookmarked. Someone I’m around in a casual setting says the R word and I let it go by. I pass as much as possible for TAB and neurotypical – even to myself. I just ignore disability – in general and mine specifically – as much as possible.
I noticed that my avoidance started right around the time I started working on a work project related to domestic violence. Working in that area always makes me aware of how many people, predominately women, are subjected to horrifying abuse on a daily basis. In the past, I’ve had the same kind of overwhelmed/avoidance response to feminist issues, when it feels that the patriarchal structure is too entrenched and too powerful to fight.
In other words, feeling vulnerable about domestic violence and sexual assault makes me feel like I cannot risk being vulnerable about disability, so I try as hard as possible to ignore it. I know that I am doing this to protect myself. But I do not like that protecting myself means ignoring disability issues or feminism. That protecting myself means, to an extent, ignoring part of who I am. Not just in the way I present myself to the world, but even in how I think about myself in the privacy of my own head.
That makes me angry. It makes me angry that retreating into my shell is coping mechanism brought on by the infinitely-headed hydra of ableism and sexism. It makes me angry that a necessary reaction to the frustration of engaging in disability activism is to take a break from that activism and to momentarily stop identifying as a PWD. (Or as a DV survivor. Or as whatever else is making me a target for kyriarchical oppression.) Basically, I get angry that the kyriarchy works, that even my efforts to stop being hurt by it are intrinsically shaped by it. That my life is inherently a response to it. That I cannot seem to exist outside of it.
On most of the vectors where I have privilege, if somebody could point me to real, concrete ways I could help with local, immediate effect — that is, not donating to charities, or writing letters to advertisers, or pointing out the prejudices of bloggers or television shows — I would like to think I’d love that information. So I thought it might be valuable to gather together some ways in which able-bodied people can do something about ableism in the world. Then, next time a person is feeling frustrated about ableism, and is thinking about doing some signal boosting of, say, some crappy thing the writers did on the latest episode of Glee, maybe that individual would have the option of committing to spending the same amount of time doing some more concrete fighting of ableism. Not that I’m critiquing the kind of signal boosting that a lot of us do on the blogosphere! But I’m assuming some people would find utility in hearing about other things they could do that might be useful.
So. Something that struck me about the Cured Disability is that very often, it was framed as a sort of… reward. Or a gift. In some cases, something good character A was doing for character B, sometimes even without asking. And char B was of course OVERJOYED and had no problems with this at all, even when they’d had this disability for a very long time.
And that? Bothered me.
Possibly more than the actual curing itself.
Because, I’m realising, what I want to see is ambivalence, mixed feelings. If you’re going to go there, if you’re going to cure a character, I want to see them have to struggle with what that means for them afterwards. Because disability isn’t objectively always bad, and lack of disability isn’t objectively always good, especially when we’re talking about a character who has been disabled for a long time suddenly losing that. (In fact, this entire post is about people who have been disabled for a while – I’m not familiar with acquiring a new disability but I suspect the same issues wouldn’t apply.)
Medication might be a costume, in that sense, something you put on and take off when it doesn’t fit anymore, or it might be something that — like wearing your favorite clothes under an overcoat — isn’t necessarily visible to anyone else but is part of the fundamental you. I think that balance of “is this simply a manner of ‘being'” or “is this ‘being’ in itself” is something we each have to deal with, on our own, but I disagree strongly with the idea that medication makes you not-you. It may alter you to the degree that friends do a double-take at first, but a split-second of not-recognizing doesn’t mean they don’t recognize you at all. It just means they were expecting a uniform on a day you’re wearing flip-flops. The you that’s the true you remains at the core.
However, I certainly don’t have all the answers. I doubt I even have a third of them. I only have what I’ve been through and the questions I’ve raised and tried to address, given that most of my life has consisted of not a single medication ever really working with any degree of success. In most cases, not even that much. Makes for a bitter reaction sometimes, if anyone thinks to compliment me for having the strength to make it through without “relying on drugs”. Really, I’d like to be able to rely on medication, I want to say; doing all the work myself leaves me feeling naked under that overcoat, to totally mix my analogies.
