This may be an unpopular take, but...
I don't think any blind person will ever be completely independent. I do, however, think that every blind person can be self-sufficient. Independence, to me, implies a lack of reliance on anyone/anything. But everyone needs help sometimes. Self-sufficiency, on the other hand, is about having the tools you need, and the ability to get assistance, to go where you need to go/do what you need to do.
Thoughts? #Blind#Disability#Disabled#A11y#Accessibility
When people find out I’m an anarchist, a question I frequently get is “how would people with chronic illnesses like diabetes access treatment under anarchism?”
There are a lot of unspoken assumptions packed into that question that I thought I’d explore a bit.
The first is, of course, that people with chronic illnesses can access treatment in the context of capitalist modernity. Not everyone can! Many people in the world of states and capital suffer and die from lack of access to treatment.
Not because the treatment is unavailable, but because access is mediated through capitalist gatekeeping. People, today, right now, in allegedly rich countries, die because they cannot afford insulin. For them, the question of “but how would we access insulin under anarchism” is moot. Many others access it only at the cost of medical debt and other forms of indenture.
I am really, really, REALLY irritated by what I just saw. The #ImageDescription function of Microsoft's #Bing is outright lying to people with vision impairments about what appears in images it receives. It's bad enough when an #LLM is allowed to tell lies that a person can easily check for veracity themselves. But how the hell are you going to offer this so-called service to someone who can't check the claims being made and NEEDS those claims to be correct?
How long till someone gets poisoned because Bing lied and told someone it was food that hasn't expired when it has, or that it's safe to drink when it's cleaning solution, or God knows what? This is downright irresponsible and dangerous. #Microsoft either needs to put VERY CLEAR disclaimers on their service, or just take it down until it can actually be trusted.
The moderator asked Alison Cernich what NIH is doing. She said they had a working group report in 2022 that they've incorporated into their broader DEI roadmap. She'll be involved in pushing this work and discloses this is just the start. They've already made changes, but there's much much more to come and that is needed. #DisruptingAbleism#disability#DisabledInSTEM
Can anyone point me in the direction of #disabled persons pursuing self-sufficient lifestyles? The #disability could be mental, physical, or other and the self-sufficiency could be from a #Permaculture, #Prepping or #Sustainability perspective.
Looking for social media accounts, books, blogs, youtube or people doing this kind of thing outside of modern socials that would be happy to have a conversation about it.
I had more medical tests and bloodwork done yesterday and things are (shocker) still abnormal.
I’ve been struggling with all that comes with #LongCovid since last summer. Yet I’m not much closer to understand when or if I’ll ever get better. I’m in a flare up.
In 3 days I’ve gone from “I think I’ll be ok, this won’t last long?” to mostly bed bound —- again. Whiplash, over and over.
Serious question: what is the vegan/plant-based solution for folks like me who want to eat more veg but can’t always tolerate them well due to IBD/etc? As much as I love beans/hummus/shrooms/tofu, I haven’t found anything quite so nutrient-dense and digestible as animal protein. Even shakes and supplements don’t really satiate my hunger.
Again, this is a serious question. In the past I have gotten such non-answers as “you’re making it up, no one is intolerant to plants” and “it’s just a stomachache” and “no one NEEDS meat, stop lying to yourself”, so I would appreciate some sincere and thoughtful dialogue on the issue. #vegan#vegetarian#chronicallyill#disability#ibd#crohns#plantbased#askmastodon
Across the political Right, the narrative is that disability benefits (primarily Personal Independence Payments; PIPs) are too easy to get & are often paid to the 'undeserving'... however, in reality nearly half of applicants are rejected, rising to over two thirds for endometriosis (a gendered dimension I'll leave you to ponder), but with high rates of rejections over-turned on appeal (often with the same evidence).
