Annie was the tiny girl with severe cerebral palsy, institutionalised since three, whose intellect was assumed to be as dysfunctional as her body until, with Rosemary’s help, she persuaded the Supreme Court she had the wit and maturity to decide her future.
It was a huge story. When Rosemary cradled 18-year-old Annie – then the size of a five-year-old and weighing just 16kilograms – and helped her fight violent spasms and guide her hand to spell out her wishes, who was really speaking? ‘‘It was like the Lindy Chamberlain case,’’ recalls one old friend. ‘‘Everyone had an opinion.’’ The notion of intelligent life trapped in such a body distressed, and for many, including some of Annie’s family, beggared belief.
The court released Annie from St Nicholas’ Hospital – ‘‘hell’’, she called it – and she went home with Rosemary and Chris. There the book ended, but not Annie’s story. What happened next spills through the colourful rooms of their house.
If you spend a lot of time talking or writing about accessibility, someone will eventually tell you this apocryphal story:
When Steven Hawking (and it’s always Steven Hawking) started teaching at Cambridge, they needed to put in ramps in all of the buildings, since they all had those beautiful huge sets of stairs as the only way in. One security guard (and it’s always a security guard) protested. “What are you doing that for? I’ve been working in this building for 30 years, and not once have I seen anyone in a wheelchair come through those front doors!”
(I know when people tell me this story I’m supposed to laugh. It’s kinda hard, though: I’ve basically been told exactly that by university administrators; professors; graduate students; student representatives; municipal, provincial, and federal candidates and elected officials; bus drivers; taxi cab drivers; small business owners; large business owners; Fox news commentators; bloggers of a variety of political stripes; apartment building managers; independent book store staff; national chain bookstore staff; people who run on-line campaigns, tea shop staff, coffee shop staff….)
I think what I’m supposed to get out of this story is the ha-ha, look at the ignorant person.[1. I’m not particularly exploring the class issues here, but that’s only because I’m focusing on disability and not because I don’t think they’re there. Of the dozen or so times I’ve been told this, roughly half have had the teller start mimicking a “lower-class” accent when repeating the security guard’s words.] What I end up getting out of this story is that the burden of pushing for something to be accessible pretty much consistently falls on people with disabilities themselves. We have to ask because no program, no building, no website, will be willingly designed with the idea that people with disabilities are part of a broader target audience. Only websites, buildings, and programs aimed right at people with disabilities will do so. [1. Before the website upgrade last month, the only page on my entire university website that passed an accessibility challenge was the Student Accessibility Office website. Because of course that’s the only website that a student with a disability will look at, right?] (Until laws are passed, of course. And even then the law will be only grudgingly followed.)
Accessibility is often treated like a favour that non-disabled people do for (or even to) disabled people, one that is given out of the goodness of one’s heart. It’s an individual’s problem to bring up, and the solution is for individuals to come up with.
This attitude comes up in lots of different ways, both online and off. To focus specifically on what larger entities do:
– I am on the planning committee for a conference and was told that if actual disabled people signed up for the conference they would bother moving one of the events to a wheelchair accessible space, but otherwise they’d keep it in the room down a flight of stairs because it’s a nice room.
When I point out these issues, I’m often told that these are individual problems: D/deaf people need to complain more! More people with disabilities need to attend conferences! Here, let me give you a list of individual solutions! It basically asks people with disabilities – people who already have a lot on their plate – to do more. And it often puts people in the situation where they may find a solution for themselves, but it’s one that leaves everyone else – whether friend, ally, or fellow traveler down the road – to sort out their own individual solution. To re-invent the wheel every time.
This isn’t the way this needs to work.
How it needs to work: Assume people with disabilities exist. Just like we assume people without disabilities exist.
So, politicians should make their political ads with both disabled & non-disabled people in mind, and thus the idea of subtitling isn’t one that’s new or unusual to them, it’s one they thought of all along. (Bonus points: maybe they could think of actual disabled people when making their platforms, too.) Plan events without assuming that everyone attending is going to be non-disabled. Then no one has to say “I’m disabled, I can’t go down a flight of stairs.”
We don’t act like putting a door in the front of our building is a favour we are doing. We assume that doors are necessary. And yet, people treat having a ramp to that door as a favour they are doing, when the ramp serves the same purpose: it allows people to come inside.
