jesse_the_k | Entries tagged with disability:news

Ed Yong is a science journalist who's been deeply reporting COVID since day 1, including long COVID. He won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for his breaking news coverage at the Atlantic, as well as five other journalism prizes. He's listening to experts by experience, like folks with ME/CFS. From Yong's NYTimes op-ed on how journalists can save lives:

In his poem Why Bother? Sean Thomas Dougherty wrote, “Because right now, there is someone/out there with/a wound in the exact shape/of your words.” Those words are ours to provide, those wounds ours to plaster. Contrary to the widespread notion that speaking truth to power means being antagonistic and cold, journalists can, instead, act as a care-taking profession — one that soothes and nurtures. And we are among the only professions that can do so at a scale commensurate with the scope of the crises before us. We can make people who feel invisible feel seen. We can make everyone else look.

https://buttondown.email/edyong209/archive/the-eds-up-a-wound-in-the-shape-of-your-words/

He offers a "gift link" to the op-ed on his site.

He presents excellent advice to young journalists ...and although it exists in a graphical format, he provides the text FIRST.

His monthly newsletter, The Ed's Up, is free, and as well as thoughts on journalism, science writing, general politics (this month it was Gaza) there is awesome bird photography.

He's also published two books, which I look forward to reading when my brain is up to it.

The New York Times has now published four of James Morrison’s short films on the lived experience of disability.

I Have Face Blindness. This Is How I Recognize You features Paul Kram. He discusses how people sometimes assign negative moral value to his not recognizing their faces. He explains how he systematically notes and uses non-facial information.

Morrison’s filmmaking is so effective: by showing many well-known faces upside-down, I’m dislocated from my familiar visual world. My favorite is he notes the delightful coincidence that prosopagnosia and faceblindness are both 11 letters long!

direct YouTube link

( play it here )

Back in July 2021, I raved about James Morrison’s NYT Op-Doc short film "Look me in the eye." I’m thrilled the New York Times has published three more of his short films.

First up: I Stutter. But I Need You to Listen focuses on writer John Hendrickson, a writer who stutters.

Morrison’s 8:15 film (pro captions and audio description) shines with visual representations of stuttering, while demonstrating what happens during disfluency and how quickly we can become better listeners.

direct YouTube link

( play it here )

The audio description script is narrated in synthetic speech, which is an odd choice.

( more on Hendrickson )

Proximal to the 32nd anniversary of the ADA’s passage, The Verge hosted Accessibility Week, with the accurate deck: Technology promises a universally accessible world — and only sometimes manages to deliver.

The ten features run from service journalism — how to turn on your screen reader — to the barriers created by web design. One of my favorite reporters, s.e.smith, had this to say regarding online animation:

Every time I click a link, I have to ask myself if it’s going to be Bozo the clown or something delightful and captivating that I will be happy to have encountered.

All of us find the internet stimulating, but I find it extremely stimulating, specifically when it comes to animated and moving content — and not in a good way. Something about the wiring of my brain makes it difficult to process animations or repetitive movements, like the blinker you’ve left on for the last five miles, turning them into an accessibility issue: a website with animated content is difficult and sometimes impossible to use because the movement becomes all I can think about.

https://www.theverge.com/23191768/animation-accessibility-neurodivergence

The Access Board has this to say about itself:

The U.S. Access Board is a federal agency that promotes equality for people with disabilities through leadership in inclusive design and the development of accessibility guidelines and standards.

Starting in March of next year, they’ll be holding ZOOM hearings re: autonomous vehicles and disabled people.

If you’d like to chime in with your thoughts, sign up here:

https://www.access-board.gov/av/

My thoughts:

AV pizza robots have already blocked curb ramps.

AV navigation depends on a deep understanding of the typical streetscape. But "typical" is a notion, not a reality. Every streetscape has atypical elements. For 50 years, I’ve observed the corner of Park and University Avenue. When UW-Madison is in session, the typical behavior is chaotic.

