!disability@beehaw.org
All things disability and accessibility related, and advocacy for making those things better.
See also this community's sister subs Feminism, LGBTQ+, Neurodivergence, and POC.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
!disability
@beehaw.orgHello everyone! This is the first post in the newly made Disability and accesibility community. Feel free to post anything health, chronic illness, disability or accesibility related. If you need a space for support or sharing your experiences regarding all of the above topics, this is the right place as well :)
https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2024/09/14/a-twitter-controversy-over-covid-19-led-to-a-culture-of-distrust-and-suppression-within-act-up-new-york/
A Twitter controversy over Covid-19 led to a culture of distrust and suppression within ACT UP New York Justine Barron The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power New York (ACT UP), th…
A question for those that may be hearing impaired, or otherwise use TV and movie subtitles frequently...
Do you have a favorite subtitle font? Do you have any further config preferences, like color or border?
I'm working on making a video player script UI more accessible, and I'd love some input.
https://19thnews.org/2024/08/dnc-chicago-accessibility-disabled-attendees-accommodations/
From wheelchair accommodations to live audio description, new wide-ranging considerations center 850 attendees with disabilities, including 560 disabled delegates
https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/a-reading-list-on-disability-justice-organizing
Looking to the past, present, and future of Mad, sick, and disabled life for roadmaps toward revolution.
This is more philosophical than practical and hopefully it's appropriate to the community.
This is something I've pondered over since I was young. What first got it running through my head was when my grandfather developed COPD and at about 10 I was tasked with helping him figure out his inhalers because I already had about a decade of experience using them. He was a very physical, active man. He was a WW2 veteran, he was a master carpenter and had built his own company, he was an expert woodsman and survivalist. Then he developed COPD and then Parkinson's. He had opportunities and accomplishments and a life that was forever closed off to me and that was a burden but I think he had at least an equal burden of having the knowledge, experience, and drive to continue to live as he previously had but no longer the physical ability. He had to relearn how to do lots of things with his new limitations as his Parkinson's progressed and it always seemed to me that it was an advantage that I never had to relearn things, I had figured out alternatives that worked for me to begin with. The biggest advantage to our situations was that we both had someone to have real conversations with about what we were dealing with. Someone it was ok to not be ok with.
Accessibility has come a long way since I was a child. Sports associations took way too long to decide that corticosteroids and anabolic steroids are not the same thing. You had to walk through the smoking section to get to the non-smoking section that was in the same room with no dividers or anything, sometimes even in medical offices. When I went to college I chose the one that I did because it actually had an office for students with disabilities. It was at the top of a hill in an old converted house that could only be entered using stairs and the closet disabled parking was a quarter mile away but it existed. The one counselor in the office basically set up a second office in a library study room so that students could actually meet with her and unfortunately she wasn't always convinced that invisible disabilities were legitimate. She did help with making sure I didn't have back to back classes on the opposite side of campus and she passed information from my doctor to the professor in my physical education requirement so I got what I needed from her without too much arguing.
A lot of the progress is really just awareness and destigmatation. It was very important to my parents and kindergarten teacher that I did not have autism, I have Asperger's. They thought that people with autism were mostly nonverbal, never did well in school, and had no future so the testing that said I was mildly autistic disappeared and I didn't find out about it until I was diagnosed in my early twenties and my grandmother told me that "we" already knew. I still don't disclose my disabilities unless I have to but it's kinda amazing how open people can be about their health issues and need for accommodation now.
There is no way to measure the cost of one form of labor in comparison to another in some generalized way. Less labor simply isn't the same direction for everyone, or even always a direction at all. Doing things faster may exhaust you longer, for example, it is always a trade off. On top of this, while many accessibility tools allow people to do things they could not otherwise, many instead allow people to do those things more safely or with another part of their body.
The key to accessibility has always been variety, being able to interact with things in as many different ways as possible. Making it simple isn't enough, making the requirements "low" isn't enough. You can't demand everyone take a specific path.
I have seen this as a big issue in art, in both ways. First people saying that one type of art takes "no effort", because they discount those types of labor. They see that one type of labor is not used that they expect, and do not realize or care that it must be replaced with another kind of labor. Different varieties of digital art often seem to experience this, especially those that don't start out with visual work and instead start with words or equations.
Then there are people saying that other methods of art are "easy enough" to be the moral option you must pick instead. I have seen so many posts of people saying "look, this person with no hands can pick up a paintbrush, you have no excuse to not being doing that instead".
Both of those are ableist, and sadly I see them in even "leftist" spaces all the time.
My best friend broke both of his arms and wrists, and will have zero use for 3-4 months. I'm trying to figure out some way for him to play videogames while recovering. Maybe some kind of foot controller? A mouth controller?
He's feeling miserable from the pain and I know that gaming would take his mind off of it.
Please let me know if you have any ideas.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/19/disabled-people-gaza-cerebral-palsy
We endured months of hell to get our son, who has cerebral palsy, out of danger, says Jamal al Rozzi of Gaza’s National Rehabilitation Society