But all the same, what I’ve learned, I’ve learned, and what I’ve got is at your disposal. It’s up to you to pick and choose whatever may also help you in turn.
Since then, the EHRC has been doing excellent work in its Formal Inquiry into disability-related harassment in Britain. On Monday, the Commission launched its request for evidence of how public bodies – such as councils, the police, transport operators, and schools – have dealt with issues relating to disability harassment.
If we are to address the issue of this continuing blight, we must understand the scale and scope of its current impact and how people respond to it. Thus, if you have any examples of disability-related harassment that you’re willing to share with the EHRC, or know of a local disabled people’s organisation who could help collate such examples, I urge you to get in touch with the Commission.
Now, in the most recent issue of Child Maltreatment, I came across an interesting study. The study examines whether internalizing and/or externalizing behavior problems in children lead to increased victimization to sexual abuse, caregiver maltreatment, and peer abuse, independent of past victimization and adversity. The results are clear that mainly children with both internalizign and externalizing behaviors are at high risk of all three types of victimization. Elementary school children are especially vulnerable to bullying, while young adolescents are more vulnerable to sexual abuse. Children of all ages are extra vulnerable to caregiver maltreatment.
….
However, I have some problems with some of the language used in the article.
Delphine Ravisé-Giard is a long-serving member of the French Air Force who transitioned in 2007. The Air Force has been respectful and reasonable about her shift in presentation, immediately reflecting her gender accurately and with apparently very little sturm und drang.
But in trying to transition legally, she is facing bigotry and ever-moving goalposts. The civil court handling her legal change is intimately policing her body and demanding that she get specific kinds of surgery. Originally, the court demanded that she get SRS. They have thankfully backed off that, but their new requirements? Not much better.
U.S.: Blind Students Sue Law Schools Over Online Applications “Three blind students and an advocacy group have sued four California law schools, arguing that their online application system is not accessible to blind students.”
Switzerland: Disability Theme Park Divides Disabled “How easy is it to buy a bus ticket from a machine if you are mentally disabled? How hard is it to cross a busy street if you are visually impaired? The exhibition at the Paradrom is designed to answer such questions. Arndt Schafter is from the organisation which is developing the project.” [There’s a recording of some sort on the site, but I can’t hear it so I can’t tell you what it says. I think it’s the article itself.]
U.S.: Clustering of Group Homes Alarms Neighbours “Some Washington, DC residents are questioning how much is too much after learning that a single section of the city houses over 40 percent of its group homes for those with developmental disabilities.”
Don and I went to see this great romantic comedy a few summers ago. IMDB tells me we saw it in 2008. It’s called Easy Virtue, and it’s one of those delightful romps where a young upper-class English boy brings home his wild American wife who is older than him, basically to upset his parents. It’s set in 1929 and has all those great things that movies have when they’re set in that time period – jazz music, flapper dresses, British manners, cigarette smoking as sexy and cool, etc, etc etc.
The take-away message was that if you really love someone with Cancer, you’ll kill them if they have to undergo too much chemotherapy.
As this was around the same time as we confirmed Don’s cancer diagnosis, you can imagine that this kinda ruined the awesome movie-going experience for us.
So I come back to story after movie after very special episode where the person with the disability, the cancer, the catastrophic illness, gets themselves out of everyone’s way by killing themselves or begging others to do it for them. I remember every narrative where disability = evil, where disability = faked, where disability = a lesson, a punishment, a blessing in disguise, a test, a momentary difficulty that is healed when the bitterness goes away, because fictional disability never just is.
This continual fictional narrative of disability as trope is what makes me distrustful of disability in fiction. If I want to watch a show that appeals to me and includes people with disabilities treated realistically, I have to go back to Joe Dawson in Highlander. If I want to watch a fun movie romp, I’m back at Sneakers. If I want to have a long conversation about assistive tech, I’m at X-Men and Star Trek: The Next Generation. If I want to watch something that looks even vaguely like our lives, I’m at Joan of Arcadia. If I want to see a show where someone has some power, a love life, and just happens to have a disability, I’m somewhere in Season 2 of The West Wing.
