Yearly Archives: 2010

Things That Make My Life Easier, A Reintroduction (Part 2 of 3)

Part 1 Part 2 — Part 3

In the realm of disability, there is a lot of terminology like: assistive device, accommodation, care services, mobility aid, various sorts of therapy/treatment (physical/behavioral/occupational/speech/etc.); and so forth, about things/people/services which fill various common needs that people with disabilities share. The unfortunate thing about these terms is that they imply particularity to disability. But in truth, these things are not special to disabled people.

What are the needs being met? Things like: mobility and transportation, mental function, physical wellness, self-care. But we do not name the things abled people use to fill those needs as being special to abled people. This is because ability is an unmarked identity. That is, ability is seen as normal. The needs and behaviors surrounding ability fade into invisibility; they are not about ability, they just are. But disability is marked — it is special, notable. It can never just be; it is always about something, always representing and signifying something particular.

Along those lines, consider these examples:

  • When an abled person wears shoes, they are not called “mobility aids.” Shoes are just things that normal people wear to do normal things. But canes, wheelchairs, and braces are special “mobility aids,” rather than just being things that normal people use to do normal things.
  • When an abled person rides in a car, bicycle, or public transportation, they are not using “mobility aids.” They are just using transportation.
  • When an abled person gets their hair cut, the stylist is not called their “personal care assistant.” Only disabled people need assistance with personal care tasks.
  • When an abled person eats a meal cooked for them by someone else — a spouse or parent, a cafeteria or food court, a restaurant — the person preparing the food is not their “personal care assistant,” despite doing for the abled person the same thing PAs do for PWD every day.
  • When an abled person uses a remote control on their television, this is not called an “assistive device.”
  • When an abled person types out words on a plastic board with small key blocks indicating letters of the alphabet while staring at a screen, or speaks words into the bottom area of a plastic-and-metal hand-held electronic device while holding the top to their ear, this is not called “facilitated communication.”
  • When an abled person is put through training at their place of work so that they can learn the tasks  they will be performing for pay, this is not called “occupational therapy” or “vocational therapy.”
  • When an abled person wears a bra, or a jock strap, or any clothing at all, this is not considered in the same category as slings or braces.
  • When an abled person climbs the stairs, they are not considered to be a special device thought up just for abled mobility.
  • When an abled person takes the escalator, they are not considered in the same category as the elevator or wheelchair ramp.

The trend evident here is that there are all sorts of things that help people live their lives. Having help to accomplish things — basic or beyond — is not special to disability. It is a fundamental part of humanity. Our society would not exist without all the little things we do, from products and tools to techniques and tricks to other people and relationships, to help us get through this world a little bit easier.

I want to emphasize this for a reason. A common trope in mainstream discussion on disability is that disabled people are helpless, and abled folk must take on the noble burden of keeping them alive, afloat. Disabled people need help with doing things, and it’s such a pitiable condition to be in, dependent on other people and things to get through life. Abled people pat each other on the back for the strength and courage and sacrifice they make in helping disabled people in their family or community. They often lament that would kill themselves before living as a person who needs help with things! And some of them take their considerable platforms to argue that because disabled people need help with doing things, their lives must not be good-enough-as-they-are, therefore their lives are not worth living at all, and we (the abled world) should withdraw all help and let them all die like they should have done as infants. (No, seriously, if your name is Peter Singer and/or you are the New York Times, this is what you say in all seriousness.)

In short, this idea of help-as-special-to-disability can be dangerous.

This is why I’ve come to like Things That Make My Life Easier: because that’s what they are. They aren’t super-special things that only people with disabilities can use. They aren’t super-special things that only people with disabilities need. They also aren’t things to be ashamed of. It shouldn’t be a hit to anybody’s pride to take shortcuts or to do things in an unconventional way. It shouldn’t be a possible insult to disabled people to associate themselves with icky, pitiable disability, and it also shouldn’t be a point of anxiety for disabled people who have concerns about admitting any sort of dependence or need for help. We can admit that we need things — or even just that those things are nice to have around — without it having to be a referendum on our identity, on our worth as a human being.