An advert for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline in the U.S. 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Press "1" for veterans in the U.S.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 and links are provided as topics of interest and exploration only. I attempt to provide extra warnings for material like extreme violence/rape; however, your triggers/issues may vary, so please read with care.
Moderatrix Note: Please kindly consider this the 05-06 November RR. I simply added the incorrect date in the title. My apologies. Also, thanks to Indigo Jo for pointing out that I forgot to add the Daily Record link, which has now been added.
As part of my job I had to attend a meeting with a manager working with
the DWP who told me that their role was to support disabled people to
receive benefits they are entitled to.
I asked them about the changes to DLA in particular and the impact of
people in residential care and was shocked to be told that ‘they don’t
really need the mobility allowance as most of them rarely go out except
to medical appointments and then the staff are more than happy to take
them, so it is only fair that they shouldn’t get this’.
Then, the response to my question about any other changes to DLA which
the condems have hinted at, was ‘well, we all know that many people
currently getting this really aren’t disabled and shouldn’t be getting
it’.
[Excerpt] Call ’em crazy, but Cedar Point won’t alter or remove any of its attractions, despite a request from mental health advocates to do so.
A Cedar Point spokesman said “changes are not required.”
On Thursday, the National Alliance on Mental Illness asked the amusement park to immediately remove two offerings focusing on fictional mental health patients: Dr. D. Mented’s Asylum for the Criminally Insane, and The Edge of Madness: Still Crazy.
One is a haunted house, the other is a separate show.
The attractions promote the false stereotype that the public should fear mental health patients, the alliance said.
One of the resources available to service members or friends and loved ones of those who need help is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline – 1-800-273-TALK.
A post on the website of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) shared the efforts of the VA to ensure that people know about the Lifeline. Last week, almost 1,200 ads that carry messages of hope for service members facing emotional crises, and details for the Suicide Prevention Lifeline, were put up by the VA on city buses, bus shelters, rail and subway stations across the country.
Just getting a diagnosis of ME, otherwise known as myalgic encephalomyelitis, was a battle for the family. When it finally came in October 2005, Carol said she was shocked by their GP’s reaction.
She explained: “Eilidh was being treated for asthma but I knew something wasn’t right and her teachers agreed.
“When I took her to the GP he said, ‘Right, that’s enough of all this’ and told Eilidh to go and run round the building three times.”
Minutes later dad Blyth, also 46, found Eilidh outside in a distressed state but the GP wouldn’t accept that she couldn’t carry on.
Carol said: “He told her to run through the waiting room. After that, they said she had chronic fatigue syndrome and would recover in six months.”
Four years on, her parents had to fight to stop Eilidh being treated as a psychiatric patient. Now the family, from Glenrothes, Fife, complain doctors seem to have washed their hands of them.
Carol said: “The paediatrician told us the ME has been dealt with and it’s all down to anxiety. They always fudge over the physical illness.”
Ms Bjornstad says the people behind the Communication Shutdown “meant well”.
“But it’s more of the kind of advertisement and philosophy that is harmful to the autistic community,” she said.
“It ignores the fact that autistic people are actually less socially isolated because of inventions like the internet, and it does a poor job of explaining what autism is like.
“Staying off of Facebook will not mirror the social isolation that many autistic people face. I don’t think that anything they do could mimic this.”
Ms Harvey says she can understand why members of the autistic community have expressed concern.
“Our aim was to create empathy in the wider community. There’s no way that we would ask autistic people to give up their tools of communication,” she said.
“There are a wide spectrum of opinions.”
Ms Harvey says she is glad the Communication Shutdown has prompted events like Autistics Speaking Day.
“Although our executions are paradoxical, we believe we have the same goal,” she said.
“I would hope that the two events can complement each other,” she said.
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![Advert for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. A green and black print on a white field. Text reads National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (the "c" is a telephone handset), and the phone number 1-800-273-TALK (8255). The web address "suicidepreventionlifeline[dot]org" is underneath.](http://disabledfeminists.com/fwd/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/photo.jpeg "Advert for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. A green and black print on a white field. Text reads National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (the \"c\" is a telephone handset), and the phone number 1-800-273-TALK (8255). The web address \"suicidepreventionlifeline[dot]org\" is underneath.")