Tell me stories about the people with disabilities I know: The ones who work hard every year to ensure an internationally renowned con is accessible to people with disabilities, the one who co-founded a successful social networking site, the ones graduating from university this month, starting it next year, struggling through grad school without enough support, parenting their children, advocating for their rights, organizing support in Chicago, running role-playing games, managing businesses, founding a successful feminist website, writing beautiful poetry, publishing academic papers, doing their rounds at the hospital, planning disability-focused conferences, planning tech-focused conferences, cooking dinner, making documentary films, getting through today, planning tomorrow, arguing with their parents, their children, their spouses, their friends, writing blog posts, drinking tea.
We are so much more than this, so much more than tropes, clichés, or tragedies.
When two partners who receive SSI benefits get married, Medicaid reduces those benefits to 75 percent of the total that both individuals received prior to marrying. As a result, many couples with disabilities, like gay and lesbian couples, seek domestic partnerships or live together without formalizing their commitments.
Activist Danny Roberts, who was unable to attend the ceremony, sent a recording of his opposition to the policy. On it, he told a story about meeting the woman he loves at the Empire State Building observatory at a protest.
“We allow ourselves to be demeaned into begging for what we need to live,” Roberts said about the receipt of Medicaid. “If we comply, we can’t marry the ones we love. It’s not illegal but it is essentially suicide.”
One week ago we at Planet of the Blind wrote a post decrying New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s budget plan calling for the elimination of the Garden State’s lending library for the blind. The so called “Talking Book” program (which is directed and administered by the United States Library of Congress) has been recording and distributing books for the blind since the great depression and they have done so with remarkable professionalism and devotion. Recorded books for blind and physically disabled readers are not your average commercial audio books. They are recorded and developed in ways that allow blind readers to access the same books you might read in your public library and in effect this service makes it possible for borrowers to read far more printed material than one might find in the audio books section of your local Barnes and Noble. Talking Books represent the nation’s library, and in a very real sense they represent our nation’s conscience.
Yet it was inevitable that we would receive a vituperative comment from a reader who identified himself as being conservative (for so we must presume given his disdain for “liberals” who, he argued, support government waste.)
They say 20,000+ social justice activists will be traveling to Detroit this week for the Allied Media Conference (17-20), US Social Forum (22-26), and the Hip Hop Congress Conference (26-28). A lot of communities are using this time to organize and people are coming in on every mode of transportation possible: bikes, buses, caravans, planes… It will be the first time (that I know of) that a large number of disability justice folks will be gathering together to be in community with each other, build shared politic, and strategize about how to incorporate this new framework into our lives and our work. It has taken a year of finding resources and planning to make the events below happen, hope you can join us!
The DSM and the ICD almost go out of their way to pathologise queer people, although there is no longer any diagnosis of Homosexuality. The DSM-IV-TR and the ICD-10 do, however, pathologise trans identities (Gender Identity Disorder, Transsexualism, Dual-Role Transvestism) and asexuality (terminology varies considerably). They also pathologise a number of consenting sexual practices like fetishism, BDSM, making “obscene” telephone calls. And, because there wasn’t enough heteronormative fail already, they also pathologise anxiety due to not knowing if you’re gay or straight (Sexual Maturation Disorder), and having non-long-term relationships (Sexual Relationship Disorder). Notably, there is no disorder of Being An Unmitigated Heterosexist Shit Disorder, so we can safely conclude that heteronormativity is a factor here.
For some time, there has been a campaign to have Gender Identity Disorder (GID) removed from the DSM-V.
I am terrified of that moment. As most people I know are. I know women that haven’t ever gotten a pap smear, ever once in their entire lives, because of that moment. This is not an unusual terror.
Now that “health care” is going to be available to more of us…I can’t help but wonder. How many of us won’t go to the doctor any damn way–because the doctor and “help” and “health” is predicated on terror? Or a type of test taking? You take the test and you pass! Or, you take the test and you die!
“We are Enabled by Design” is a one day event, looking to reframe the ageing and disability debate by focusing on Design for All.
We believe the world is made up of people who have a range of abilities, with each person having their own personal strengths and qualities. We are passionate about harnessing these strengths to empower people to live as independently as possible. Design for All taps into this by focusing on meeting the needs of as many people as possible, to make either a product or service accessible. By mainstreaming accessibility, this can help to remove any stigma attached, while making people’s lives that bit easier and in turn more manageable. For us, Design for All means accessibility for the masses.