Or at least, I’d like it if we were able to!

So some of the things I post about are silly little things. Because they help me. Some of them are things that are particular to my disability — things that an abled person will likely not have to ever deal with, and may not be able to relate to — but that’s part of the human experience. I am a human being; there are other people like me who share these concerns, and they are human too. Part of the human experience is our experience. Because we are human. It shouldn’t have to be repeated like that, but it does. Disabled people have claim on the human experience. We can talk about our experience as disabled people, and it is not only about disability-in-particular, but about humanity itself. No matter how much it flames the insecurities of abled people, this is truth.

Next: An Invitation

Cross-posted: three rivers fog, FWD/Forward, Feministe.

Dear Imprudence: How terrible when blind people are seen and heard

I read this letter to Dear Abby and Abby’s awesomely ableist response. I wonder how she would have responded to a different letter. One that was more like this:

Dear Abby,

I was really looking forward to the opportunity to go out with my friend the other night and enjoy a good movie. I don’t get to go out to many of the popular films when they’re playing and everyone is buzzing about them, because very few theatres have descriptive audio available in them, and even when they do, not all films come packaged with such things. I should probably mention that I’m blind.

For example, if I go through the Regal Entertainment Group’s website, I see they have 605 screenings of movies with Descriptive Audio. This may seem like a lot, but counting up all their movie theaters across the US and guessing an average of 10 screens per theater, they have 4400 screens! That’s about 14% of all their showings! And I know from experience that dealing with staff at these theaters can be difficult: When I called a theater in my neighbourhood about descriptive audio, they told me where I could go to see movies that are captioned, which is not exactly helpful.

Anyway, my friend gracious agreed to not only go to a movie with me, but take the time and effort to let me know what was going on on the screen, so I could enjoy the movie too – at least, if the theater we went to didn’t have a descriptive audio option. Blind people are well aware of the various options they have to enjoy movies and other visual art – they certainly don’t need sighted people scolding them over such things!

So, you can imagine my dismay that, at this opportunity to enjoy a movie together, and be able to enjoy a movie while everyone else was talking about it, people were rudely “shushing” my friend, telling her to shut up. I know that it can be difficult and frustrating to have noise when you’re enjoying a movie, but I wonder why these people couldn’t find a less rude way of asking my friend to keep her voice down, or even just move a bit further away so that we, too, could enjoy the movie.

I know you’ll understand my frustration, Abby. I hope that you’ll remind sighted people that blind people have social lives and like to go out and enjoy things just as much as they do. I believe in my heart you’d never tell a blind person to just stay home and watch DVDs rather than risk bothering the sighted public.

Yours,

A Blind Person Who Wishes the ADA Meant Actual Accessible Content For All

P.S. Abby, surely you have statistics on the number of DVDs that are packaged with descriptive audio, right? According to Wikipedia, such DVDs are pretty rare. I bet you already know that the number of DVDs released with descriptive audio in the US in 2009 was 11.

Recommended Reading for 20 August, 2010

Gentle reader, be cautioned: comments sections on mainstream media sites tend to not be safe and we here at FWD/Forward don’t necessarily endorse all the opinions in these pieces. Let’s jump right in, shall we?

Wheelchair Dancer writes about Body Matters:

It’s about how we imagine living in other people’s bodies and the value we ascribe to them; it’s also about how we pass on the fear and vulnerability of change, injury, or pain in our own physicality. And that’s just on a personal level; things get more complicated when we think of the body as a political space.

From the Human Rights Watch, Malaysia: Disability Rights Treaty Ratification an ‘Important Step’. The treaty went into effect on 18 August.

“Malaysia has taken an important step to protect the rights of people with disabilities,” said Shantha Rau Barriga, disability rights researcher and advocate at Human Rights Watch. “But the convention should be seen as a springboard for changing Malaysian laws, policies, and practices that violate the rights of people with disabilities.”

[…]

Malaysia entered formal reservations to the Disability Rights Convention concerning the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment (article 15) and the right to liberty of movement and nationality (article 18). It also made a declaration limiting the government’s legal application of the principles of non-discrimination and equality.

