When Accessibility Means More Than Getting Through the Door

I came across a conference that I would have loved to have gone to, but I hit an accessibility barrier. It isn't the one you're expecting. This one is inaccessible to me because I'm a student, and even more than that, I'm a student with a mobility problem that keeps me out of work in the typical student jobs. In other words, like many other people with disabilities, and like many other students, I'm too poor to pay the registration fee.

The conference to which I'm referring, ironically, is the University of Guelph Accessibility Conference. The registration fee for students is $70+taxes, per day. It's only two days long, but that's still $140+taxes. The fee for non-students is $110+taxes for one day, or $200+taxes for both days. To provide some context, the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University are currently hosting the 2012 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. It runs for an entire week (plus a day) and the registration fee for students is $77 (for last minute registrations). Not per day, for the entire week. I understand that there is a difference in scale and budget for these conferences, but there's a huge gap between $9.62/day and $70/day. Both conferences might be outside the budget of the average student.

Students aren't the target audience of the Accessibility Conference, and neither, really, are people with disabilities, but what is the worth of a conference about accessibility if it isn't accessible to the people who require accessible spaces? How can you foster understanding when the majority of the people you're supposed to be understanding can't afford to attend? How can you learn about accessibility needs when your conference isn't accessible to the people you're talking about accommodating? One of their conference goals is to "De-emphasize the notion of disability by encouraging a universal design approach to the creation and dissemination of information." Thanks for achieving your own goal, folks. Another goal is to "Offer participants the opportunity to network, to share ideas and strategies, to learn how others approach and address accessibility issues, to gain practical information, etc." Would people with disabilities, people who tend to be on the poorer end of the spectrum because of barriers in the workplace, not be an invaluable resource in terms of achieving this goal?

The conference is a great idea, and it's good to see more attention being paid to accessibility, but it would have been great if the conference was financially accessible enough to allow people to go and speak for themselves.

I have provided the link to the conference homepage if anyone is interested/has the resources to attend. It runs from May 29-May 30, 2012 (short notice, I know)
http://www.accessconf.ca/default.aspx

So I Bought A Bike...

I decided that I miss exercising (plus some pressure from my mom) and I decided that I would rather ride a bike somewhere than go to the gym and ride a stationary bike. I have been looking for weeks for the right bike at the right price, and ended up with this one.

  

 It's fancy, it has everything I need, including front disk brakes, and it was affordable. 

The exercise won't be painless, but it should be awesome. So excited. 

Just wanted to share my new toy.

Thoughts on Accessibility

Accessibility needs to mean more than wheelchair access. It needs to mean more than allowing service dogs and getting sign language interpreters. It needs to mean more than having an elevator in some dark, scary corner of a building somewhere completely out of the way.

When I injured my knee in January 2011, as I mentioned in a recent post, I had some difficulty getting to class due to an inaccessible building. What I didn't mention then was that I also had some difficulty with two classes that took place in a building that was supposed to be accessible. One of those classes could not be moved because of the sheer size (425 students) and the other was eventually moved for other reasons. I say the building was supposed to be accessible, because it had an elevator and it had a ramp to the back door. The thing about the elevator is that the building was constructed with what I can only call half floors and the elevator only stops at some of them. The elevator is only designed to stop at some of them. The floor that is accessible by the ramp is not a floor where the elevator stops. Presumably to fix this problem, the school installed a wheelchair lift like the one pictured above on a flight of stairs leading to a floor with elevator access. That's fine for people who use a wheelchair, but I couldn't use that lift safely on crutches, and I couldn't use it now with my brace. On top of that, you need a key to operate the lift. My class was a night class. I'm not certain if you can get someone to operate the lift outside of business hours, but it seems like a lot of trouble to go through. I never asked. Instead, I hobbled as best I could up the stairs to my class that was eventually moved to a room in a newer building.

The other class I had in the building was in a two story auditorium. The professor lectured from the bottom half of the room, that floor was accessible from the elevator, if only I could use it. If I arrived early enough to get a seat in the front row of the top half, I'd be fine, except that the top half of the room was occupied mostly by people who hadn't figured out skipping class yet and were unable to shut the heck up. No big deal though, I could hear most of the lecture. The problems came in on the day of the midterm, the days the assignments were due and the days when assignments were handed back. Everything had to be handed in, and was handed back from, the front of the room. I couldn't get to the front of the room safely. Problem. I had to get creative about it, and I managed okay in the end, but it left me feeling like "accessibility" was only for people with wheelchairs. I still feel that way a lot of the time. Every time there's a stair-lift instead of an elevator, every time I get crowded out of an elevator by wheelchairs and strollers, every time someone glares at me for using a seat on the bus, it reminds me that "accessibility" isn't for people like me. But it should be.

