Tag Archives: accessibility

Recommended Reading for December 2

“[L]ook at who they are and how many of them are saying it”

When you ask for help, and other people assume it’s motivated by your being lazy or just a smartass, pretty quickly you learn to stop asking. If you started out wanting to please, and people around you keep jumping to negative conclusions about your motives, you may come to believe that you’re really a lazy smartass who could really do things without help (or clarification) if you tried.* If you repeately get told that you’re more than smart enough to figure out and do things on your own, you might start thinking this is so. If you’re told that you’re obviously too stupid to do something properly, you might believe it.

I really identified with some of Dave Spicer’s descriptions of how he learned to cope and make sense of things, growing up as an undiagnosed autistic.

Guess what I want for Christmas!

Yesterday, I read an interesting post on FWD/Forward, called Cerebral Palsy Humour? Not so much, in which the author Esté Yarmosh writes about the offensive pity crap she found on Café Press and Zazzle when she was looking for humourous graphics about disability.

In the comments, Codeman points towards even worse examples, Animals 4 A Cause, which is by far the most godawful “awareness” merch I’ve ever seen. It features daft pictorial puns like cartoon dogs that “Piss on Autism”, bulls that “Bully Autism”, an “Autism Stinks” skunk, and so on.

Ugh.

Wheelchair Tourism covered at conference

Dr Stumbo said her presentation would cover leisure, health and disabilities and remind tourist operators and hospitality managers about the importance of accessibility.

She said there was a misconception among these operators and managers that people with a disability did not use leisure centres or visit tourist attractions.

“They say, ‘we don’t have anyone with a disability come to our program or facility so why should we bother to become accessible?’

“This is a chicken-egg dilemma. Of course they serve people with disabilities. They are just unaware of the extent of it.”

Awareness Days

Hey, Hey, Hey, it’s Disability Awareness Day! Everyone gets a chance to see what it’s really like to have a disability! Yank out those blindfolds, grab cotton to stuff in your ears, and plop yourself in a wheelchair to navigate around an obstacle course! To get the most out of Disability Awareness Day, it is important to try almost all the disabilities on for size.

No doubt about it, life with a disability is a tragedy! Why these poor gimps, blinks, and others would be better off dead! They are so courageous and yet pitiful as they go about their daily routines. Yep, I’m so glad it is their fate and not mine . . .

Sadly, these are the misconceptions that the public holds about those of us who live with disabilities. Disability simulations do nothing but reinforce these negative stereotypes about persons with disabilities.

To Everything There Is a Season

It is not the film makers fault they have tapped into “disability = scary = violent = bad” and helped promote that concept in public consciousness. It is the fault of the disabled person pointing it out; that they’re refusing to rise above it. {Strong Black Woman, Strong Black Man, You’re So Strong If I Had That I Would Kill Myself, Model Minority, So Hard Working} They are refusing to not change the world, starting with themselves; namely their outlook, attitude and tone to something more positive.

Which frankly I read as ‘you should be less confrontational’, even though the original post wasn’t. It was simply pointing out a trope.

But more than that, something I do not think the individuals debating with the OP seem able to recognize, the tropes about what behavior is abnormal and thus scary and potentially violent and bad are actually based on either exaggerated behaviors within minority stereotypes OR they are based on behaviors regarding human states medicine in the past had no answers for; Those behaviors of course representing a gambit of symptomatology within another minority.

And, just another reminder that I’m always looking for posts to include in this. Because I’m only sporadically able to get into comments due to my schedule, it’s best to email me. anna@disabledfeminists.com . Feel free to send me your own links – I’m all for self-promotion!

Recommended Reading for November 30

How to Survive Thanksgiving When You’re In Eating Disorder Recovery [I should have posted this earlier, but there are major food-related holidays coming up in December.]

During the holiday season, support from family and friends can significantly impact an individual’s ability to effectively handle these stressful situations. For those supporting someone with an eating disorder through the holidays, the Eating Recovery Center offers these suggestions:

Language, Stigmatisation, and Mental Distress

I recall from some years ago when a mental health survivor of the system told me about a meeting he had with script writers working on a soap opera. They were trying to create a storyline regarding a character and his psychotic breakdown culminating in him running amok brandishing a knife. The script writers were happy with the storyline and were engaging in a discussion with mental health users to see whether they had anything to add. The guy telling me the story said the other people he was sitting with just sat there totally gob smacked. One of them explained to the script writers that the current storyline as it stood only reinforced stereotypes and stigma (mental distress=psycho=knife wielding maniac).