Headlines:
Complaint Box: Assumptions “Maneuvering through New York City as a person with cerebral palsy can be a constant irritation. Just making my way down subway stairs at rush hour, with people breathing down my neck, is holy terror. But it is not the physical strain of steps and crowds that is my main source of anxiety. It is the naïve, inappropriate and sometimes downright mean comments that people make.”
Textbook describing Down Syndrome as “Error” triggers debate “Books used by seventh graders in Bridgewater, Mass. schools describe Down syndrome by saying “the extra chromosome is the result of an error during meiosis.” The section on the chromosomal disorder also uses the term “mental retardation.””
Reminder: We have a Delicious account! If you tag entries “disfem” or “disfeminists”, or “for:feminists”, this will bring items of interest to our attention. Thank you!
And what I have realised is that there is a sixth component to zvi‘s rules, and that is that complaining about and calling out what you do not like does help, slowly, painfully, get rid of it.
Every time I see friends who make locked posts about fic that Others them, that writes appropriatively and ignorantly and dismissively and condescendingly and fetishistically about their identities, I think — there needs to be a space where this can be said.
Writing a short ficlet in which someone who has been abused/injured/disabled/etc is “comforted” and feels better seldom bears much relation to the reality of abuse/injury/disability/etc. Which, OK, we write a lot of unrealistic things. The problem with this one is that the idea of hurts being easily cured/comforted is one that also exists in the real world and harms real people. Almost anyone with a real-world, serious “hurt” has had people dismiss and belittle their experience on the assumption that they “should be over it by now” or that “if you just did X” the problem would go away. People are often treated badly or denied care on these grounds.
“Shingles vaccination has become a disparity issue,” Dr. Hurley added. “It’s great that this vaccine was developed and could potentially prevent a very severe disease. But we have to have a reimbursement process that coincides with these interventions. Just making these vaccines doesn’t mean that they will have a public health impact.”
Nine months later, the joyous mood has soured. Five research teams trying to confirm the finding have reported in journals or at conferences that they could not find the retrovirus, known as XMRV, in patients diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, casting grave doubts on the connection.
To Lehrer, who has spina bifida, “Disability and art are natural partners. In order to have a good life with a disability, you have to learn to re-invent your world almost hour by hour. You discover ways to re-imagine everything, and how not to take the average answers to everyday questions…”
The title card for the current serial of Doctor Who. It says DOCTOR WHO with a red flame-like background
This post presumes you’ve seen Doctor Who up to and including “The Lodger”, which is episode 11 of the current season. Since I know this episode hasn’t aired everywhere yet, I’m going to put it behind a cut tag. I’m also going to distract you with a picture of a kitten. A large grey cat pats the top of a TARDIS toy. The caption reads Good TARDIS *pat*.
[I went with the smaller size because otherwise it dominates the page like woah. Anyway, final warning: Here be spoilers.]
You see, my parents got a discount on my adoption for two reasons. The first one was that I am black. Black babies weren’t as popular in 1990, so I was in foster care for a while. The other reason they got a discount was due to the fact that I was supposed to be intellectually challenged, and had a few physical issues. Not being a white, healthy infant lowered my price.
I think this says something interesting about whose bodies we value. We don’t value black bodies or disabled bodies. Thus, in order to encourage potential adoptive parent to look at children like me involved lowering my adoption fees, my cost. This feels wrong. I will say that my parents didn’t put any preference for race on their application and there were only a few disabilities they didn’t feel able to handle.