It’s Australia’s federal election tomorrow, so I’m devoting the rest of this to Australian issues.

From The Age: Anger as disabled pupils spend up to four hours a day on bus in the southern state of Victoria:

Parents say their children have suffered dehydration, toileting problems and emotional distress on the free bus service that runs children to and from specialist schools.

And, to end on a happy note, disabled Australian swimmers are doing beautifully in the ICP World Swimming Championships in the Netherlands. (Swimming is very very popular here in Australia, as I’m sure you can imagine. You can read some of the results in Swimmer Cowdrey wins third gold medal at the Sydney Morning Herald. We also did really well at the 8th World Deaf Golf Championships in Scotland!

Send your links to recreading[@]disabledfeminists[.]com.

Recommended Reading for 19 August 2010

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.

NPR: Commanders Have Ignored Major Mental Health Issues, Army Report Concludes

(Trigger Warning for Statements of the Obvious and a seeming disregard for lives)

In his introduction, Chiarelli says that “now more than ever, our Soldiers need firm, fair and consistent leadership.”

Although he acknowledges that commanders — like troops — have been stretched thin by repeated deployments during two wars, Chiarelli says the Army’s leadership has to do better, taking “a holistic, multidisciplinary approach to address this risk.”

According to NPR’s Rachel Martin, “Defense officials say commanders on the ground don’t have the training to make suicide prevention a priority — or to recognize the signs of a soldier on the brink.”

VA Watchdog: Contract In-Home Nurse Steals from Disabled Veteran

When JoAnn went in for surgery on her hand, she noticed prescription medication missing. Soon after, her son noticed much more missing.

“When he came in the door he said, ‘Mom you have been robbed.'”

Pride admitted to police she had stolen it all: more than $5,000 dollars of garden equipment, electronics and jewelry.

flip flopping joy: disability on the face of gendered bodies

A feeling that stands in stark contrast to how we as viewers understand Emily’s injuries. Usually their narratives are the other way around. An abused woman is blamed, why did you stay with him? And a politically active woman is congratulated as fierce and mighty. Suddenly our consciousness is declaring the abuse victim “beautiful” and “strong” and we want to help–and the politically active woman is understood as a troublemaker. As somebody who maybe shouldn’t have been where she was. It’s sorta her own fault for showing up someplace where she knew there would be trouble. Right?

BBC: Ouch! (disbility) – features- Dragging accessible computer games into the 21st century

With up to 32 sounds playing at any one time, no one could accuse GMA Games Lone Wolf of not being exciting and challenging, even with zero graphics. For this is an ‘audio game’, Made with blind and visually impaired people like me in mind and based exclusively on complex stereo sound.

BBC News: With one good leg, US Veterans climb Mount Kilimanjaro (Apologies for the title, folks!)

(Moderatrix note: I felt the tone of this article was rather ‘splainey and shamey. Kind of “well, if I can do it with my prosthetic leg, than what is wrong with all of you crips at home who aren’t even going out for runs and swims?”. Still, I wanted to highlight the accomplishment, and would hope that we can focus on that, rather than on the negative.)

The trip typically takes five or six days, and the men had to stop frequently to adjust their titanium prosthetic legs, as they slipped constantly on the loose scree-covered paths.

The hikers were Dan Nevins, 37, who lost his legs in Iraq; Neil Duncan, 26, who lost both legs in a roadside bomb attack in Afghanistan in 2005; and Kirk Bauer, 62, who lost a leg in Vietnam in 1969.

If you have an exciting link, news article, or blog post that would be relevant to our interests, please feel free to send it to recreading [at] disabledfeminists [dot] com. We would be more than happy to credit you for any usable find!

Things That Make My Life Easier, A Reintroduction (Part 1 of 3)

A long time ago, I decided to start up a series. I lacked a catchy title, so I went with the mere truth: Things That Make My Life Easier.

What I meant by that is, of course, things that make my life with a disability easier.