After much patient explaining the penny eventually dropped, wasn’t so much an eureka moment when that happened. They changed the storyline, taking out the needless psychodrama for psychodrama sake. Wasn’t perfect, it still referred to stereotypes and your average psych textbook but at least they took out the knife wielding moment. My own view and I said it to the guy who told me the story is that this exposes lazy script writing as opposed to researching the realities of mental distress.

Disability & Virtual Worlds: Universal Life

The island was designed visually and experientially to offer the best benefit to users with disabilities, fully available to adaptive services and developed in accordance with Universal Design principles. The island contains the following features: wide ramps scalable for avatars in wheelchairs; bright high-contrast signage more easily trackable by users with visual impairments; smoothly landscaped walkways to accommodate many types of users; and training offered in small sets to decrease fatigue.

Testing was performed in stages, with the first challenge being how to best present signage. Signs needed to be readable by the default camera view, which is angled downward at roughly 15 degrees from eye level, so all signs in the island’s Orientation Centre were compensated for the height of avatars using wheelchairs. The standard view in Second life includes the avatar in the frame, so signs were placed high off the ground. Paths and walkways were designed with as few stairways as possible, with no bumps that would make an avatar trip while walking. The surrounding land was modelled to meet the paths as closely as possible.

In the news:
Man builds stair climbing wheelchair

“It used to take us a good half an hour to walk downstairs from our fifth floor apartment to the ground floor after her injury,” he said.

“I realised that what she needed was an electric wheelchair that could go up and downstairs but such a thing didn’t exist.”

So, despite a complete lack of mechanical knowledge, Li sold his apartment for £44,000 to fund the project.

The wheelchair as a weapon

And though the 38-year-old father of two quickly learned sporting activities such as hand cycling and sit skiing, it wasn’t until he took a new self-defence class for wheelchair-users that he began to feel at ease with his new paralyzed status.

“When you become a paraplegic and are in a chair, physically your world changes. You’re looking up all of a sudden,” he says. “(The class) was a great way for me to get to know my body again, to get comfortable in the chair and to build up a sense of confidence.”

Recommended Reading for November 26

They hate you. Yes, you.

Because the first thing people use on us is always, “It’s not about you.” When I was a kid, when I first started reading about autism rights, it was so instinctive: of course it’s wrong to say “cure autism now.” Of course it’s wrong to say autism is a tragedy, a disease, it’s wrong to give kids electric shocks, it’s wrong to say you thought about killing your kid in a video about eliminating autistic people from the gene pool. Like Sinclair says it’s wrong to mourn for a living person. All this stuff was plain and clear and bright, and I was autistic, and I was being attacked.

Right?

Well, not to anyone else.

YouTube now adding close captioning automatically

We received word from our new star writer Tara that YouTube will begin using a machine to produce close captioning for its videos. At first, the “auto-caps” will only be seen on a select number of videos of the nearly 20 hours of footage uploaded to YouTube every minute.

This is an excellent step in the right direction to add more accessibility to the second most popular search engine on the planet. Deaf and hearing-impaired gamers will now be able to begin looking up cheat codes for their favorite video games just like everyone else!

Accessibility and Table Top Gaming: Rulebooks

To fully understand what accessibility means in a gaming context, game players and game designers need to think beyond simply what our own abilities are, and consider a larger audience that may not share the same physical abilities. If a game requires pointing a nerf gun at other players, how can you adapt the game (or can you?) for people who can’t point a nerf gun?

Also, proper accessibility for games requires not just that people with disabilities are able to participate, but that they can participate fully. In other words, in games with a Dungeon Master or Gamemaster, people with disabilities need to be able to take those roles as much as any other player of the game might. Game accessibility includes the ability to be the GM.

Captchas: The Bain of everyone’s Existence

So the question is how do you make a captcha accessible, without making it solvable by spam bots? There are actually many options. The current audio captchas include, typing in a set of numbers that you hear, and typing words that you hear. The draw back to both of these is that they can be difficult to hear, or too challenging. I often have to listen at least 2 to 3 times and then I still worry that I’ll get it wrong, but at least this option gives me the potential of being able to submit the form. Another option, and one of my favorites is to make the captcha a question that you have to solve, such as, “what is 2 plus four?” This is a simple math problem that most people should be able to solve, but it isn’t something a computer can solve. Finally, there soon will be a new option thanks to the work of the NFB and Townson University. They’re new system will use pictures of familiar objects and sounds that correspond to the pictures. If you are listening, the answer to the captcha is whatever the sound corresponds to. So for example the image may be of a lion, and the sound would be a lion roaring. The answer to the captcha is lion.