Looks like this month is disability pride month. And I'm not sure what that really means. How can I be proud to be blind? How can I be proud that people have to do extra work to support me in digital spaces? How can I be proud that I cannot drive? How can I be proud that the only way I can enjoy pictures is through others' hard work, or a blurry AI that might add things or take away things from the description? How can I be proud of being locked into proprietary operating systems due to many developers not even knowing about FOSS accessibility, let alone considering it? How can I be proud that, for most blind people, to read Braille digitally costs $700 or more, outside the US? How can I be proud of the fact that my mobility and orientation skills aren't very good and that I have to be shown a route from my home to the mailbox across the street? Or that if I'm not using Braille, I have headphones in all the time, signaling to sighted people that I am not to be disturbed and thus haulting interaction? Having so few apps, out of the millions of them, that I can use? That so many blind people feel that they have to just be grateful for what we have, and not push forward? I don't know. I am not proud to be blind. I would accept vision in a heartbeat. I'd look at all the beautiful art and user interfaces and animations, drive around seeing the world, use Linux and Android, read books, even their images, see all around me and know where to go, understand people better through body language and facial expression, and play all the video games, old or new, that I want.
Well, it looks like I'm once again in a ranting mood, so here we go.
Have you ever tried to get a job as a disabled person? Of course you did. Everyone tries. Some succeed, a lot of us don't.
The truth is that society is unprepared for us disabled people having jobs. Of course there are programs that give money to companies hiring disabled people. But in a lot of cases this isn't enough of an insentive to ever bother with us. Did you know about 90% of blind people are unemployed? Yeah, that's a lot, I know. So here's the story of me trying to get a job, so far. I expect this to be yet another big thread, fair warning. #blind#disability#job
How did you make a more robust sense of self? How do you know when your sense of self is strong or weak? Interested to hear people's lived experiences.
Years of dissociation and masking makes it hard to feel what is me.
GPs face being stripped of the right to issue sick notes, as the prime minister says doctors are too readily writing people off as unfit for work. Specialist teams linked to the benefits system will instead assess the sick and decide how best to keep them in work.
Be afraid, very afraid. Those will be the same private companies who have already stripped benefits with no due concern. #ToryCorruption#Disability
The nice thing about digital art is it never has to be finished. On this one I got too deep into the image. There's a lot going on you can't see cuz the midtones are too dark...
The non-gendered warrior SHOULD be creating themself (to coin language) out of and battling dark chaos, a bright spark headed toward a dim light... they never know if there's a goal...
I’m learning about brain zaps - they feel like electric shocks in your brain. They are a lovely side effect [yes, that is sarcasm] of stopping venlafaxine (effexor) before trying a different antidepressant for preventing chronic migraine.
I also feel like I just got hit by a truck and every inch of my body hurts.
tbh - I am now afraid of trying the new antidepressant (nortriptyline).
Suggestions via your personal experience welcome (no mansplaining)
I find it disturbing that capitalism takes and creates wealth and then outsources the problems it creates to us.
I was at a restaurant (pay at counter) type, and my meal was like $35. And I had to pee. But they told me the “restroom is out of order”. But it wasnt because i saw employees use it.
Petition to "call upon the Government of Canada to create and implement a disability emergency relief benefit to provide immediate support to people with disabilities while awaiting the implementation of the Canada Disability Benefit."
Please sign and share this link everywhere you can.
Poverty is crushing disabled ppl in Canada (including me). We need your advocacy. 💪🧡
Doc: Are you sure? You look young. Maybe it was your appendix?
Me: I know the difference between my appendix and my WOMB.
Doc: Orders pregnancy test anyways
We really need to discuss how AFAB patients get treated by many doctors. If you need to do a pregnancy test on everyone as a matter of course - then just do the test. But don’t waste time arguing with me about whether I know the difference between an appendix and my LITERAL womb when I’m having a life threatening cardiac emergency.
J'ai découvert hier que le complément "prévoyance" de ma mutuelle en cas d’invalidité s'arrête à 70 ans.
Parce que ton invalidité a une date de péremption, après 70 ans pouf, t'es guéri, c'est un miracle.
Non mais tu comptes vraiment vivre aussi vieux en ayant une invalidité ? non mais MDR
Some good news on the housing front. A multi -sector plan that is comprehensive, innovation, smart. I am feeling more hopeful than I have in a long time.
What will it take to solve Canada's rental housing crunch?
I'm staggered at the number of UK law firms I've spoken to this week who will not take a tech related disability discrimination case because they either do not think the law applies to websites and apps, or because they do not have the knowledge to know what discrimination looks like in that context.
How do you feel about duplicate links in articles, blogs, whatever? Meaning: A certain word is a link (let's say "HEALTH") leading to an external website.
Would it annoy you if this word was always a link and it's mentioned for example 20 times in an article? Or would you rather have it only once to make it easier to scan for links?