Hello 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 :)
In this article, I will discuss the details of 10 innovations throughout history that were only possible through unlocking the power of accessibility and including the voices of people with disabilities. In the disability community, it is a deeply believed and often repeated fact that improving accessibility leads to innovations that improve the world for everyone. Necessity is the mother of invention is, after all, a proverb so frequently quoted that it has become a cliché. And yet, people with disabilities still find ourselves left out of research and design, and all too often we don’t get a seat at the product development table. This leaves our inventions overlooked, unrecognized, and sometimes unrealized.
Decades after her act of defiance, Rosa Parks galvanized a cadre of activists to protest their own conditions and, though the scope of her legacy for them is still coming into focus, it remains just as powerful.
This week, while trying to catch up on schoolwork, I've been discovering all the things that put my body into nap mode, and wow, it’s a lot. Pillows, recliner angles, even kicking my feet up can flip the switch from "study" to "sleep."It's been like running my own ergonomic lab this week, testing what keeps me awake vs. what puts me to sleep.Turns out I focus way better with my feet supported, but that's tricky when you’re short and most setups aren't built for you. Fully kicking my feet up feels nice… until I wake up two hours later wondering what happened.I can't tell you how many hours I've lost to nap mode when I was trying to study, but maybe now that won't happen anymore.#disability #DisabilityLife #ChronicIllness #Fibromyalgia #RheumatoidArthritis #Neurodivergent #Fatigue #Accessibility #StudyStruggles #Ergonomics #ShortPeopleProblems #DisabledAndStudying #NapMode #ActuallyAutistic #Spoonie #CollegeStudent @disability @autistics @spoonies @chronicillness @accessibility
The ADA is hailed as a historic civil rights milestone. For the first time, it formally recognized disabled people as a protected class, banned discrimination, and mandated reasonable accommodations in public life. It reshaped the built environment—adding curb cuts, closed captioning, ramps — and created a legal vocabulary to describe exclusion.
This clever gizmo turns any USB input devices - or combination of input devices - into any other HID device. Different versions also accept individual switches as inputs.
Max will debut Sinners in the U.S. on Friday, July 4, when viewers will be able to watch it two ways: by 1) streaming the exact theatrically released version, and 2) choosing Sinners in Black American Sign Language (BASL). It’s the first time a streaming service has interpreted a film into BASL, Warner Bros. says.
For people with rare diseases—estimated to be between 263 and 446 million people worldwide—finding the right doctors and treatments can feel like a Herculean feat, a reality Alexandria knew all too well. “There is no long-term cure,” she wrote. “I’m very very very sick, things are progressing fast. I’m wheelchair or bed bound most of the time. I had 16 seizures yesterday and over 30 stiff person attacks.”
In this post, I seek to understand and explain the pervasive phenomenon of COVID denialism from the perspecitve of disability justice, specifically as someone who remains extremely cautious and anticipates doing so indefinitely. It's not intended to excuse this behavior—denialism is actively harmful to everyone the denialist interacts with and fundamentally eugenicist in effect whether or not in intention. But understanding and even empathizing with people who believe falsehoods and do harm can be valuable, especially when they make up such a huge portion of the world and for many of us are inescapably part of our networks and communities.
For unions, Covid-19 was a wake-up call. Large numbers of unit members were suddenly affected by disability issues: Workers needed paid sick leave, personal protective equipment, workplace accommodations, and help balancing caregiving needs. Disabled union members and organizers, who are often familiar with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and their rights under the law, became especially important. Many disabled workers told me that since the start of the pandemic, their unions have given them more responsibility and that a union’s willingness to collaborate with disabled members is crucial to determining how effective it can be in helping all of its members.
The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power New York (ACT UP), the flagship branch of the historic and global AIDS organization, attracted controversy on social media this summer around statements related to the Covid-19 pandemic. On July 19, ACT UP angered disabled and Covid cautious people with a Twitter thread that aligned people who criticize others for not wearing a mask with the historic criminalization of HIV patients. As many pointed out in response, people who wear masks are the vulnerable marginalized group currently being stigmatized and criminalized, not unmasked people who spread airborne disease. The thread also offered the nihilistic and deadly proposition that “people cannot prevent themselves from getting Covid in perpetuity.”
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.
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.
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?
Amber Galloway doesn’t just do sign language to music – she uses American Sign Language (ASL) and her body, face and vibes to channel the live experience and energy to deaf and hard-of-hearing fans.
If you're wanting to build something accessible but not sure which tools / software to test it with, this is what you need to know: most used screen readers, web browser usage, braille usage, and more!
A while back I was in a business class, and I had this thought, that I really wish there was a way for me to log how many mental spoons* (how much mental energy) it takes to do a task. Something like a period tracker app, or a habit tracker, that could allow me to enter some data, and when it had enough it would be able to estimate how much energy a task would take, and how much energy I probably have on a given day, so that maybe I'd have an easier time managing my own energy. This idea developed into extending to physical spoons, as I've since developed chronic pain. It's not just that I suck at time management, although I do suck at that, it's that I have a hard time knowing how mentally or physically strenuous an activity will be for my mind/body, or how much energy I will have on a given day.
A relative wants to buy a wheelchair and I can tell there a lot to consider, but I'm having a hard time finding useful reviews of any model's actual usability, so I thought it'd be nice to get a discussion going on which chairs people loved, hated, or would otherwise like to rate. Is there something that is really great or really annoying about one?
Everytime I leave the house to do anything, I either
1) get shit from people because I am wearing a mask -either minimizing and simply gaslighting comments, or plain agression
2) when they seemy mask they decide to share their grief with me.
It is so hard to listen to all the stories of people dying and becoming disabled from covid, shared by maskless people. I tell them masks work, and they should vaccinate.
But it is so tiring. I am just trying to survive. I wish others would help each other survive.
I am already tired from my chronic illnesses. Seeing the COVID numbers rise and no one masking or doing anything and staying in denial is horrible for my mental health. I am trying my best to hang on to my sanity. I wish you all that you stay sane too.
Employees of the state of Minnesota in the United States have created a "Maps Community of Practice" to advance the accessibility of digital and print maps.
Hi everyone thanks so much for accepting me. My disabilities include fibromyalgia, ROP (I was born at 24 weeks gestation.) I'm also autistic and have hyperacusis. I'm hoping to contribute to what looks like a wonderful community.
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