In the news:
New Grants Aim To Get More Disabled People Volunteering [UK]

Organisations can apply for grants between £250 and £5,000, which can be used to help overcome barriers that stop disabled people volunteering, such as specific equipment, a lack of suitable access and understanding of disability issues.

These grants are part of the £2 million ‘Access to Volunteering Fund’, which was developed by the Office of the Third Sector as a pilot scheme in Greater London, the West Midlands and the North West.

Please note: I’m in thesis crunch time now, so don’t hesitate to send me links to your own stuff, to other people’s stuff, or to the news, because my reading time on the internet is getting more and more limited. anna@disabledfeminists.com

Recommended Reading for November 24

But Accessibility is Too Expensive

Due to the weather and being forced to stand, the pain was so terrible I was literally weeping silently. I walked into the office and asked to speak to someone in charge. I explained the issue and suggested that they install a platform, which would allow scooter and wheelchair users to watch the game. Like any other parent, I paid for my child to have this experience and it is completely unfair, that I should be forced to suffer, so that I can participate.

The woman gave me a depreciating smile and informed of the cost involved. Of course they will look into it and maybe in the spring they can do something. Isn’t that lovely. You will note, that she made certain to point out that I was asking her to spend money. This is always the excuse given when the disabled demand that accommodations be made so that we can participate. Shame on me for not having a normal body, which can tolerate standing for an hour outside on a cold Ontario fall evening.

Victim Art

I’m not sure what I think. I don’t know whether I would go to see such a performance. I don’t know whether I would call it art. I do think that inviting someone to film you at your most vulnerable moments is a gutsy statement of human vulnerability. And it forces me to think about what I call art.

Usually, I think of art as being the result/product/performance of a skill that is not commonly shared among people. Marcalo asks us to watch a moment of absolute lack of control. Usually, art is in the execution of the extraordinary — a painting, an image, a photograph, the playing of a piece of music — we are asked to watch a moment of incredible consciousness and intention. Marcalo strips that down. The way her body will move in the grip of a seizure may well be extraordinary, but it will also not be intended or conscious. Marcalo’s very idea makes me think. And think and think.

A Teaching Moment (Service Dog Etiquette 2)

I know I’ve mentioned in my first piece on service dog etiquette that many people make all kinds of errors in dealing with a service dog team, but it surprised me how many of them I face in hospitals and doctor’s offices.

The doctor who always stoops to say hello to my dog before he talks to me. (If he wasn’t a hard to replace doctor, I’d have a talk with him about it, but he’s of a specialty where I can’t afford to alienate my doctor)

The nurses who tell me that the dog is just fine where he is, and then struggle to straddle him or reach equipment across him, making all three of us uncomfortable.

The doctors I’m seeing for completely unrelated specialties who ask me what purpose the dog serves.

Common Barriers to [Website] Accessibility

Many web pages on the UIUC campus have the same barriers to accessibility. These can be relatively easy to spot and correct, so check out your pages to see if you have [them]

In the news:
‘Mad’ and proud of it [Note: Comments are a mess.]

Ms. Costa is one of the founders of the Mad Student Society (MSS), a group that has been able to make great strides in getting people to come out of their shells, form friendships, become politically active and feel better about themselves.

The group, made up mostly of students who have experienced the psychiatric system, use a once-a-month two-hour group talk to discuss personal issues and day-to-day difficulties “without fear that you’re going to be charted or pathologized” says Ms. Costa.

For MSS member Joel Zablocki, peer support is about being able to discuss all kinds of subjects with others who are at your level and have gone through similar experiences. “You don’t have the strange power dynamic of a doctor-patient relationship.”

Always feel free to email me with links to posts you think are appropriate for Recommended Reading. If you put FWD/Forward in the subject line, I’ll see it sooner. anna@disabledfeminists.com

Campaigning: A (brief) Guide for Inclusion

Before Don told our political party of choice to go take a long walk off a short pier*, I used to be That Girl at Riding Association meetings, at committee meetings, and at rallies.