Disability can introduce certain complications to a life — meaning that in reaching the same destination, a disabled person may have a bumpier, windier, more obstructed path than a nondisabled person. A disabled person may simply have more to deal with than hir nondisabled counterpart. And this is not inherent to hir condition: much of that difficulty, that obstruction, is constructed by a society that is built to suit a nondisabled person’s needs, concerns, and preferences. Some of it, to be sure, is difficulty that will never be eliminated, no matter the social context.

This means two things, things that are not at all contradictory but, in fact, must both be recognized for us to make any progress:

One, that disabled people face a great deal of difficulty that is ultimately the result of a society that cares more about the convenience of the comfortable than the comfort of the inconvenient;

And two, that disabled people may always face some amount more difficulty than their nondisabled peers due to the intrinsic nature of neurological and physiological variation.

Disability is an experience all its own. But at the same time, disability is not particularly [anything]. Disabled people are experiencing the same thing nondisabled people are, by the by: they are experiencing pleasure and experiencing pain; they are experiencing acceptance and experiencing rejection; they are experiencing stability and experiencing change. They are learning and expanding; they are teaching and demonstrating. They need food and drink, and the opportunity to get rid of bodily waste. They need shelter from the elements, a comfortable place to sit or lie. They need transport if they are mobile; they need a way to enter buildings; they need an effective method of communication with other people. They need social interaction; they need solitary time. They need intellectual stimulation; they need leisure and entertainment.

These are all things that nondisabled people need, too. They are not “special” needs. They are human needs. A core set of needs that we all share.

But these needs are not all met in the same ways.

This is the beauty of humanity, really: presented with a particular need, a set of people will take all manner of approaches, using all sorts of different resources available, finding all kinds of different ways to use them — different paths to the same end point. All paths take a toll on their travelers, while offering to those travelers certain advantages. It is up to the individual to weigh the costs and benefits of any specific way sie might take.

There is no moral weight to one path over another. That it harm none, do what you will. Whatever you are doing, so long as you harm no one else, it is good. Or, put another way: Whatever you are doing, however you are doing it, if it gets done, who the hell cares beyond that?

Next: A Reintroduction (Part 2 of 3)

Cross-posted: three rivers fog, FWD/Forward, Feministe.

A.I. spotlight: Keepon and Paro

At the risk of understatement, exciting things are happening when it comes to robotics and artificial intelligence and the potential applicability of these fields in the lives of PWDs.

[Description: A small, bright yellow robot with two eyes and a black nose stands in front of a white background. Outlined in orange and bright blue, the robot leans slightly to the left while it sits atop a small black pedestal]  Image courtesy of this page on the CMU website.

The little ‘bot pictured above is Keepon, developed by Hideki Kozima and Marek Michalowski at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Keepon’s purpose is to interact with children with emotional, neurological or sensory processing disorders, and who otherwise may have difficulty interacting with other children, relatives, or caregivers. However, Keepon has become something of an internet sensation in recent years, most notably when a 2007 video of the robot dancing to Spoon’s “I Turn My Camera On” became extremely popular on YouTube, and inspired a Wired Magazine-backed promo video for Spoon featuring Keepon. As this 2008 excerpt (accessibility warning: video is not close-captioned) from Discovery Channel’s show “The Works” demonstrates, there is quite a bit of potential for Keepon’s original purpose; it may be cute (and a great dancer), but the potential for this sort of technology to help children with disabilities is worth further exploration.

A New York Times article from this past July, written by Amy Harmon, discussed another A.I. creature, Paro, which is made to resemble a seal cub. Paro was first developed by Takanori Shibata, a researcher working at Japan’s national science institute AIST.  The NYT article describes Paro thusly:

Paro is a robot modeled after a baby harp seal. It trills and paddles when petted, blinks when the lights go up, opens its eyes at loud noises and yelps when handled roughly or held upside down. Two microprocessors under its artificial white fur adjust its behavior based on information from dozens of hidden sensors that monitor sound, light, temperature and touch. It perks up at the sound of its name, praise and, over time, the words it hears frequently.