Jane Lynch on The Rachel Maddow Show

Despite not living in the United States (I'm Canadian), I really enjoy The Rachel Maddow Show. This isn't necessarily because I agree with her on everything, or just because she's a lesbian. I really enjoy the way she delivers political commentary. One episode this past week was even better than the usual.

This segment of the show, that shows up on a semi-regular basis, is The Best New Thing in the World Today. What made this the best new thing for me, though, wasn't the news that they were talking about, but that Jane Lynch and Rachel Maddow were just lesbians being lesbians on television. They weren't being particularly stereotypical, they were just talking about what mattered to them. It was one of those moments enshrined in the "privilege checklist." There were people like me on television just being themselves, talking about things that matter to me, and it made me happy. I didn't feel like anyone was having a laugh at my expense and I didn't feel like people like me were being paraded around as token characters. It was just two lesbians having a chat. Progress.

The Difference Between Identity and Insults

This is an argument that has come up a lot lately and I wanted to clarify my position. 

I think we can all agree that there’s a difference between saying “I’m gay” as an identity and saying “that’s gay” as in insult. This doesn’t mean that intent is magic, because it isn’t. “I didn’t mean it like that” isn’t a valid argument. If you are insulting someone using an identity (which may or may not be theirs), it is an insult to people who claim that identity. There’s no “it doesn’t mean that anymore.” If you use someone’s identity as an insult, they are going to be insulted. THAT IS THE POINT OF INSULTS.

For example, I claim queer as my identity in terms of sexual orientation, for many reasons. I am still offended by the use of queer as an insult. The same goes for any homophobic slurs and any slurs in general. You can claim whatever you want as your identity, but that does not mean it is okay to use the same words as an insult. It all comes down to power and agency. It comes down to the difference between using something in an affirming way and using something to demean someone.

There are so many other circumstances in life where something is appropriate in one context and not in another. Why is this one so hard for people to understand?

Yes, I call myself queer and lame and a gimp, but that does not mean that I think it’s okay to use any of those words as an insult, in any circumstance.  And it doesn’t mean that I won’t be offended if you insult me with those words. Offense being the point of insults, after all.

Rants and Responses

I read a few articles and blog posts over the past few days that made me want to share some more of my own experiences with disability, particularly invisible disability.

The first, found here, actually prompted me to email the author. I was so grateful to read something in defense of people like me and I wanted the author to know that she'd made a big difference in my day, because it's exhausting dealing with the constant rhetoric about faking and it's doubly exhausting because it comes from all sides. The point here is, most of the time, you have no idea if someone is faking or not.  Disability doesn't discriminate, people of all ages, sexes, genders, classes, etc. become disabled. Their age/class/sex/gender/etc can impact their ability to deal with the disability, certainly, but the fact remains that all kinds of folk can have disabilities. When you assume that someone who is young is faking, you make their struggle so much harder. So stop glaring at people for asking for a seat, stop glaring at young people/people without wheelchairs with disabled parking permits and stop leaving pissy notes for them. Sure, there are fakers out there, but when you take it upon yourself to police these things, you are making life so much more difficult for people who just want to have enough spoons left to make dinner at night (which I didn't yesterday, by the way, for reasons to be explained later in this post). If you're unfamiliar with spoon theory, check it out here.

The second, found here, prompted a rant about strollers on public transit, particularly empty strollers. If there is someone sitting in the priority seating that needs it, fold up your damned empty stroller! Don't glare at me when I explain that I need the seat. The seats are there for people with disabilities first, and then strollers. I will gladly move, if there's another seat available, but if there isn't, tough luck for you. I need that seat because standing on the bus is so painful I want to cry and because standing on the bus sometimes makes my kneecaps slip, an intensely unpleasant and painful sensation.
In other bus and stroller related news: yesterday, after paying $52 for physiotherapy and acupuncture (the only thing that helps with the pain, and yes, I'm aware of how lucky I am to have insurance that covers it), I was sitting on the bus, minding my own business, and a woman with an empty stroller comes charging onto the bus and rams my injured knee with the stroller in her attempt to maneuver it into the completely empty space across the aisle. There was no reason for her to run into me, there was plenty of space. It was an accident, and I didn't say anything other than "ow," but her "oh, did I run into you?" reaction made me even more angry. I've pushed strollers, with babies, without babies, you can tell when you run into things, especially as hard as she hit me. I might give you some leeway if you're a new parent trying to figure things out, but the kid looked about 3. An apology would have made a huge difference, but there was no apology forthcoming. The worst part was that my pain free day, for which I paid $52, turned into a pain free hour. I wish I'd told her that.