How this fails to work in Open Source is that Open Source is a community. A reputation economy, as the nerds are so fond of talking about, but also a group of likeminded people who chat and bond and stuff. You know what they bond over, in large part? Women’s bodies. Tits, how much they like them. Bitches and how crazy they are. You know, locker room stuff. Guy culture. The sort of male homosocial bonding that is how guys grease the social gears (in the US, anyway). You know something? People with tits can’t be a part of that conversation! Because they are being talked ABOUT. They are not the ones doing the talking! They are the thing that is being used to prove how well we all get along. This is where women have to decide whether or not they want to try to be “one of the guys” too. Some groups are gracious enough to let their token female do that, as long as she is willing to join in the girl-bashing. Some groups are not that gracious but are still kind enough to let their token female become the hackysack in the girl-bashing party. They’re willing to let her demonstrate her loyalty to the group by putting up with being kicked around! It’s very nice of them. But should she ever try to say that This Shit! It is Not Okay! Well then she is a killjoy, a frigid bitch, ruining everyone’s fun, girls have no SENSE OF HUMOR and guys are SO PUT UPON and ZOMG PC POLICE!!1! What is this world COMING TO when no one can have a FRIENDLY CONVERSATION without someone telling them they are offending puppies or something!
Creating Collective Access – Check it out!
Are you a crip and/or someone with a chronic illness that is going to be in Detroit this summer for the Allied Media Conference and/or the US Social Forum?
We know that for many of us, access is on our minds when it comes to traveling, navigating the city, movement spaces, buildings, sidewalks, public transportation, rides, the air, the bathrooms, the places to stay, the pace, the language,the cost, the crowds, the doors, the people who will be there and so so so much more.
Would you like to be connected to a network of crips and our allies/comrades who are working together to create collective access?
When reading a lot of scientific dissection of bad science, I’d get outraged but I’d also want to go further – WHY are these stories being written in the way they are? Why is so much scientific reporting in the mainstream press so piss-poor? A lot of the above writers list deadline-pressures, budget-slashes at national newspapers, lack of specialist journalists etc. But as journalists churn out health and science stories under undeniable pressure, they are all too often also resorting to and replicating tired and lazy stereotypes.
Borderline Personality Disorder – a feminist critique
By Anji Capes | 11 June 2010, 14:32
Among my many diagnoses, I have what is known in the UK as Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (Of The Borderline Type), known elsewhere as Borderline Personality Disorder. BPD is described by Wikipedia as “a prolonged disturbance of personality function … characterized by depth and variability of moods.” It manifests in many ways, including rapid cycling mood swings, ‘self-destructive behaviour’, black and white thinking, disassociation and extreme fear of abandonment.
BPD is a serious mental illness and is difficult to diagnose. Unfortunately it is also well-known as being used by psychiatrists and mental health professionals as a way of labelling ‘difficult’ or ‘problem’ patients – I know at least one woman who was threatened with a diagnosis of BPD by a mental health professional because she wouldn’t do as she was told.
Three-quarters of patients diagnosed with BPD are female. I’ve spent some time since my diagnosis wondering why that is, when one would expect the split to be roughly 50/50.
The March for accessibility was conducted in Sweden on Saturday 29 May 2010. Despite bad luck with the weather, almost 3,000 people joined the marches at 31 locations around the country.
Only a few days after the march, the ministry of Integration and Gender Equality announced a proposal that the Swedish discrimination act should include a new provision prohibiting discrimination in the form of lack of accessibility for persons with disabilities. The act is proposed to take effect in 2012. But first, all concerned should have the opportunity to have their say.
There are still some places available for European surf week from 22-28 of August in Willebroek, Belgium. The event is held by the Belgian organisation Recreas and personal assistants are welcome so that you can learn to surf with your personal assistant.
If I could, I would dare them too look in her eyes. There is hurt there. Deep, deep hurt. I would challenge them to look deep in those eyes, oh trust me, I would if I could.
She is reaching out from behind others. Her staff has stopped to speak to me, thank me for my lecture. I had just spoken about the teasing and bullying of people with disabilities. About the pain that that damn word ‘ret@rd’ causes. About the need for people with disabilities to have skills to understand teasing and the need for us all to rise in protest at the use of hateful words used with the intention of hurt.
Canada: CNIB Pondering Human Rights Complaint Over Transit Service “Duncan Williams of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind says his organization has been working with transit officials to improve service for partially sighted or blind riders.” [Halifax, NS]
African Doctor Fights Eye Disease “The physician who leads a Calgary charity’s work in Africa hopes to open the public’s eyes to a nasty, but treatable, disease that’s stealing the eyesight of millions of people in the developing world.”
![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