The whole article is worth a read, as it covers the success that some senior residential communities in the U.S. have had with using Paro as an assistive device — sort of akin to animal therapy without an actual animal (which might cause problems for, say, residents with allergy issues) — for some residents.  There is also a video at the NYT’s website (unfortunately, sans transcript) that shows Paro in action. The article also discusses at length some of the benefits of this sort of technology, as well as some of its limitations.

Of course, Keepon and Paro are only two examples of the amazing possibilities of artificial intelligence, and it remains to be seen as to whether this technology — which, like many new technologies, currently comes with a rather hefty price tag — can be made more accessible to people or organizations that cannot afford to pay $6,000 U.S. for a Paro. Hopefully, these A.I. breakthroughs will not be as pricey in the future, and will be made accessible to a wider variety of people — including PWDs.

I’ve Got Your More Responsible Pain Management, Right Here

Not many of you would know this but I had my first experience with acupuncture the other day.

I went to see a physical medicine doctor about a TENS unit because my current dose of my narcotic pain medication for breakthrough migraine and body pain is no longer sufficiently covering the amount of breakthrough pain I am having, and as a personal preference I have decided to seek alternative methods before I agree to increase the current dosage (which honestly, I am already trying to squeak by with as little as possible because the hospital here is so stingy with it, and I am trying to be Model Patient). The physical medicine doctor, for whom I would make up a name for him, but in all honesty, I have, currently, three Dr. Kims and two Dr. Lees  so I don’t feel the need to do so, agreed quickly to get me set up with the TENS unit. I just have to come in to see the physical therapist to try it out, and they will order it for me. In the week between, Dr. Kim asked if I would like to try acupuncture.

Now, I have a very high level of phobia surrounding needles, and the thought of acupuncture, being pins, doesn’t stray too far from that for me. This is not the first time I have been asked to try acupuncture. But Dr. Kim wasn’t pushy. He offered it casually, mentioned that he is licensed and certified, and that he could start right away, if I wanted to. He smiled in an understanding manner when I explained that I was afraid that any benefit might be canceled out by my anxiety.

He spent ten minutes calmly explaining to me a slightly different method, more commonly known to military doctors as “Battlefield Acupuncture”, where pins go in my ears and stay for a week or so, at its most basic form. I agreed to try it, not wanting to have another doctor click their tongue at me for not trying everything and not wanting to give anyone a chance to call me a drug seeker. But when I say “pins” I tell you that these tiny things felt like thumb tacks piercing my non-pierced ears, five in each ear with two in the inner part (ten total). I was instructed to sleep in a supine position, which would screw up my sleep, since I am a side sleeper. But he told me to keep them as long as I could stand them.

I lasted two nights of thrashing around. And The Guy told me he was proud of me for sticking it out that long. I felt like I was in agony the whole time. I could think of nothing else.

I have seen noticed that the military is leaning towards pushing acupuncture on troops, which I think is odd, since getting other “alternative” care (things as innocuous as chiropractic care) and getting it covered by our insurance is like getting a root canal. I believe that more options is better, but it was the framing of these alternatives that bothered me.

The first time I had heard that acupuncture was being offered to troops was in an AFN commercial. AFN is the military’s overseas entertainment network, both on television and radio. They offer commercial free programming for military families. But they have AFN sponsored spots and informercials. One of those was for acupuncture, celebrating the troops who were asking for it, choosing to treat their pain in “responsible ways”, which clearly spoke to me that people who received no help from such methods (such as I discovered I did not), or where it was not available, or who chose not to, were irresponsible for choosing narcotic pain relief methods.

And that just doesn’t sit well with me. I will defend against screeds like this writer at Forbes, who are just simply dismissive of methods that have helped actual people, because the author is deliberately dismissing their experiences. That would be like someone telling me that all chiropractors are quacks because they don’t ever help anyone, when I know for a fact that the last doctor to give me actual, long-term relief that didn’t require daily narcotic care was a chiropractor specially trained in treating patients with fibromyalgia. At the same time, however, I know that suggesting that because I use certain medication to manage my pain doesn’t make me less responsible. I am pretty sure that managing my pain makes me responsible for my pain. Certain people may not like how I am choosing to do it, but it is still up to me how I choose to do so, making it my responsibility. No one but me gets to make a moral judgment on that.

