Accessibility is too important for us to ignore just because it can be difficult or unpopular. We also can’t choose one group and decide to make everything accessible to them, and inaccessible to other people.
Tag: Disability
At any given time, I have to pause and give serious consideration as to whether or not turning a light on or off, or walking to a different room, will be worth the discomfort. I think for most people, this can seem like a minor thing, but in the course of a day, even minimal differences with lights can add up to a substantial impact.
[image: Illustrated cover of the book Hoshi and the Red City Circuit, by Dora M Raymaker, featuring a person in silhouette sitting on the ground fending off rays of power from a pitchfork-wielding person silhouetted in red.] Kelly Israel Introduction Hoshi and the Red City Circuit, the debut work by Dora Raymaker, is first and foremost an excellent page-turning detective story about private investigator Hoshi Archer’s race to discover who murdered three Operators. Operators are a caste of people with disabilities. They are also the only people who have the ability to run the multi-layered, complex technology of the future. It is next a story about Hoshi herself and the many friends, allies, acquaintances, enemies, and lovers she has known and cared for on her way to becoming the person that she is. Hoshi is also a story that grapples with the intellectual and developmental disability (I/DD) community’s ghosts and…
Kerima Çevik theautismwars.blogspot.com The author’s idea of what displaying autism positivity looks like [Image: a Black woman over 50 with braided gray hair wearing Neurodiversity 3.0 by ThinkGeek, a black T-shirt with a world globe design on the upper chest area in the shape of a human brain, colored in physical map fashion i.e., water is colored light blue and land masses green, clouds white, looking to her left over bent wire-rimmed glasses in that way that mothers look at their children when an outrageous behavior has just ensued.] There is an article in a paper called The Daily Net, about singer Toni Braxton’s 16-year-old son Diezel working as a professional model for the past two years. The article refers to him as “formerly autistic.” It goes on to say he has, “fortunately, moved past” autism and is now a celebrity himself. Apparently, when her son was thirteen, Ms. Braxton…
Finn Gardiner expectedly.org Photo © G_Jewels | Flickr / Creative Commons [Image: Black infant in a wooden high chair, being spoon-fed by an off-camera adult.] If you’re a parent of a teenage or adult child with a disability, it’s important to avoid infantilising them. What is infantilisation? It’s treating people who are no longer children like children in a way that restricts their ability to be fully integrated with their age-peers. It’s talking to them in a condescending voice, dismissing their ideas and opinions, acting as though you will always understand them better than they understand themselves, or going out of your way to shield them from everything you think may be even slightly dangerous. Infantalisation is treating your child as though they will always be a child, whether they’re five, fifteen or thirty-five. Infantilisation is different from recognising that disabled people have support needs. That’s part of what being…
It’s not okay to dismiss one autistic person’s lived experience as having nothing to do with “real” autism simply because you don’t understand what autism is like for them.
Kris Guin queerability.tumblr.com Update August 6, 2019: The author no longer supports Sesame Street’s “See Amazing” project because of their promotion of Autism Speaks. Please also note the following insights from Cal Montgomery: If you have a Julia doll, be gentle with her. She is just now learning that Big Bird thinks the world would be a better place if she weren’t in it. It is an ugly shock whenever you find out the people you love feel that way. And a lot of people love Big Bird. — Cal Montgomery (@Cal__Montgomery) August 6, 2019 The new Julia toy! Photo courtesy Kris Guin [image: Stuffed “Julia” doll with orange hair, green eyes, yellow skin, big happy mouth, pink dress, green pants, and black shoes.] Sesame Street is a staple in children’s television, and has used its platform to educate children about topics that need to be talked about and that children…
Functioning labels do not always relate to people’s real skills and can be based on hurtful stereotypes about autistic people. They also assume that people’s skills cannot change over time.
Elizabeth Bartmess elizabethbartmess.com This is a three-part series. Part I explores autistic interiority and neurology. Part II explores Diversity in Autistic Characteristics and Demographics. In Part I of this series, I talked about how good representation of autistic characters shows interiority—characters’ inner experiences and reasons for doing things—and how various aspects of autistic neurology affect our experiences, particularly sensory differences, language and speech differences, social skills and abilities, and our ability to strongly enjoy specific interests. I also briefly mentioned executive function, the usefulness of routines and structures, motor difficulties, and a few other common differences, plus some common co-conditions, and discussed how having these differences, and having to interact with others surrounding them, results in our developing skills and coming to new situations with particular expectations for what will happen. In Part II, I talked about variation among autistic people: we each have a particular constellation of neurological characteristics…
Elizabeth Bartmess elizabethbartmess.com This is a three-part series. Part I explores autistic interiority and neurology. Part III explores Setting, Plot, and Character Growth. In Part I, I talked about how neurological differences affect autistic people’s internal experiences and strategies, and how we change over time as a result. Today, I’ll talk about variation in autistic characteristics, in our and others’ relationship to our diagnosis (or lack of it), and variation in demographics, as well as how others’ perceptions of us influence how they treat us, and how we change in response. On Friday, I’ll bring everything together and add some thoughts and links to advice on writing autistic characters, along with a list of some common aspects of autistic experience that are underrepresented in fiction, plus a list of all the books and short stories I’ve mentioned. Even though autistic people have many things in common, we also vary a…