Tag Archives: disability activism

Recommended Reading for 30 September 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.

Can you believe it already the end of September?

The Vibrating Square: Respect (Sent in by The Untoward Lady)

But it’s not about intent. It’s not even about the very real impact that such language has on people like me. It’s not even about the fact that what you said is hurtful.

Brilliant Mind Broken Body: After the Separation (Glad you are well again and home, Kali)

But I went through 2 1/2 days of my service dog not wanting to have anything to do with me, and that was their fault for separating us.  I went through more pain at the hospital, I was alone, and I had to deal with days of my service dog ignoring me.  If it weren’t for them, all I would have had to deal with last week was a nasty stomach virus.

The Consumerist: Continental Sorta-Apologizes For Not Allowing Service Dog On Flight

Jessica says Continental offered her a couple of coupons to make good — one for 10 percent off of a flight and another for a free drink. She says she’ll need to give them to a friend because she’s given up on flying for the time being.

Disability Rights California: The California Memorial Project

The perfect last day of a California summer drew a collection of advocates, supporters and community representatives to the Stockton Rural Cemetery. The gathering honored hundreds of people who had died anonymously while residing in the Stockton State Hospital, established in 1851 as the state’s first “asylum” and closed in 1996.

Disability Books: Stevie Wonder Calls for International Action to Enhance Accessibility for Visually Impaired Persons

World-famous singer-songwriter and UN Messenger for Peace Stevie Wonder called on the international community to take action to enhance accessibility for all those with physical disabilities. Speaking at the opening of the annual meetings of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Assemblies on September 20, 2010, he challenged delegates to conclude an agreement on improved accessibility to copyright protected works by visually impaired persons (VIPs) within a year.

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 at disabledfeminists dot com. Please note if you would like to be credited, and under what name/site.

Recommended Reading for July 13, 2010

Problem Chylde at Feministe: Storytelling as a Radical Act

They won’t speak out for fear of losing something: losing a relative, losing control of their lives, or losing their stories. To them, it’s not a myth that their stories will be repeated without their names to guide them. Anyone can pick up a textbook and read case studies about H, a 26-year-old African-American woman from X with cerebral palsy, or see pictures of happy smiling children online referred to as “happy smiling children in the Y mountains/Z desert/Q farmland.” These people — their bodies, their plight, their stories — are Other. No names in the street, in the book, in the mind, and people only recently have been asking why they are nameless.

Jeannine Stein, Los Angeles Times: Movement therapies may reduce chronic pain

Movement-based therapies such as yoga, tai chi, qigong and more mainstream forms of exercise are gaining acceptance in the world of chronic pain management. Many pain clinics and integrative medicine centers now offer movement-based therapy for pain caused by cancer and cancer treatments, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, and other diseases and conditions.

lisa at Sociological Images: Norms, Normality and Normativity

Sociologists distinguish between the terms “norm,” “normal,” and “normative.”

The norm refers to what is common or frequent.  For example, for Christian Americans, celebrating Christmas is the norm.

Normal is opposed to abnormal.  Even though celebrating Christmas is the norm, it is not abnormal to celebrate Hanukkah.  To celebrate Hanukkah is perfectly normal.

In contrast to both of these, normative refers to a morally-endorsed ideal. . .

Wheelchair Dancer: Equivalencies:Days 2 and 3

We use equivalent to suggest that two separate and often very different things are the same, or, at least, of equal value. But the very insistence on equivalence underscores the potential for the thing that is being compared to be somehow less than the original. Rather than “same but different,” it’s more “different but same.” My mind jumps to “separate but equal.”

Recommended Reading for December 3

Disableism Impacts Families

This choice that is being forced upon me is impossible. I must either tolerate physical pain at the hockey arena or emotional abuse at the dojo, if I want to be a part of my child’s life. It’s ironic that disabled mothers are often viewed as incompetent but where is the discourse surrounding the ways in which our parenting often occurs under extremely difficult situations? I suppose, of all the people on the planet that Destruction and his brother Mayhem provide the best reason for me to want to rise above, but the constant pain requires more of a super human effort than I believe that I am capable of.

Murphy’s Law And Disability: The Week From Hell

Normally, we get by. We get by pretty well. Provided we stick with the diet restrictions, usually we just switch off when one is a bit more able to get things done than the other. Chores basically go to whomever is in less pain at the time, or in less of a bad mental state or who can actually do them reliably without issue (like me defocusing and being unable to even read a recipe because I can’t keep on it). Usually even when the chronic shit we deal with is flaring the other one is just dealing with the baseline of the chronic shit for them, and the other disabilities coming up are all spread out over time.

Not this week though.

This week was the perfect storm of flare ups, semi chronic appearances and stress induced aggravations of all of the various things we deal with on a regular basis. While my partner fought off a pain flare, struggling just to walk, I was nailed with a “Richter 7? migraine.

Accessibility and Gaming: Randomizers

Most traditional six-sided dice may be tactile enough that someone who can’t see could feel the result. There are also special “Braille dice” available for not that much more than premium gaming dice; they’re more properly called tactile dice since the faces are traditional die pips and not true Braille numbers.

So, blind players can probably get their hands on accessible d6s, but to the best of my knowledge there are no tactile dice made for any other types of dice. Champions, anyone?

The wrong message – still

I don’t know who dreamed up the concept of “disability simulations” but they have been around for a mighty long time. My lifelong friend, Michael A. Winter, now the Director of Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Transportation, first exposed me to the shameful practice. Michael and I were classmates at a segregated school for crips and met in 6th grade. We attended the same university. As undergrads, Michael formed a group called Wheelchair Action. When the Rehabilitation Institute at Southern Illinois University sponsored a disability simulation, Michael and members of his group stormed into the classroom and tried in vain to halt the fiasco.

Professionals who are nondisabled rarely stop to listen to the people who live with disabilities. I was proud of Michael for trying to get people to understand how destructive these simulations can be.

What Makes A Good Doctor?

Dean Tom Marrie is interested in hearing what kinds of qualities people value most in their family physician or specialist. What do you appreciate about your doctor? What do you think physicians of the future will need that might not be taught at med school today?

Disability Activsm: Reading Rights

Reading Rights is a US-based advocacy group that is campaigning to have equal access to electric book formats through text-to-speech on the Amazon Kindle. Their campaign is based around the American Author’s Guild demand that people must either prove their disability to the satisfaction of the Guild (and thus give private information over to e-book publishers) or pay extra for the same access to books.

As technology advances and more books move from hard-copy print to electronic formats, people with print disabilities deserve the opportunity to enjoy access to books on an equal basis with those who can read print.

People with print disabilities cannot effectively read print because of a visual, physical, perceptual, developmental, cognitive, or learning disability.

They maintain a news blog that focuses on print disabilities and access to books and textbooks.

Print Disabilities are a very big deal, and affect a large number of people. Text-to-speech capabilities aren’t a convenience, but a way for people with print disabilities to have access to books without waiting for the Book On Tape (or CD, or MP3) to come out. For some, this could “just” be having the latest book by their favourite author when it comes out, for others it could be the difference between passing and failing a university course.

Further Information:

Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities

The Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities facilitates and influences the production and use of quality alternative formats for people with print disabilities by optimising the evolving Round Table body of knowledge.

Continue reading Disability Activsm: Reading Rights