It isn’t widely available. I am fortunate, were I willing to give it another go (and possibly, I might be talked into the more traditional style). Acupuncture is widely practiced in Korea, so it is readily available. But not every military medical center is so well equipped. In fact, I think your chances of getting chiropractic care are better. They’ve hit the big ones, like Walter Reed, and it seems Fort Hood, which has a high deployment rate, has one as well. I am unclear how many other branch facilities are joining…but that is hardly accessible with so many needing it. I am also unclear if this is widely available to family members, or if this is another perk to my medical record still being messed up because of Dick Cheney’s privacy law funhouse or whatever it was that has left me listed as still active duty and of a higher rank than I actually was (and yet, with my hyphenated post-married name, which I never used while active duty…).

Often times it is being coupled with Chaplain care and yoga, which isn’t going to help everyone, and you shouldn’t be forced into one in order to get the other. Nothing adds to my needle phobia like you praying for my soul. And sometimes people with chronic pain shouldn’t be forced into certain types of exercise, which really is the Military Way, I know, but they need to understand that it can do more harm than good.

It’s a big Catch-22 of hope. I hope to see a broadening of options opened up for the masses of troops coming back from battle hurting from a decade of two wars (why, yes, I do say that a lot), or even as a way to help troops still in combat zones who have to stay and carry on. I hate to see it being set up as another way to shame people into using it if they aren’t ready to be the shiny happy Model Patient.

Recommended Reading for August 18

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.

Wheelie cAtholic: Not Bound to my Wheelchair

That’s all well and good. But there’s a problem with the word bound when it’s used with wheelchair, i.e. wheelchair bound. It drags up images of someone duct taped to a wheelchair or melded into its cushions or metal frames. It denies the very real fact that the person using the wheelchair gets in and out of it and is not a part of it, is not a machine, that the wheelchair is a tool.

That kind of language is why, when little kids ask me questions, one of the questions is Bound to Be:

“Do you sleep in your wheelchair?”

Steve at the Art of Accessibility: Fiddling While Rome Burns: Don’t Give Up Advocating Accessibility

Whether armed with lots of money and time or not, you have your voice — never be afraid to speak up when there are opportunities to make an experience more accessible. It can be on the micro level (“that font against that background is going to be really difficult for people with sight limitations to make out”). It can be on the macro level (“all those videos on the site? we really need to add captioning”).

You may lose. You may get a pat on the head and told to go play somewhere else. Keep trying!

Jack at [personal profile] jackandahat: So you’ve found yourself a disabled person!

Congratulations! You now have your very own shiny person in desperate need of YOUR help to run their life!

So what’s your first step?

Well, obviously, your Disabled Person has no clue about their own condition. Living with something twenty four hours a day for anywhere between a month and eight decades is no match for the knowledge you picked up in that magazine you read on the bus last week.

Ian Pouncey at DevOpera: Web Accessibility for cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties

Web accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties is one of the most overlooked subtopics of general web accessibility, despite it affecting the largest numbers. A large part of it is that there are so many conditions to understand in this area (far more than say visual or hearing impairments) and a lack of educational information available for learning about it.

In this article we will cover a few of the problems users with cognitive disabilities may have that can affect their ability to use the Web, as well as the things that developers can do to alleviate these problems and things they should avoid. A lot of what is covered will be well known and common sense to many, but is here for completeness.

Problem Chylde: poor people aren’t supposed to want nice things.

However, if you take what little disposable income you have and buy sushi, you are doing wrong. Poor people do not want things like smartphones (you’re poor; who are you calling on a smartphone?), televisions (you’re poor; what do you need entertainment for?), nice cars (why wouldn’t you get a modest car to get around when you’re poor), or delicious food (do you know how much ramen you could have bought for the cost of that scone?). Poor people should not take any windfalls or nest eggs or scraped together pennies and expose themselves to luxuries. After all, isn’t that just a brutal reminder of how poor they are any other time? Why not just face the fact that poor is what you are, poor is what you shall be, and poor means that you cannot have nice things?

