People with disabilities who have actually been in the US are probably either rolling their eyes or giggling at my naivety.

In the last few weeks, I’ve read about airlines being fined for not following the ADA, despite repeated complaints from customers that they hadn’t been, continuing issues with post-secondary education, online content, and accessibility for students who are blind or otherwise vision-impaired (no mention of blind or visually impaired teachers) and students needing to sue in order to get attention to the fact that the new content delivery system was not accessible to them (again, no mention of blind or visually impaired teachers), the Attorney General of Massachusetts needing to step in to demand movie theater chains provide accessible content in all their theaters… The list goes on, while “advocates” tell people with disabilities not to sue because it upsets the non-disabled when they do.

And maybe those “advocates” have a point. Because even though one can find example after example after example of law suits – threatened or actually carried out – before businesses, universities, and even government offices will follow the ADA and “allow” people with disabilities the “rights” they’re guaranteed in the US, some folks still feel the need to produce opinion pieces claiming these lawsuits are frivolous and that the people who take them on are parasites (Content Warning: John Stossel).

Under the ADA, Olson notes, fairness does not mean treating disabled people the same as non-disabled people. Rather it means accommodating them. In other words, the law requires that people be treated unequally.

The law has also unleashed a landslide of lawsuits by “professional litigants” who file a hundred suits at a time. Disabled people visit businesses to look for violations, but instead of simply asking that a violation be corrected, they partner with lawyers who (legally) extort settlement money from the businesses.

Some disabled people have benefited from changes effected by the ADA, but the costs are rarely accounted for. If a small business has to lay off an employee to afford the added expense of accommodating the disabled, is that a good thing — especially if, say, customers in wheelchairs are rare? Extra-wide bathroom stalls that reduce the overall number of toilets are only some of the unaccounted-for costs of the ADA. And since ADA modification requirements are triggered by renovation, the law could actually discourage businesses from making needed renovations as a way of avoiding the expense.

I feel like I’ve taken apart aspects of this argument before, mostly because it seems the arguments get repeated over and over until one wants to make a Bingo Card and be done with it. But, to save me some keystrokes: Let’s Bust Some Myths: People with disabilities just want to sue the world into compliance (there’s a transcript to the video linked there in the comments ¹), Needs Are Not Special and Accommodation is not “Special Treatment” (written by s.e.), Why Being Nice Isn’t Enough (which is meant to address the “just ask for accommodations!” part), “Bad Cripple” – you know, the fakers who are just scamming the incredibly generous disability system for the huge cheques they can rake in – oh, and we’ve got multiple posts just here at FWD about workplace accommodations being treated like a huge drama and a favour that doesn’t need to be granted rather than a right, people who work with actual people with disabilities assuming all people on prescription drugs are dangerous addicts, and how the opposite of disabled is not employable.

I think my favourite bit of the quote above, though, is the “If a small business has to lay off an employee to afford the added expense of accommodating the disabled, is that a good thing — especially if, say, customers in wheelchairs are rare?” I love that sentence, I want to cross stitch it on a little sampler and hang it up on my wall.

A Very Short List Of Businesses You Are Unlikely To See Wheelchair Users In:

1. Ones that don’t have a ramp to allow access to wheelchair users.

Seriously, that’s the basic criteria for shopping in this one-wheelchair-user household. We choose our restaurants, our coffee shops, our bookstores, our yarn stores, our sex toy shops, our grocery stores, our housing, our favourite tea place all on whether or not the shops themselves allow wheelchair users to enter. We don’t even go to one of the malls in the city because half the shops are too crowded to allow wheelchair user, so yes, John Stossel, if your business doesn’t accommodate wheelchair users chances are you don’t have many customers who are wheelchair users.

(Gentle reader, I cannot believe I just typed that sentence 20 years after the ADA passed into law.)

Honestly, that John Stossel is paid actual money to write opinion pieces that amount to “cripples are just sue-happy freaks, the ADA is why the Exxon oil spill happened, and service animals like snakes are ruining it for everyone else” – especially while service animals are constantly being turned away illegally – is especially irritating when we’re still fighting for something as simple as the right to be paid minimum wage for our work.

©2010 FWD/Forward. All Rights Reserved.

After I wrote my post on blind photographers last week, I bought the bullet and bought a new camera, a Digital Rebel T1i (aka the EOS 500D). This is something I’ve been researching and thinking about for a while, and one of the things I was concerned about was how well my camera would play with my hand disabilities. One of the reasons I went with a Canon is because I have been buying Canons for years and I’ve always been very pleased with them and because I’ve had a chance to play with other people’s Canon digital SLRs and I got an idea of how they feel in the hand.

On Monday, I took my new camera out on a little test drive to get familiar with the settings, and along the way, I noticed some things that I thought might be relevant to other people with hand disabilities like tremors and contractures who are contemplating a camera purchase.

The bad: The camera controls are very tightly packed on the body. If you are the kind of person who uses full auto settings, this might not be a big problem for you, but if you prefer full manual control, you may want to consider a larger bodied (and unfortunately much more expensive) camera from the EOS lineup; I personally ended up with hand cramps after about 45 minutes of use, but that was also after a full day of work (think typing about 16,000 words), so my hands were not at their best at that point. If your fine motor skills are not the greatest, I think you may find the T1i really frustrating because it looks easy to mash controls and some of the controls feel like they would be hard to activate if you have significant hand weakness or poor motor control.

Is it enough to make me return the camera? No, but it might be enough to make you think about buying a different camera if you’ve been weighing the Rebel against another option. I’d like to get my hands on cameras in the same class to see if tight controls are just a universal problem, or if the Rebel is particularly bad.