[You might be thinking “Why would your husband telling a political party to get lost mean you wouldn’t be part of them anymore?” Don told them to go away and they stopped calling and emailing me too. Which is why I don’t deal with them anymore. If you’re going to claim to be representative of women in Canada and then stop interacting with me because my husband told you off, then I guess my money and my time can go elsewhere.]

Anyway, That Girl. That Girl, who would say things like “When you mumble and look down when talking, it’s very hard for people who have hearing loss to understand what you’re saying.” That Girl, who would say “This website is horrible on accessibility issues. Can you suggest your webmaster develop a text-only version? And stop using PDFs instead of web pages!” That Girl, who still emails every political party in Canada once a month to ask for transcripts of their YouTube Videos. That Girl, who has only once seen a transcript, and has never received a response.

One of the problems with being That Girl, who points out problems with accessibility a lot, is people start assuming I’ll become their expert on All Issues About This, and, instead of paying someone to deal with such issues, will just demand a lot of my free time and efforts into making them look better. (They also figure it will shut me up. I’m not good at that.)

I don’t mind too much with groups I’m a part of that don’t really have much money and are run entirely by volunteers or overworked staffers. I find these groups are both interested in what I have to say, and grateful for what (limited) aid I can give them. However, political parties have money. They also have power and prestige, even if they’re not currently running the country or the province. In Nova Scotia, they can work with the Nova Scotia League for Equal Opportunity and get actual experts to discuss with them actual ways of making their campaigns, their offices, their rallies, and their literature as accessible as possible.

But, since that’s not possible for everyone, let me give you some free (and lengthy) advice on how to make your campaign (however you define campaign) more accessible for people with disabilities. This advice has been influenced and improved by talking to the folks who run the Nova Scotia League for Equal Opportunity, and I can’t thank them enough for sending a representative to the Campaign School I recently attended.

Clearly, not every person with a disability is going to have difficulties accessing your campaign information. As well, this advice will not magically ensure that your work is available for everyone. We’re talking broad generalities here, but at least we’re talking something. And even though I am That Girl who will snap at you that your rally isn’t accessible if you don’t have an interpreter for the Deaf, I’m also That Girl who will notice that you’ve done something, and tell other people about it.

But, the biggest thing you can do, if you’re really trying to reach and include people with disabilities, is broaden your understanding of what disability means. We are not all men in wheelchairs and women who are blind.

Continue reading Campaigning: A (brief) Guide for Inclusion

Recommended Reading for November 6

Missing in Causation Talk: Actual Austistics:

Today I listened in a bit to the IACC conference call on “risks and prevention.” I ended up not listening to the entire thing, partly because I’m quite busy, and partly because the conference call format just does not work very well for me in terms of processing information and understanding what it’s said. And because of the different volumes at which people talk, I find myself constantly having to adjust the volume to prevent sensory overload. It is telling, I would say, that the IACC would select such an autistic-unfriendly method of holding its discussions. A chatroom, or another written format, would be much more accessible.

But the main reason I stopped listening was because of the conference call’s content, and the fact that I have very little desire to expend so much effort to listen to a discussion in which I am unable to speak and disagree with the premises so profoundly.

Invisible Disabilities, Accommodations, and the Obligation to Explain

From there on, I automatically assumed that Campbell Alexander was faking. You know, the dog was just a regular dog, but the owner had a huge sense of entitlement and thought his being an attorney made him eligible for access with a dog. Even way until the near end of the book, when the dog starts barking loudly in the courtroom and Campbell refuses to remove it, I assumed that he was really feeling better than the judge. Even if it is a service dog, it should behave itself, right? I couldn’t imagine that maybe there was a reason that dog barked, until the reason Campbell has a service dog in the first place was shoved right into all other characters’ and my face.

YOU are responsible for access:

I am so sick of people assuming I can always manage inaccessible venues – which gets them off the hook from having to arrange accessible ones – because I sometimes use crutches. My church is holding confirmation classes in a venue which has “a few shallow steps”. This unwillingness to think about access means that the burden is conveniently shoved onto me – the burden of finding accessible parking near enough that I can walk in, the burden of coping with steps, the burden of sitting on unsuitable chairs in pain for an hour and a half so that the following day is a nightmare of agony for me…

Restaurant 101: The Gimp Edition

If we’re going to a place we have never been to, we must check if it is accessible. EVERY time we forget to do this, or we assume that the place will be accessible, the restaurant ends up having two flights of stairs or narrow doors. Sometimes, the staff will tell us they are accessible “but we have a few steps out front that we can help you with.” Assholes don’t even know how much my chair weighs. Plus, HELLO, dangerous! Lawsuits!

