University of California is holding its annual survey of undergraduates. It surveys on several subjects, including "campus climate for diversity and inclusiveness". This is especially important for disabled undergrads to weigh in on, IMO. If there are freeform comment fields, make sure to fill them with anything you want them to know that they're NOT asking you about.
Reminder: It is not necessary to make ableist jokes about a horrible politician's medical conditions to recognize that they're espousing dangerous, bigoted ideas.
Criticize that which is actually worthy of ridicule, not their medical conditions.
This excerpt from a DEI survey shows the attitude: In their view, it's not up to the university or the department to do the work to be as accessible as they can be by default (highest common denominator accessibility). It's up to the disabled person to take on the labor of fighting for our rights and they'll "accommodate" us if we take it up the chain (they don't).
Even the word "accommodation" betrays that they like inaccessibility to be the norm, from which they may occasionally deviate if you do the work, fill out the forms, and beg.
#Ableism is telling disabled people they want too much convenience and should toughen up (and go through loads of $ and bureaucracy to get even bare minimum ADA "accommodations")...
....while centering the hardships of presumably abled parents and caretakers for disabled people when writing a caption like this.
Since I started really "reading" infrastructure, I've noticed that car-centrism and ableism often overlap in parking.
Car-centrist & ableist planners view cyclists AND disabled people as groups they grudgingly have to "accommodate". So they are often shoehorned together in bad designs that put cyclists (including disabled ones) and mobility-disabled drivers into conflict with one another. (Hit link to see all photos)
It's unfortunate when good messages are undercut (while also validated in this case?) because the site hosting them uses an #accessibility#overlay. In this case, #UserWay by #LevelAccess.
I took a ride later today than usual. At least part of it was in the dark. I wish I'd known we were this close to the Coffee Center on campus opening. I'd love to have brought some UC Access Now labels to helpfully point out the ways this new building's infrastructure is still inaccessible. #UCAccessNow#Ableism@disability
I am so tired of hearing about the "privilege & #ableism of the bike community" as an excuse for not investing in protected low-stress bike infrastructure. Those assholes buzzing you on a path (or when you're in the bike lane on streets with no sidewalks) are #drivers on bikes, not members of my bike community. I'm taking my kid to a doctor appt and #CarSupremacy is squatting on 130ft and 65ft swaths of asphalt while we share scraps of space with people walking their dogs. #BikeTooter
Today I have an appointment to see if I can become a part of the disability lift program the local bus system operates. Considering the bus stop near my place has been violating the ADA since the four years I've been here AND had resulted in me getting injured... You'd think this will be a slam dunk.
Still, I'll be forced to go IN PERSON today for a meeting while being immunocompromised. There's extremely little chance anyone there will be wearing a mask. Oh, and my scheduled pickup time is TWO hours before the appointment and my ride home? An entire hour after. It took me an entire month of waiting to even get this meeting too!
It's really gross that the time of disabled people isn't valued. Being disabled is often a full time job in and of itself, this kind of junk shouldn't be added onto it. I just want to leave my house safely and easily on occasion without fear of how I'll get home. That shouldn't be asking much, but here we are.
If you don't think ableism exists, contemplate for a moment that Mastodon comes with on-board OCR tools that will recognize most or all of the text in an image. So all you have to do is click that, then proofread it, correct, and hit "Publish".
There are loads of abled people here who know that, know the image is inaccessible without it, and choose not to use it, but publish inaccessible images anyway.
I'm only just scraping by and the UK government are proposing to take away PIP (a disability benefit), which would be HALF of my income wiped out: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0ry09d50wo "Reforms to personal independence payments (PIP) could include stopping regular cash payments, and instead offering claimants one-off grants for things like home adaptations."
Genuinely absolutely terrifying.
Can anyone join in with an (hopefully!) overwhelming cascade of unique emails to their MP opposing this? https://www.writetothem.com makes it very quick and easy. They're proposing to replace it with one-off grants that the individual can apply for, which is absurd and horrifying, so feel free to point out how that won't work as well!
While AARP is trying to disrupt stereotypes about age, what they are leaving untouched is how systemic ableism shifts disability to "age" or "elderly". That is, disability is part of the human condition, but because fewer younger people are disabled just due to having gone through less in life, disability is othered and punished, but when formerly abled people finally succumb in age, it's just "age". #Ableism#Ageism
UC's attitude towards disabled people is clear in things like this.
This July will mark 34 years since ADA became law. UC doesn't do bare minimum compliance (not full accessibility & inclusion, just legal compliance) until they decide they need to do seismic upgrades. Then "ADA compliance" is piggybacked on that.
It's the very last thing listed. Whoop-de-doo, ADA "compliant" restrooms.
You know another reason even abled people should be on board with dismantling ableism?
Because you can take some of the blackmail-ability out of things like this by making folks not fear they'll be fired if it gets out they're disabled (including things you don't think of as disability, like going through cancer).
Secure our health data, but also take some of the threat out of our health data by not making disability something abled society uses to pay us less, fire us, punish us.
"I was stunned. The guy who developed IVF was a eugenicist? Part of me couldn’t believe it. Yet, the part of me that had studied the eugenics movement knew it was all too possible. Shortly after the email exchange, I reached out to the Eugenics Society of Britain—renamed the Galton Institute in 1989 after the founder of eugenics, Francis Galton (the group is now called the Adelphi Genetics Forum)—and asked one of their staff members if Robert Edwards was a member of the organization. “Yes,” they proudly affirmed."
As a person who has been physically disabled in a way I couldn't deny (had other disabilities from birth I was unaware of) ~ 30 yrs, I feel like I want a tote board to tally up the abled ppl who became disabled and changed their tune about ableism.
What would help us all, ideally, is to not have to wait until it happens to us to change our minds & become active in dismantling #ableism.
Maybe rising awareness of how this is a common part of the human experience for all of us would help?
At least 3 things missing from UC's Global Accessibility Awareness Day event:
The idea that there's any accessibility issues beyond the type digital technology tools could potentially help with
and
Actual diversely disabled UC community leading the event.
Statement up front as to what accessible options are available for this event.
Keeping the emphasis on digital tools allows abled people to continue their hegemony by simply training to be "experts" on accessibility, keeping jobs & control in abled hands. It allows UC to keep refusing to hire human captioners, human notetakers, as well as keep NOT addressing making things as accessible as possible as the default at UC.
"Well, you're only 3.44% (citation needed) of ____ population so I don't see any need to desegregate my communications"
Apparently what is a "threat" is unfollowing people so you don't accidentally boost their inaccessible toots. Othering people based on their marginalized status isn't threatening, apparently.
It's remarkable to me how confident abled folks are that they'll never become disabled.