So, the Oscars changed the format to announce a presumed Boseman win that didn’t happen whilst denying accessibility to Hopkins, dissing two disability icons at once and setting up its own abrupt ending?
Tag: accessibility
First, as a part of this administration’s accessibility and inclusion efforts, starting today, we will have an ASL — an American Sign Language — interpreter for our daily press briefings. Today’s interpreter, Heather, is joining us virtually. The President is committed to building an America that is more inclusive, more just, and more accessible for every American, including Americans with disabilities and their families.
Source: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, January 25, 2021 | The White House
Hearing the words and getting a shout out sure is nice, especially after the open ableism and eugenics of the previous administration.
whitehouse.gov is modeling transparency and open government with a legible, accessible, and informative site that runs the open source software I contributed to for years, WordPress. Wanna help? Check the Easter egg in the source.
Ms. Morin herself has neurodivergent children, for whom virtual learning has been “a relief in a lot of ways,” removing the social pressure and sensory overload of an average day. “They’ve been so much calmer about school,” she said.
As nondisabled people rush to return to face-to-face interactions, accessibility threatens to narrow back to pre-pandemic levels. But the window is still open to make accessibility permanent, ideally under the guidance of people with disabilities, who used online tools out of necessity well before they became universal.
Source: Disability, Work and Coronavirus: What Happens Now? – The New York Times
My kids also prefer the sensory and social calmness of schooling at home.
Telemedicine and distributed education are accommodations our disabled and neurodivergent family had to fight for, usually unsuccessfully, that are now no longer accommodations because they have suddenly normalized. I’m cynical enough to expect to go back to fighting as soon as some sense of the old normal is reclaimed.
Screen reader users: If I have a descriptive caption for an image, do I also need alt text, or is that annoying redundancy?
Imani Barbarin launched another great accessibility hashtag, #AdaptTheFeed.
Writing ability is crucial, and distributed work only amplifies its importance.
Source: Distributed FAQ: How to Transition to Remote Work – Distributed.blog
A related thought from “Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools”:
Writing is too important because, though forms and structures will differ, writing is the path to power for those born without power. This importance lies not in how to write a “five‐paragraph essay” or a “compare and contrast” book review but in the capability to clearly communicate visions both personal and collaborative. Whether the work is a tweet that generates action when that is needed, or a text message to an employer, or the ability to convince others in the political realm, or the expression of one’s identity in a form that evokes empathy in those without similar experience, “communicating” “well” is a social leveler of supreme importance.
In both cases, methodology become less important than process. Our students read on paper, or through audio books, or through text‐to‐speech, or by watching video, or by seeing theater – or by observing their world. They write with pens, keyboards large and small, touchscreens, or by dictating to their phones or computers, or by recording audio, or by making videos, or by writing plays or creating art, or playing music. We do not limit the work by attacking those with disabilities or even inabilities – or even other preferences, because that robs children of both important influences and of theira individual voices. Multiplicities are an intention: We build the best collaboration, the deepest learning, when we expand the opportunities for complex vision.
Thus we begin by moving the teaching of writing from the training of a specific skill set toward an interpersonal art form that flows from students and builds communities. Then, through the reimagining of teaching places into “learning spaces,” we craft “studios” where all the technologies of school – time, space, tools, pedagogies – liberate and inspire rather than deliver and test. Then, using those recrafted technologies, we allow communication learning to flow.
Distributed work amplifies the importance of writing and is at its best when it provides tools and culture for making that writing an accessible equalizer supportive of neurological pluralism.
Written communication is the great social equalizer.
Remember this if you start to fear your Autistic child is spending too much time interacting with others online and not enough time interacting with others face-to-face. Online communication is a valid accommodation for the social disability that comes with being Autistic. We need online interaction and this meta-study demonstrates exactly why that is the case.
I couldn’t help wondering, since the study showed the durability of first impressions and the positive response to the written words of Autistics, with all visual and auditory cues removed, could we mitigate childhood bullying in any way by having a class of students meet first online, in text, and form their first impressions of one another in that format before ever meeting face-to-face?
Getting online was revolutionary and may have saved my life.
The difference between offline and online communication could not have been more dramatic.
Source: THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: Autism and the Burden of Social Reciprocity
See also:
It’s easy for people to dismiss online activism as somehow fake, or at least not significant. When it comes to disability in particular, that’s a mistake. Twitter is the most accessible real-time conversation. It is not perfectly accessible, but its text-based public nature allows people to talk to one another who have radically different modes of interacting with the world. People who have difficulty leaving their homes for reasons of physical or social disabilities, people who are blind or deaf (or both), who do not speak verbally and communicate by typing (regardless of appendage used to type), and those with other disability-related access needs can all use Twitter to talk to each other. I have been in wildly accessible physical spaces, with captioning, ramps, sign, and warnings about a lack of scent. It is possible to make accessible spaces, but Twitter brings us together by design. It’s a space, therefore, where the disability community can manifest as a powerful constituency. And it doesn’t hurt that both journalists and political operatives also hang out on Twitter.
Source: Where the Heck Is Joe Biden’s Disability Plan? | The Nation
Also: Bring the backchannel forward. Written communication is the great social equalizer.
if you are not budgeting for events to be accessible, what are you prioritizing over the inclusion of everyone?
Source: We Need to Fix Inaccessibility at Caucusing and Campaign Events – Rooted in Rights
rnbn 