Astrid at Astrid’s Journal: “Like A Little Child”

It seems that, for the sake of conceptualizing life with developmental disabilities for people who don’t have these disabilities, they need to assign an age group to that person’s skills or behavior, that is the age at which non-disabled children acquire this particular skill or display this behavior. People then get to generalize into such things as “mental age”. The problem is, an adult isn’t like a little child, even if that adult has a developmental disability. Adults with developmental disabilities, in many respects, display behaviors that are normal for adults. Most adults with mental retardation, at some point, become interested in sexuality, for example. This is exactly why support workers often struggle with how to handle this. If those adults had been like children, they wouldn’t have been interested in sex. The thing is, they’re adults and, like most adults, they develop sexual feelings.

In The News:

Canada: Kids Learn By Example To Meet The Unexpected. “Anyone visibly different knows about the stares — and the occasional comments — they attract when out in the community. For Phil Crowson, it’s when he rides the bus and kids spot his guide dog, Faith. “They’re always asking their parents ‘What’s the dog for?’ ” says the 61-year-old intake and referral officer at Victoria’s CNIB.”

Russia: Russia to adapt higher education facilities for the disabled – Putin. “Putin said a program is being developed in Russia for “inclusive education” so that preschoolers with handicaps may attend kindergartens with their peers on an equal level, and may then progress on to elementary school and finally to a higher educational institute.”

Africa: Disability Rights Must Be Part of Continent’s Future, Ugandan Says. “Any vision for the future of Africa must include people with disabilities, who constitute “a significant percentage of the community anywhere in Africa — almost 10 percent of the population,” Ssengooba said. “People with disabilities have a lot of potential to take part in the development processes of their countries, yet they are in most cases excluded from most of the development programs.””

And, in today’s “We should praise them for doing this even though we hate giving out cookies for providing basic services”:

This Toronto election, voters will be able to use two different accessible voting machines during the

Weekday and Weekend Advance Votes.

Videos are now available to explain each of the machines as well as the voting process. All videos are captioned and are accompanied by voiceovers, and we continue to work on improving them.

To access videos showing how to use each of the machines or hear audio descriptions, please visit Voting Equipment: Touchscreen Terminal and Voting Equipment: Voter Assistance Terminal. Please check our website for events where you will be able to try using the machines.

If you will be voting for the first time and want to find out what happens inside a voting location and how people vote, please visit
How Do I Vote?

We would like to maximize participation in the 2010 Elections, so if you find these resources helpful, please tell your friends.

So: Yay Toronto! Have a cookie!

Recommended Reading for August 17, 2010

Sarah Fenske at the Phoenix New Times: ‘Til Death Do Us Part: They Got Married. Then Everything Changed

This is a love story, albeit one with a medical twist.

Unbeknownst to anyone — including Kevin himself — there was a tumor the size of a Granny Smith apple pressing onto Kevin’s brain.

Kevin didn’t need therapy. He needed surgery.

Patient C: Pain: Attitudes

Often, before I even mention pain to others, I have to overcome classic attitudes I have internalized, the largest being “is this important enough to bother someone els[e] with it?” followed by “am I being a wimp?” I have found that the fear of wimp-dom keeps many people from talking about their pain at all, or at the very least only to those people that are trusted. If I do not trust you, I will never bring it up at all, or I will bypass a pain related issue by making a weak overall health generalization, if forced (which I hate, thank you very much).

Wheelchair Dancer at Feministe: Just Who You Callin’ White

My interlocutor poked me: “Your mama white?” All thoughts of positive interaction slipped beyond my grasp. I knew that we weren’t actually talking about race and yet. Yet, I answered her question literally. My English accent returning more strongly than usual, I talked about my white father and my Afro-Caribbean mother; I spoke bitterly about the loss of Spanish and Creole-speaking family members and English as the language of acceptance. I gave her the history full and square. “Now,” I demanded, “do you think of me as white?”