If I can get into a restaurant, I will either not receive a menu (because I am just at the restaurant to look at the decor, evidently), or the waiter asks if we all want menus. Or they ask if I need a children’s menu. I’m almost certain that able-bodied folk do not experience this phenomenon, and this menu game is only done for those who look gimpy. I know, I know, I should ask for a menu if I don’t get one, right? But no, I just borrow my mom’s. I don’t feel like dealing with it. Bad activist moment.

In the news:

Charity says 9% of disabled people have been victims of hate crime

Almost one in 10 disabled people in the UK have been the victim of a hate crime, according to a leading disability charity.

For the first time, the 2009 version of an annual survey carried out by Leonard Cheshire Disability asked respondents whether they had faced a crime which they felt was motivated by their disability, with 9% saying they had.

“Even without a comparison for previous years, this is a shocking figure,” said Eleanor Gore, from Leonard Cheshire, who compiled the review. “It’s often hard to know how big a problem disability hate crime is as it tends to be very under-reported, and sometimes police and councils don’t recognise it properly.”

Recommended Reading for November 3

If you have a child with Asperger’s

When I was a little girl, nobody knew the word Asperger’s. My way of being was called “weird,” “strange,” “slow” and other equally nice things. Today, we are finally getting to understand that not everybody is neurotypical, that the variety of human difference is huge, and that, most importantly, it’s ok.

Everybody on the spectrum is different. There is no single list of characteristics that would encompass all of us. Still, when I think about it, there is a whole range of things that people around me could have done when I was a child to make my existence easier. So if you have a child who might have Asperger’s, these are the things you should consider:

1. First and foremost, it is not the end of the world, a tragedy, or a reason to feel miserable. It isn’t a disease or “a public health crisis”, as some ignoramuses claim. It’s a way of being that is in no way worse or inferior to yours. I believe that in some ways it might actually be better. There is nothing in this condition to prevent your child from being happy. Of course, she will be happy on her own terms and within her own way of understanding happiness.

Transcription, because you do too much

A choice to engage in dialogue, discourse, or movement-building without making a commitment that any video used will be transcribed has a real cost in terms of cutting progressives out. A commitment to accessibility, combined with intersectional issues that make one short on time, energy, or spoons, has a real cost in terms of cutting progressives out. We can’t do it alone, people!

As a member of the progressive community, I have something I can give to help with that.

Quickhit: Pedestrian Bridge Lifts Turned Off At Night:

Oh, but it’s only at night, right? Surely all well-cared-for people with disabilities are locked up at night. So this would never be a problem. Right?

Halloween on Wheels

It seems slightly wild and bubbly-making to be thinking about partying (a little). Karaoke (OMG, yes)?? Costumes?? Yes. I’ve been wondering though about disability specific — OK, wheelchair specific costume. I mean, where is the disability/wheelchair culture that would enable us (cuz it would have to be one of us — don’t want to repeat the disability equivalent of blackface) to joke about ourselves in a Halloweeny kind of way.

Dreams aloud for a second. Well, the costume would have to embody both chair and user. I can certainly see wheel wings, but what would the scary, exaggerated, ironic wheel thing be? A flat just isn’t funny. I often refer to my wheels as my ass — could something be made out of that. Envisions wheels and buttcheeks together. Shakes head. Tries to wipe mind tv. Wheels with spikes, studs, water pistols –OK. Done before. But perhaps a starting point. How to ironize wheels?

Via Wheelie Catholic’s twitter feed: This family needs help buying an expensive device that would allow their daughter to communicate:

“The sad thing is that with a lot of these kids, you can tell the lights are on upstairs, but unfortunately, they almost become a prisoner of their own body,” said Shayna’s mother, Kym.

Spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy is the most serious form of cerebral palsy. It’s a disease that’s difficult on both those with the disease and their loved ones — but not one without hope, thanks to new technology.

A $15,000 device, the Dynavox Eyemax, would make it possible for Shayna to communicate. An infrared light on the machine’s screen has the ability to “read” her pupils, detecting where and what she is looking at, and then speaking for her.