Color me doubtful and dubious. What problem are AVs solving?

thanks to Susan & Teddy Fitzmaurice, with grants from a wide variety of folks, ADA 30 - Michigan is a festival of disability voices. They're currently at week 4 of 9. Until 27 September, you can attend their daily free programming, mostly 2pm CDT (1900 UTC).

These are all virtual events. Closed captioning and ASL interpretation will be available for all. Audio description will be added for primarily visual events. There is no cost to participate. But you will need to register at Eventbrite to get a password

registration link is labeled "Eventbrite" at the home page[1]

https://mi-ada.org

Don't let "Michigan" stop you: program includes items of world-wide interest, such as personal narratives, advocacy strategies for IEPs, history lecture, accessible movement and dance, films, and much more!

I particularly recommend today's session with Tom Olin, Photojournalist of the disability movement. He was there for the noisy disability activism in the US, for the last 40 years. (24 August 1900 UTC)

Too many to list them all; this one looks great

True Inclusion is Revolutionary: Disability Inclusive & Accessible Organizing Practices

Learn with member Dessa Cosma how Detroit Disability Power is mobilizing Detroit’s disability community to fight for inclusion, rights, and respect, alongside and included with mainstream activists and protesters fighting for justice. (3 Sept 2020 1900 UTC)

[1] home page is also the landing page for all events, with a single link via workshop title. Very accessible information design -- thanks to Susan's lived experience with intellectual disability.

This is what online access can look like: American Sign Language, Spanish interpretation, and English live captions will be provided. Multiple breaks will be built in to the webinar.

"Grounding Movements in Disability Justice" will take place this Thursday -- 23 April 2020 -- between 7-8:30 PM EST (in your time zone) via the ZOOM platform.

Presenters include Azza Altiraifi, Cyree Jarelle Johnson, Dorian Taylor, Dustin Gibson, Talila A. Lewis, and Nirmala Erevelles. They will offer the perspective of people grounded in #DisabilityJustice work as they all respond to COVID-19.

To receive the ZOOM meeting invite, you must register here: https://bit.ly/djgrounding

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/214085396704598

cross-posted to access_fandom, kindly discuss there

The Motherboard listened, and they're changing the name.

We’ve read your thoughtful and pain-filled emails, tweets, and Facebook posts. We are sorry for the harm that’s been done, especially to some of the most marginalized members of our community.

We recognize that the award is necessary to the community, but can’t go on under its existing name. Now we need to figure out what to do next and how to do it. We’re working on it. And we’ll say more within a month.

( suggest new names, read two wonderful essays )

( creepy images - mean students - lovely DWers )

Columbia Journalism Review is a trade magazine for journalists. Maia Szalavitz's article on "What the media gets wrong about opioids" opened my eyes wide—

The “relatable” story journalists and editors tend to seek—of a good girl or guy (usually, in this crisis, white) gone bad because pharma greed led to overprescribing—does not accurately characterize the most common story of opioid addiction. ( a truer take and a link )

I've been reading all of a wonderful blog from Mel Chua, who is too many things to summarize, but in her own words, "a human jumper cable." If you work with, teach, learn, or hang around any number of deaf people, please read this
( helpful info on speechreading and its demands. )Mel addresses How to succeed in engineering school as a disabled person in a poem

begin quote
Don't get angry.
Don't have feelings.
Don't realize how tired you are.
Don't realize that what you're doing is extra labor.
Stay oblivious. Focus on your classwork.

Don't ask for help.
Don't look dumb.
And never show signs that you're struggling.
That any of this is any harder for you.
That any of this ever hard for you.
end quote

In ADA enforcement* news, ( NAD sues Harvard and MIT over inaccessible online education ) Why is a lawsuit "enforcement"? Because the vast majority of Americans with Disabilities Act rights are gained not from the law itself, but by someone suing to claim those rights have been violated. Sometimes, the U.S. (Federal) Department of Justice has worked with individuals and classes to bring suits, and only then do Federal lawyers advocate for disability rights. There is no "ADA Police" because violating our rights isn't a crime.