In FWD-Contributors-Elsewhere news, our own s.e. smith is currently guestblogging at Bitch Magazine’s Social Commentary blog! The series is called Push(back) at the Intersections, and you can read the intro post here. An excerpt:

Feminism has a problematic history. A profound lack of awareness about this history means that we engage in the same dynamics over and over again. For example, the failure of many nondisabled feminists to recognize the history of eugenics in the reproductive rights movement means that it’s hard to understand why disabled feminists feel marginalized by the mainstream feminist and reproductive rights movements. Likewise, a lack of awareness about the history of transphobia in the feminist movement leads many cisgendered feminists to stumble unawares into very loaded conversations.

You can keep up with s.e.’s series of guest posts over at Bitch Magazine!

And finally, my good friend Paolo Sambrano, an amazing artist, performer and writer whom I have known for many years, is looking for funding for his incredible solo show Bi-Poseur, in which he humorously chronicles his experiences with life, death, mental illness, and, in his words, “the quest to write the perfect suicide note.” The show premiered to rave reviews earlier this year, and Paolo is currently attempting to fund a month-long engagement of the show in the San Francisco Bay Area, beginning in September; donations will go toward things like renting theater space, printing programs, marketing the show, hiring a tech person, and more. Here’s some info about the show:

Bi-Poseur [is] a pop-culture encrusted, kinetic look at the intricacies of trying to hang oneself with a Playstation controller, possibly being bi-polar, full scholarships to exclusive Bay Area prep schools, psych wards with twelve year old white supremacists, finally grieving the loss of a parent, motivational speaking, to live tweeting your own funeral. And push-ups. Among other things.

If you’d like to learn more, purchase tickets to the show or make a donation, you can visit Paolo’s Kickstarter page, or his website. I urge you to donate if you can (some neat donation perks are offered at various price points), and go see the show if possible!

Non-Fiction Book Review: Signs of Resistance by Susan Burch

If you were lying awake last night thinking “You know what I need? I need to read a well-written, engaging book that deals with Deaf cultural history in the US, and that includes discussion of gender, race, and class distinctions. Gosh, if only I knew of such a book!”, I have exciting news: Signs of Resistance: American Deaf Cultural History, 1900-1942 is totally the perfect book for you!

Although the book is basically chronological, Burch divides the subject into overall themes and discusses them at length. She starts with the Oralism vs Sign Language in Schools issue, then discusses the growing Deaf community, Deaf-focused Associations and Clubs (including Deaf athletes competing in mainstream sports), barriers to Deaf people and working, and legal issues that Deaf people faced, including proposed bans on Deaf-Deaf marriages (think of the children!) and bans on Deaf people driving.

Throughout, Burch discusses intersectionality. While the chapters are primarily focused (due to sources) on white Gallaudet-educated men, she devotes time in every chapter to discussing how white women in the same situations were treated, and how Black Deaf people had almost entirely different experiences from white Deaf people, such as the segregated school system and racism within the Deaf community. I’m pretty certain this is Burch’s earliest work, and I know her later stuff focuses a lot more on these issues.

One thing I really liked about this book as well is that Burch puts a short sketch of the life of various Deaf people in every chapter. This gives us someone to “root” for, as well as someone to celebrate or make note of. It’s easy to look at a book like this, that talks about broad cultures, and forget that individuals were actually involved in it. I also like that, for the most part, these were people I hadn’t heard of. While Gallaudet and Clerc are discussed – they have to be, really, for any history of Deaf education in the US – the life sketches are of people like Alice Taylor Terry or Thomas Francis Fox.

I found the text very engaging, and not difficult to read. Like most people, I’ve groaned my way through dull prose that made me want to sleep rather than read, but Burch’s writing kept me wanting to stay up late reading.

I give this book 5/5 stars, and would totally recommend it to anyone. The only thing that makes me eager to put it aside is that I have some of Burch’s later books and edited anthologies in my To Be Read (TBR) pile.

[Signs of Resistance at WorldCat].

[Limited Preview of Signs of Resistance on GoogleBooks]