How to Be a Good Doctor

Update: It was pointed out, correctly, that part of this post contained a statement that made a generalization based on age. That statement has been removed and the post updated with this message. It’s not feminist, and it doesn’t belong here. I’m sorry.

I actually had a really good experience with a physician recently. Like outstanding. With a specialist even — an endocrinologist, so if anyone in the northeast Texas general area needs one, I can recommend him without hesitation. I was kind of nervous; I’d seen an endo before when I was starting my transition but stopped because he was a really huge jerk. (My GP wasn’t entirely comfortable with writing scripts for hormone replacement but has been willing to for a while now. She’s also recommended and trans- and queer-friendly.)

Accessibility was poor to okay: I could have done with a chair by the reception window while waiting for them to copy my ID and insurance card. To get from the curb cut by the reseved parking to the front door, one has to go down the sidewalk across the front of the patio to where the ramp up the patio is. At least three cars were parked so that their noses stuck out over the sidewalk. If you couldn’t squish down to 18″/46cm wide, you couldn’t get through there. The doors were all unpowered and the front doors were on the heavy side. I didn’t see Braille signs at all. There was, blessedly, no music and no TV in the waiting rooms. The exam room was freezing; fortunately for me I’m tall and the ceiling was low and I was able to close the air conditioning vent but that’s not a widely available option. There were wide spaces around the furniture in the waiting room that looked like they’d easily accommodate wheels and other assistive devices. Some of the furniture was squishy but some wasn’t and the non-squishy furniture had arms to push up with.

They got to me right about when my scheduled appointment was. They weighed me, measured my height — 202lbs/91.5kg and 5’11 3/4″ (yes, they really measured me to the quarter inch ((sheesh)) and yeah I’m that tall — people comment constantly on how nice it must be which it kind of is except when I’m trying to buy clothes: for all that they love models my height designers apparently don’t believe women don’t come my size and shop at Target)/182cm — with my boots off, and they did bring me a chair for getting them on and off without my having to ask for one.

We waited in the exam room less than ten minutes. Maybe five. The office had mailed me a new patient packet with all the usual stuff to fill out (and the usual uninclusiveness of gender- and sex-variant people on the form, sigh *tick* F). The doctor apparently had spent the five minutes reading and absorbing it because he came in and introduced himself and greeted the wife and me as Mrs. and Mrs. Brown. It felt really good because NO ONE DOES THIS even the people who know we are legally married. Holy shit. The wife explained that I had an autism spectrum disorder and was not having a good day communication-wise. Also that even though I was not talking much today I was plenty smart (which is a construction I’m unfond of) and could understand doctor jargon (this I’m fine with — it’s a skill, not a definition of a person). He told us that on Mondays he had a resident following him around and would we mind if he joined us for the exam?

I’ve had doctors ask this badly before. Often it’s with said resident already present so refusal is an explicit personal rejection and difficult for even a lot of neurotypical folks, never mind those of us with moderate to severe social anxieties. This doctor asked it with the resident on the other side of a closed door. It really actually felt like I could have said no and it would have been okay.

He liked that I had typed up a list of all my surgeries and meds, the dosages, the schedules for taking them, and what they’re for — it’s a long list, twelve prescription meds total — and expressed sympathy that I needed them all. Even though my wife was helping me communicate, he mostly spoke with and to me. Once when he was looking at his notes he missed that I was nodding in response to his question and he apologized for not watching to see my response. When he was working out what labs to order, he noticed what insurance we had and apologized that we couldn’t use the lab in his office but would have to go to the one (not far away) that our insurance company had a contract with or we’d have to pay for the lab work. A DOCTOR. I’ve never run into one that noticed this stuff before, never mind knew what to do with our insurance company.

In short he seemed to be respectful of all the ways I was different: physically impaired, neurologically variant, queer, trans, everything. And genuinely respectful, too, not in that fake-ass “I don’t see the ways people are different from me” bullshit. [Age-based generalization removed by the author.] It was a really nice part of what’s been a string of mostly crappy days.