For the last decade, I've been fortunate to receive the Inclusion Daily Express, an email-based news service. As their blurb promises

begin quote Inclusion Daily Express saves you time while keeping you up-to-date on what people with disabilities are facing, saying and doing. Each daily edition features six or seven important disability rights stories—many you cannot find anywhere else—along with links to dozens of other articles, press releases, opinion pieces and disability columns. quote ends

Inclusion Daily is well worth the annual cost of US$160. That might seem too much to pay, but you can specify ten email recipients for each subscription. If you're part of a working group, an agency, a school district, just one sub can keep everyone in the loop, you choose whether it's weekly or every weekday.

I've been able to keep up on disability-related news from all over. I find the info inspires me to action, provides examples, educates about other people working on "my" issues, and helps me know my place in the movement and the world.

You can try two weeks for free, and see if it's for you.

Here's a sample of what I found in the last two weeks, thanks to Inclusion Daily Express

( Terrible Captions on UK TV )
So, I use captions. I loathe the state of live captioning, and I'm dismayed at the falling quality of offline captioning, as more services enter the market with seemingly no understanding of what good captioning means. From thousands of miles away, this article raises the question: Does the US's FCC* investigate caption quality? Do they supply a "how to do it" manual? Could I do something to help increase caption excellence?

*parallel agency to UK's Ofcom

( Suing for Wheelchair Access to Hotel Shuttles )
Now this is highly relevant to my SF fan interests. Most cons are held in hotels; every hotel shuttle I've seen can't carry a powerchair. Sharing this info with other fans enables them to better advocate.

( Irish= Disability Advocate's Long Life )

sasha_feather taught me, there have always been social justice advocates. Martin Naughton was a "man of his time" as much as the hospital administrators who couldn't conceive of someone using a wheelchair outside the hospital. Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily's editor, casts his net very wide indeed. Sometimes the articles sampled don't represent an ideal perspective on disability rights. But always, they include the living experience of people with disabilities in the world, and that's always welcome in my in-box.

Because I'm a worrier, the last few months have been hard for me personally. My family's bequest has meant I'm somewhat directly insulated from the impact of Wisconsin's conservative revolution, but many of my friends and colleagues aren't that lucky.

People with disabilities interact more with government. We are more likely to be poor, and therefore more likely to need the welfare system (living expenses, housing, food discounts, medical care).
Only comprehensive, government-wide action can undo the decades of systematic oppression documented in the prelude to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Disability Advocates Wisconsin Network provides a detailed yet understandable accounting of how people with disabilities are going to be affected in so many ways by the budget just passed.

I bring up this list because it neatly reminds us all that "disability issues," like "women's issues," are pretty darn broad.

Are you wondering "Who's ALEC?" The American Legislative Exchange Council was founded in 1973 by Henry Hyde, Lou Barnett, and Paul Weyrich. In brief, they're a group of policy wonks who develop model laws based on the values they hold dear: absolute free market capitalism, elimination of governmental regulation, deployment of public-private partnerships wherever possible. Wm Cronon, a UW-Madison history professor explores in greater detail on his web site.

I bring up ALEC because the misery we're experiencing may be coming to a state like you -- and it may be letter-for-letter what we've been protesting against. Informed is always a good look on a radical.

Current Mood: anxious

...and it makes me glad glad glad.

badgerbag's outstanding analysis, Deconstructing Dick Cheney's Inaugural Wheelchair, which challenges the "Evil Nuclear Villain in Wheelchair" trope, even when it's so so, apropos for Mr Former Vice President.

sasha_feather ponders Disability in Battlestar Galactica, and there's lots of it. What does it mean? Join the discussion.

chasingtides combines internal and external experience to address Wheelchairs and Shotguns: Handicapped Other in Supernatural Fandom, and there's more good discussions as well.

Current Mood: gleeful

Today the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act goes into force. Sadly, the implementing regs have not yet been written, and as with most US Federal laws, the regulations are the details where the devil resides.

However, the purpose of legislative intent on the Amendments Act is clear: reverse the US Supreme Court's radical restriction of who was considered disabled under the law, and therefore who was protected under the ADA.

