I recently came across a news article about a lawsuit by several d/Deaf or hard of hearing people who were denied interpreter services in emergency rooms. It sounds both infuriating and terrifying: One deaf hospital patient in Jacksonville Beach said she was given a stuffed monkey instead of the sign-language interpreter she requested for ...

I’ve been reading a fair number of how-to creativity books (yeah, I know, creativity is not something you can “learn” from a book) recently in preparation for a long-term project, and one thing I have noticed about some of these books–and a lot of the “advice” ...

When I first saw this post on the ACLU’s blog about solitary confinement for juvenile girls in criminal detention, I was so horrified that I opened it in a tab and then couldn’t look at it again for several days. When I read through the entire post, I cried. I believe that when the United ...

Static Nonsense at I am Not – Exceptionally Creative Awareness, be it of mental illness or physical disability, includes all of the effects, not just positive or negative. To ignore one in favor of the other strips the depth from the experience, and strains ...

Here’s the scoop: Despite the fact that I am sort of a cartoonist and “into” graphic art, I am, sadly, not totally on the up-and-up when it comes to comics and graphic novels! So, I need recommendations from you fine FWD commenters for a project that I will be starting on rather soon. I am ...

My fandom is White Wolf’s Exalted. I’ve complained about it before and I’ll complain about it again. I build characters because it’s fun and I often spend a lot of time working at it trying to make a person rather than a collection of attributes. Right now I’m working on a character who I actually ...

Did you know that being poor puts people at greater risk for disability? And that people with disabilities are more likely to be poor? And that there’s a very strong relationship between poverty and disability, the worst kind of vicious circle? Well, you probably do, especially because we talk about it a lot here, but ...

Ken Reibel at Huffington Post: Teen With Asperger’s Arrested: Were Callers Racial Profiling? Neli, as his family calls him, is 18 and has Asperger’s, a mild form of autism. Three Mondays ago, he rose early and left home without telling his mother. “When I entered his room at 6:30 am and didn’t see him, I assumed ...

Recently, I was on the commuter train home. I happened to be reading Susan Schweik’s book Ugly Laws: Disability in Public for a research paper. Two middle-aged women sat down opposite me, and one inquired as to what book I was reading. Me: It’s a book about 20th-century ugly laws in the U.S. Woman #1: What’re those? Me: ...

From a post at Change.org: According to a study (pdf) by the Commonwealth Fund, in 2007, 33 percent of working-age women, compared to 25 percent of men, faced medical bills that left them unable to pay for food, rent or heat; caused them to take out a mortgage on their home or take on ...