I’d really rather not have anything endocrinologically jacked up (and given the pattern of other Stuff that has been tested for, I’m not expecting that anything will be very wrong here either). But if I have to have something like that, I’m glad I know who to go to. ‘cos expertise is one thing. Respect like this — on the first time seeing me, on one of my bad days? — is rare. I wish I could drag all the bad doctors I’ve been to and gritted my teeth through seeing to make them watch this young man do brilliantly with a patient who is admittedly not exactly the most conformative person ever and yell “See? This is how you do it! This is how you make all your patients feel like you care about them.”

Cross-posted at Impermanent Records.

Recommended Reading for October 28

Join Marlee Matlin in Demanding Captioning of Online Video Content

Academy-Award-winning actress Marlee Matlin has been using her Twitter account to actively lobby for captioning of all the digital video content that is flooding onto the Web. The issue has rightfully hit a boiling point for the deaf community because Netflix and other services are now streaming video online without captions.

The National Association of the Deaf sent a letter to Netflix Oct. 5 complaining about the lack of captioning for “The Wizard of Oz,” which was available for download free at the Netflix Web site as a promotion.

Matlin points out the irony of a recent video about the Helen Keller statue unveiling at the U.S. Capitol on the CNN Web site that has no captions!

Related: How to add Subtitles and Translations to your Vids, Captioning Sucks!.

Ableism in 30 Rock [Includes an embedded video from HULU that is not available outside of the US]:

A lot of feminists love 30 Rock. As they should: it’s a funny show, and a rarity for television – a women-fueled enterprise with a two main female characters, written and conceived of by a woman. That is Cool, full stop. And 30 Rock has many deft explorations of the many facets of being a white, middle-class, straight, woman with able privilege. But persons with disabilities don’t fare quite as well.

30 Rock trades on ableism on an almost episodic basis. The show’s disrespect towards folks with disabilites, particularly those with visible disabilities, is constant and unrelenting from side gags to b-plots to regular characters. 30 Rock constantly places bodies with able privilege in a position of supremacy above bodies with visible disabilities through humiliation and devaluation. Its abuse of persons with disabilities in the name of comedy goes beyond the casual ableist language like “lame” or “retarded”. Such language is unfortunately ubiquitous to even shows that have been critical of ableism (eg, The Office has critiqued ableism through Michael Scott’s typical obliviousness on a couple of occasions, but, as in life, “lame” and occasionally “retarded” is still a consistent presence) but 30 Rock’s ableism is constant, humiliating, and dehumanizing.

An Example of an Article about FSD [FSD = Female Sexual Disfunction]

I’m still not fully understanding the claim that FSD is profitable. If that’s the case, why is it so difficult for me, someone who falls into the pain category, to find a doctor who is equipped to handle me? My experience is that often, my first line of defense doctors get tired of seeing me after I don’t respond to conventional treatments. I think right now my local gyno probably never wants to see me again.

The article goes on to talk about hysteria. For the most part I don’t find this section of the article to be inherently problematic. Except for the part about “pelvic congestion,” being in quotes, since it is mentioned as a real thing in Heal Pelvic Pain (p. 16)

Identifing:

But the real reason it followed me and stayed there in the back of my mind was the times I thought, “Wait. That’s me.” And then my guilt complexes came in full-force, telling me no, you can’t call yourself that, that’s for people with real problems, any problem you have is just in your head. And maybe most of them are in my head, but well, it doesn’t make them any less real. It doesn’t make it any less hard to me to function or to try and figure out how to fit into society. It doesn’t make my very concrete limitations disappear.

In the news:

Clem7 Tunnel Labeled a death trap for the disabled [Australia]:

BRISBANE’S Clem7 tunnel could be a death trap for the aged and infirm, a disability group has warned.

Queensland’s Spinal Injuries Association said the 4.8km-long tunnel’s emergency exits were too far apart and too narrow for people with mobility problems to escape an underground disaster.

Mr Mayo argues there are no design rules for tunnels but believes this infrastructure should follow the Australian Building Code which mandates emergency exits at every 60m in buildings.

Recommended Reading for October 27

I’m writing this four days before you’ll see it. (I write most of my posts from the past, due to my schedule.) I mention this so people know that I’m not ignoring recent posts, I’m just not seeing them yet.

Disability & Desire: The Dance of the Heart – This is a pointer link. The actual article is PDF.

