stillness is a lie, my dear
The world of discrimination is rarely one of grand, sweeping gestures, though they do happen. More commonly, it comes in the form of sly, everyday, sneaky presentations, which some refer to as ‘microaggressions.’ The little things in life, conscious and subconscious, that remind people they do not belong and their humanity is something open for […]
Defining ‘disability’ can be a slippery thing. There are definitions government agencies use for the purpose of demographic studies and addressing requests for reasonable accommodations. Workplaces, educational institutions, hospitals, and long-term care facilities use their own definitions, and within the disability rights movement, there are many ways to conceptualise disability. This is not, in other […]
I am a huge advocate for universal design, because it improves everyone’s lives. If you dedicate resources at the start to making spaces accessible, you save money in the long term in addition to making environments more welcoming to all — and you might be surprised by who will benefit from accessibility. It’s not just […]
Resistance to accessibility often centres around cost; it’s too expensive to accommodate people with disabilities, so we should make do with whatever we can get. In particular, there’s a heavy focus on the cost burden for small businesses, by which people usually mean owner-run establishments that may have a handful of extra employees. While it […]
Last year at FWD/Forward, I wrote about the role that the good cripple archetype has in accessibility and accommodations denials. The idea that people with disabilities should be meek and quiet and grateful for what they have plays directly into why it can be so difficult to get accommodations. Either you must be a good […]