The Job Accommodation Network has the clearest description (I've seen) of how the Amendments Act language accomplishes this goal. Don your logical thinking beanie and read all about it on JAN's website.

Here's one example of how the changes in the Amendment Act mean better coverage for people with mental illness, cancer, diabetes, and epilepsy, where it's not so much the conditions themselves, as the implications of living with them, which require accommodation. Before the Amendments Act, the Supremes basically said, "If you can medicate the condition, then it's not a problem."

JAN's summary of the changes:

One thing to keep in mind regarding a request for reasonable accommodation is that the accommodation does not have to be tied to the substantially limited major life activity that established that the employee has a disability. For example, a person with cancer may establish that she has a disability because she is substantially limited in normal cell growth, which is listed as a major life activity under the “bodily functions” category in the Amendments Act. However, her accommodation request is related to fatigue and nausea resulting from her medical treatment. Once the employee establishes that she has a disability, then the employer must consider providing accommodations for any limitations she has as a result of her impairment, not just the limitation that established her disability.

Editorial aside: one of the reasons I love JAN's explanation is its "twelve days of Xmas" format. Very tasty for the slow learners among us.

Current Mood: awake

Disability-rights advocates hate institutions. Their high walls and one-way doors nurture a culture of sexual, physical and mental abuse. The most important Supreme Court ruling so far on the Americans with Disabilities Act has been Olmstead v L.C., which held that sentencing people with disabilities to institutions when they could live in the community constituted discrimination.

Almost ten years later, states are still fighting to keep large institutions open (and advocates are still suing to switch spending from supporting institutions to supporting people living in the community). As always, civil rights laws never automatically mean discrimination is over: it only gives us the legal standing to sue.

Today my invaluable Inclusion Daily Express brought news of excellent political theater necessitated by the State of Texas' refusal to implement the Olmstead decision.

As the Inclusion Daily Express Archives show: Texas Houses Largest Number Of Americans Behind Institution Walls

( Shouting 'Fifty-three murders on your watch!' and 'People are dying, shame on you!' the group of about 20 protesters interrupted the meeting. They waved signs and emptied a bag of 53 toy watches, painted red, on the floor near the panel. )

"" (Watch on YouTube)

Current Mood: angry

Substantive commentary on WisCon awaits the day I can ingest more than 400 calories (my brain needs protein to work, and the Madison Misery hit me on Tuesday).

Not surprised but perturbed that what gets singled out for scorn as "political correctness" in this local article are all disability accommodations. In some lights this means that the disability rights movement has arrived firmly enough in general consciousness to be mocked, but I think it's more likely that mocking people with disabilities' needs has always been fashionable.

[ETA 29-May-08 before *eating dinner*] I was too sensitive to the words "politically correct" -- details below.

On the plus side, the loving mutual support in the face of RL and online hatred towards non-skinny, non-cis-gendered, non-normate bodies is evidence of what we can do right.

Current Mood: sick

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Inside the Little Plastic Castle

adventures with Jesse the K

Entries tagged with disability:news

I admire Ed Yong's insight and persistence

GREAT: I Have Face Blindness. This Is How I Recognize You

GREAT! I Stutter. But I Need You to Listen.

boost: Mainstream Media Covers Assistive Tech

What problem are autonomous vehicles solving?

Five weeks of disability history, justice, culture & celebration

True Inclusion is Revolutionary: Disability Inclusive & Accessible Organizing Practices

Online Disability Justice Panel 23 Apr 2020 2300 UTC

Update: Tiptree Award renaming is in progress

boosting: Fake People for Fake News, Epilepsy & The College Prof, Signal Boost Bookmarklet

What the media gets wrong about opioids

Hearken! Bits and bobs with a D/deaf theme

Try Out "Inclusion Daily Express" Disability Rights News Service

Concrete Impact of ALEC's Budget Implementation

disability analysis bubbling up all over

(Almost) Plain Language re: ADA Amendments Act

The Only Safe Institution is an Empty One

"political correctness"

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