From the article:

In 1996, at the age of 24, I found myself in hospital, with empty walls and broken dreams colouring my days. My partner at the time, Janine Clayton, and I were caught up in local taxi violence in Cape Town, South Africa, with members of rival taxi organisations firing at each other. The driver of the taxi we were in died, and my spine was severed by a bullet. My body told me long before doctors had the courage to admit it. I was paralysed from the chest down. During those endless afternoons with little else than my mind to entertain me, I contemplated the extent of my loss. Perhaps what struck me deepest at the time was my conviction that I would never be desired or loved again. I felt that my body had become damaged goods, my sexuality erased.

As time went by, I began to dismantle my perceptions by analsying their origins. I recognised that my mental picture of a person with a disability was that of someone in need of care, someone to be pitied, someone who certainly had no real claim to love or any kind of fulfilling life. The basis of my beliefs was largely informed by society’s consensus on people with disabilities … these were people who were mostly invisible, unless as beggars on the street or patients

When Simply Stating Your Truth Isn’t Enough:

What matters, then, is what you do with what you call facts, experiences, truths and ideas. It’s how you handle your perspectives on gender, race, ethnicity, class, and disability. It’s the way that you align the facts (or not) with societal preconceptions about those who are somehow “different.”

It doesn’t matter whether or not you, personally, don’t share the stigmatizing impulses that lead to discrimination and hatred; members of your audience most certainly do. As an artist/performer/writer/…, you have a responsibility to treat those facts in such a way that you don’t perpetuate the beliefs that enable harm. You might even take on the responsibility to change the way that people think and act. Or, then again, perhaps not.

Accessibility: The Soundtrack of my Life

We would never expect the average able bodied person to push themselves to the point of pain to participate in a public event. Whether I am watching my son play hockey or considering taking my boys to the Santa Claus parade, I must consider how much pain I am able to live with to participate. Differently abled parents are no different than able bodied parents. We want to be a part of our children’s lives and yet the barriers that exist often make this impossible.

Those that parent with a disability also bear the social stigma of being unfit. Social services has intervened on many occasions because of questions about our ability to parent. Disablism in this case is supported by concern for the children. It never occurs to many, that if the world were more accessible, that there would be no reason for concern. The fault is not with the body in question but with the makeup of the world.

Pain vs a Life:

Friday morning the group I was with wound up discussing a scenario of tension between the demands of being healthy and the desire to live life. I’d love to have both good health and the ability to pattern my life in the manner I want. I don’t. (And I would argue that none of us really do.) I live in a body that will experience pain if I try to do too much. I consider myself lucky to know about where that line lies. And sometimes I choose to push and bring extra pain meds. And sometimes I choose not to push and to be pain free. There’s no magic formula. I try to balance the life I want against what I expect the physical costs of extreme activity to be.

And, this comment was left by Amanda of Ballastexistenz and I’m just going to C&P the whole thing because it is full of good reading material:

I’d like to present some links that could be useful further reading on these topics….

The first one is from The Perorations of Lady Bracknell. She addresses some really common misconceptions about the social and medical models. Her article is useful for people new to these ideas, many people not new to them, and especially anyone who has ever believed that the social model means impairments don’t cause problems on their own, or that the medical model is the model that good medical professionals ought to use. The link is Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.

Then there’s some things by a writer named Cal Montgomery. She’s cognitively and physically disabled, but has been pressured by physically disabled people to pass as purely physically disabled (the same thing happens to me sometimes). She frequently criticizes the entire concept of “invisible disability”, saying that it makes it sound like the “invisibility” is happening as a trait of the disabled person rather than a lack of understanding in the particular observer. I see very few other people tackling that idea and I think she’s absolutely correct. She talks about it in a lot of places, but her two best articles on the topic are A Hard Look At Invisible Disability and Tangled in the Invisibility Cloak.

I’ve been challenged enough (told I’m making crap up, basically) when I say that autistic people who can pass for non-autistic are usually visible if you understand what to look for, that at one point I got fed up when writing a post that dealt with that, and wrote up a detailed description of precisely what combinations of things are visible to me that are invisible to people who have no idea what to look for. (I then got criticized for writing a “DIY autie-spotting guide”, but that was absolutely not my intention. I was just trying to be concrete about something to avoid being accused of lying.) For people who have trouble imagining how something could be invisible to them but visible to people who know what to look for, this post I wrote might be useful. (Note that I use a lot of terms in it to refer to other people’s perceptions, that I would never use myself.)

If you have links you think are relevant, don’t hesitate to email me: anna@disabledfeminists.com Please note my schedule means I may not see your email for a few days.