This one is the last response, to this blog post here. I know it's an old one, but it reminded me of an experience that I wished I'd handled differently. When I first injured my leg last January, it was the day before winter semester classes started. I was still trying to figure out using crutches and in more pain than I could cope with, the doctor having not yet prescribed me any painkillers and advil not really helping. I found out that one of my classes was on the third floor of a building with no elevator. I was ready to just climb the damned stairs, but my girlfriend (at the time, now fiancee) talked me out of it. Several calls to the accessibility office, or whatever it was called, later, my class was moved to an accessible building. Great, I could go to class, all was well. I crutched up to the front of the class to get a syllabus from the prof and sat back down. The prof started class by saying that he was glad to see that everyone had figured out the room change, and let the class know that the room had been changed for "some person in a wheelchair who didn't bother to show up today." I should have said something, but I was too humiliated. I should have stood up (figuratively) and reminded him that not everyone who can't do stairs is in a wheelchair, but I didn't. I was too ashamed of myself for not climbing the three flights of stairs and for inconveniencing everyone when I wasn't even in a wheelchair. I've learned a lot in the year and a half since then. Now, I would have said something, and I really wish I had then. People in wheelchairs aren't the only people with disabilities, people with visible disabilities aren't the only people with disabilities. Just because you can't see something, doesn't mean it isn't there. Besides, the prof was completely out of line for making the comment in the first place.

Rant over.

Nerd/Geek Wisdom of The Day

• Life is like a Super Mario game, you think you’re doing great and then you move up to the next world and it kicks your ass.
• Save points are the best invention ever. It's too bad life doesn't have them. 
• There's always something to learn. Never assume you know everything already. 
• Girls DO play video games/Magic/xyz board game/tabletop game, and we'll kick your ass at them. 
• Bronze yarn is really hard to find... 
• You're never too old to play with Lego. 
• Rogues do it from behind. 
• Just because you weren't born a hero, doesn't mean you can't become one. 
• True brilliance isn't always recognized.

 

• The people closest to you don't always give the best advice. 

That's all the wisdom I can think of today. DFTBA.

 

Hands Down Most Hilarious Excuse for Being a Dick Ever

So, I deal with the customer service for my local transit company on a regular basis. I have heard a lot of excuses from bus drivers or reasons why they were behaving like asshats, but the one I was given today was by far the most amusing yet.

The situation went down like this: I wear a knee brace; I need to have the bus lowered so that I can get on/off without pain. I have no problem asking for this, but lately, the drivers have developed a nasty habit of only lowering the bus halfway, leading to me having to ask twice. This happened recently with a driver, and I’d had enough for one day, so I called customer service. The supervisor called me back today to tell me that she had told him that there had been a fruit fly that she needed to kill, thus the need to stop pushing the button. She then told him that she had continued to lower the bus without my having to ask again. All lies… I definitely had to ask again, I didn’t see any fly, nor did I see her kill any fly. The supervisor responded to my statement that this was not how things had actually occurred with, “I HATE it when they lie to me.” I felt so bad for the guy… But, the driver’s excuse is definitely one to be remembered for the laugh.

Thoughts About Disablism

Since Blogging Against Disabilism Day (May 1 2012), I have been working my way through all the blog posts and enjoying them immensely. The posts have given me lots to think about and I always enjoy reading about other people’s experiences. I didn’t start this blog until after BADD, so I obviously didn’t write a post then, but I’m definitely thinking about disablism now and numerous thoughts have come to mind.

1.     Being disabled and being disablist/ableist are not mutually exclusive.

2.     There is a lot of anger about perceived “fakers” which seems to be leading to vigilantism and general ill-will towards people who don’t have visible disabilities.

3.     There are more inclusive ways of marking accessible parking locations. Something similar to this (http://www.grt.ca/en/accessibility/resources/Priorityseating.jpg) sign used increasingly on buses in Ontario could be one option.

4.     Disablism also comes from the parents of children with disabilities.

5.     I don’t consider Asperger’s Syndrome to be a disability in my case, but I can see how others might see it that way.

6.     It is disablist to say that the only thing that disables people is their attitude or their environment, but it is not disablist to say that the only thing that disables yourself is your attitude or your environment.

7.     I need to find out more about the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, particularly when it comes to people asking for proof of disability. Bus drivers, I’m looking at you on this one.

8.     Not being in a wheelchair does not make me a “lesser disabled person”, it makes me an invisibly disabled person.

9.     I refuse to use a cane simply to prove that I’m not a faker. It feels fake and I’m uncomfortable doing it. If people can’t understand that my brace IS a mobility aid, they can go screw themselves. I may still buy a cane, because there are days when I could probably use one.