The middle: Changing lenses can be done one handed, with a little bit of practice, and it’s very easy, but the release button is small, and, again, if you have severe tremors or bad coordination, you might find it challenging to hit in a hurry. I do like that there are clear visible guides and a nice audible click so you know you’re not borking your lens change.

The good: Canon’s image stabilisation (IS), which is aces. What the hell is image stabilisation? Short version, from Vincent Bockaert at DP Review:

Image stabilization helps to steady the image projected back into the camera by the use of a “floating” optical element—often connected to a fast spinning gyroscope—which helps to compensate for high frequency vibration (hand shake for example) at these long focal lengths. Canon EF SLR lenses with image stabilization have a IS suffix after their name, Nikon uses the VR “Vibration Reduction” suffix on their image stabilised Nikkor lenses.

One of my concerns with the T1i was that the Rebels have a reputation for not performing so well in low light conditions, where you are typically using a slow shutter speed and hand tremors can become a serious problem. Another issue is that when you are using a telephoto, tremors can also become a significant issue. After testing the camera in a variety of lighting conditions and using the telephoto in an assortment of places, I am pleased to report that the IS came through every time. Some of my pictures came out badly for other reasons, but they were definitely not blurry! This is exciting news, because since I have a telephoto, I would like to be able to use it.

For really low light, I would strongly recommend using a tripod with this camera (or using a convenient hard resting surface). The Rebel does have limitations in dim lighting and you will notice those limitations more quickly if you have tremors, IS or no.

Cognitively, I really like the interface, but your mileage may vary. I found it very intuitive and easy to use, with settings I use a lot easy to access and things I use less frequently buried in submenus. I would like the interface more if it was configurable so that people who want to access buried settings could set them up in a quick launch bar or something. But, overall, the interface seemed to have been designed by someone who thinks a lot like I do in terms of how things should be laid out, what I would want to access, and how I would want to control and represent things.

Once I’ve had a chance to play with the camera a bit more, I will probably be posting a followup review. Alas, the weather has been conspiring against my strong desires to go out shooting.

If you’d like to read a more technical review of the T1i, I’d recommend the very comprehensive evaluation at DP Review.

Here are some photos from my Monday adventures at the trainyard:

This was taken with the telephoto!

©2010 FWD/Forward. All Rights Reserved.

Cube: Modern Warfare 2: Gaming with a Disability, Junkyard talking with Ian (MW2 Gameplay/Commentary)

[video interview at the link]

I was able to get an opportunity to talk with Ian who is paralyzed from the middle of the chest down. Not letting his situation dismay him from playing video games he has been able to adapt and come up with a solution to overcome his disability.

Sustainable Diet: Common Ground Organic Farm & Veteran Cooperative

[donation solicitation at the end of article]

The model-of-care has been successfully demonstrated with over 60 Marines, veterans and military families at the current program called Operation Recovery.  The model-of-care is now positioned to expand and serve hundreds of active duty, veterans and their families through a financially sustainable program called, The Common Ground Organic Farm and Veteran Cooperative. Mr. Bornt has a lease-option and an opportunity to purchase the ideal property for the expansion – a 70-acre farm with existing residences and infrastructure within 40 miles of downtown San Diego and 28 miles from Camp Pendleton.

The potential of the veteran farm cooperative has generated collaborative interest from Camp Pendleton Marine Corps command and Chaplains, Balboa Hospital ASYMCA, Alliant University, Palomar Collage, the VA PTSD clinic and many other local and national veteran service agencies. The farm will provide a safe, familiar decompression zone, immediate veteran employment, veteran short-term housing, and peer-to-peer treatment training and veteran micro-enterprise development.

Wheelchair Diffusion Blog: Marine Veteran Invents Powered Beach Wheelchair

Blaker states that he was inspired and motivated by his Marine buddies, some of whom suffered injuries that made mobility difficult.

“I worked on cobras and hueys the avionics systems, so that’s where I got all my understanding of electronics and what not,” explained Blaker.

Blaker served six-years as a Marine, and was stationed all over the world, and after finishing his service, he now spends his time building wheelchairs that work on the beach. He was inspired to extend the freedoms non-handicapped people enjoy to those who still want to experience the beach.

Rhivolution (Dreamwidth): Practicing my dropkick skills: OCD

So I saw the book Saving Sammy at the public library, and after picking it up and skimming the inside cover, I sort of couldn’t bear to read it, mostly because the subtitle is ‘Curing the Boy Who Caught OCD’.

Caught. OCD. Cure.

Now, for those of you not aware, a few years back, the US National Institute of Health concluded that in some children with sudden onset OCD and/or Tourette syndrome (henceforth TS), the conditions appeared after the children had had a strep infection, and that this could possibly be causal. Your bog standard OCD and TS are, apparently, slow onset in pre-pubertal cases, and these cases came on rapidly, like a switch was thrown. This proposed condition is called PANDAS, an acronym for something I’m too spoon-less to write out here involving strep and pediatrics and psychiatric disorders and stuff.

Teach Me Tonight: CFP: Fat Studies Edited Anthology

CFP for fat studies edited anthology

Julia McCrossin and I were approached at the PCA/ACA Conference by a publisher and asked to put together a fat studies anthology. The result is the call for papers listed below. Please feel free to distribute far and wide with our thanks.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email either Julia or me. Our addresses are listed below. Huge thanks, and I look forward to hearing from many of you!

~Lesleigh Owen

If you’re on Delicious, feel free to tag entries ‘disfem’ or ‘disfeminists,’ or ‘for:feminists’ to bring them to our attention! Link recommendations can also be emailed to recreading[@]disabledfeminists[.]com

©2010 FWD/Forward. All Rights Reserved.