10. Unrelated to disablism, but still something that has been weighing on my mind lately: I have decided that I’m opposed to the DSM V taking out the specific entry for Asperger’s Syndrome. This has come from discussions with parents of children on the “lower” end of the spectrum who believe that people with Asperger’s should not identify as having autism and who are irritated when they do. I think that lumping everything together will cause more anger for these parents and might have the impact of making services less accessible to people with Asperger's. I intend to write a more involved post about this decision, which may evolve.

11. Also unrelated to disablism, but related to BADD: there are A LOT of QUILTBAGPIPE bloggers with disabilities out there.

Some of these thoughts may become the subject of longer blog posts, but they’re all still being thought out and simmered for a while.  If you’re interested in reading some Blogging Against Disability Day posts, a list can be found here: http://blobolobolob.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/blogging-against-disablism-day-2012.html

Computers with Aspergers

 

I saw this posted on reddit and thought it should be spread around because it's a great metaphor and I found it really funny. I also appreciated it because it's an easy way to explain some aspects of asperger's to people. While this could also be achieved by recommending the book "All Cats Have Asperger's," I like computers much more than I like cats. On to today's borrowed brilliance:

Why Having an Invisible Disability is A Lot Like Being Bisexual

When I was a teenager, I identified as bisexual. I haven’t changed, but my perception of the world has, and I now identify as queer, for many reasons, which I will cover in a different post. What matters here is my experience with being bisexual and how it relates to my current experience as a person with two (mostly) invisible disabilities. 

The QUILTBAGPIPE community (http://yada.wikia.com/wiki/QUILTBAGPIPE) has a clear hierarchy in which white, cisgender, gay males are at the top, and everyone else is fighting for a place below. People who identify as bisexual are often ostracised within both the queer and “straight” communities because they’re neither fish nor fowl. Nearly everyone you meet assumes that you’ll change your mind and choose one team or the other. Some people do, and it certainly might look like I have (I’m engaged to an amazing woman), but many don’t and it’s hard to respond to that kind of attitude day in and day out.

Having an invisible disability is a lot like that. I was diagnosed as a child with Asperger’s Syndrome – an autism spectrum disorder. For me, it means I’m an extremely socially awkward nerd (when I’m not trying very hard to fit in, in that case, I’m just a regular socially awkward nerd). I stim, which, again, for me, means that my brain doesn’t work as well if my hand’s aren’t moving. I’m sure it is distracting for others, but I’m not really interested in stopping. (For more information about this, check out the Loud Hands Project). I get agitated in crowded spaces and woe betide anyone who shoves me or bumps into me repeatedly in a line. Mostly, it doesn’t impact my life that much, and it’s pretty much invisible.

My other mostly invisible disability is a poorly-constructed knee. I’ve been having trouble with my knee caps slipping out of place for about a decade (since I was about 13). The severity and frequency have varied over time, but in January 2011 I had an altercation with an icy Ottawa sidewalk that resulted in a serious injury. I still have pain a year and a half later, I’m still doing physio. I wear a complicated knee brace similar to those worn by people who have torn their ACL. You wouldn’t think that something like that would be invisible, but it is. People don’t see it, or they ignore it, or they don’t realize that I use it instead of crutches or a cane. It’s much more effective, and it doesn’t take up any of my hands so I can open doors and carry things AT THE SAME TIME! Because of this most recent injury, I cannot stand on the bus without excruciating pain and I need to have the bus lowered to get on and off safely. I need to use a ramp or an elevator instead of stairs. I’m not lazy; I’m just in pain 99% of the time and the other 1% of the time I’m trying to remain pain free. You’d think I was asking for the world the way people react to this.

What does this have to do with bisexuality? Well, there’s a hierarchy of disabilities too.  People are more aware of visible disabilities, and they’re more likely to know what to do around people with wheelchairs, other visible mobility aids, service dogs and white canes, but they’re less aware of invisible disabilities. When I ask to have the bus lowered or a seat in the priority seating, I get looks, comments and stares. I’m young and I don’t look disabled. This behaviour comes from people with and without disabilities. People with disabilities, in my experience, particularly those with wheelchairs or other very visible indicators of disability, often glare at people who they don’t think are disabled in order to punish them for using a seat or asking for anything. There is an almost constant rhetoric of who is more disabled and there is a feeling that people who don’t have anything obviously “wrong” with them are cheating or taking away from people with “real” disabilities. This needs to stop, you do not always know why people are asking for accommodations, and people with invisible disabilities can have equal challenges or even more challenges than people with visible disabilities. Please stop asking me to prove myself to you and remember that not all people with disabilities are in wheelchairs.