Tag: inclusion

I updated “Disclosing You’re Neurodivergent at Work” with a selection from “Neurodiversity: Paving the Way to Universal Design Inclusivity in the Workplace”.

As I’ve witnessed, the opposite approach to universal design inclusivity leads to the likelihood of increased segregation, such as the implementation of entirely separate hiring processes for job candidates who have a specific neurological difference. Neurodiversity isn’t meant to be a means of setting individuals apart. Siphoning a member of a marginalized community into a separate process leads to discrimination. Imagine if we encouraged all women to go through a segregated hiring program! It’s easy to see the problems with such an approach — and the benefits that universal design inclusivity can bring in its stead.

Source: Neurodiversity: Paving the Way to Universal Design Inclusivity in the Workplace

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.

Disabled people already have to give up our privacy just to access basic services, support, and accommodations. We have to deal with consistent, lingering beliefs about fraud and deceit that lead to implementation of policies like Electronic Visit Verification, which subjects disabled people receiving publicly funded support to increased scrutiny.

Source: How to center disability in the tech response to COVID-19

This is forced intimacy. It’s the opposite of inclusion, and it is exhausting.

Solve for the Infinity

Selections from “Thriving at Work While Autistic, Introverted, Shy, and Otherwise Different: Part 3” on intersectionality, equality, equity, and autism at work:

Abundantly confident people who are energized by competition and enjoy a bit of a fight (typically men, extroverts, and those without conditions associated with higher physiological reaction to stress) may feel that all others should be happy to play by their rules. And if some are not, then these others are flawed, and perhaps even inferior.

Equality is not equity. The most well-intentioned mono-focus equality programs, such as gender-based, assume homogeneity within the group – but groups are not homogeneous, and the most privileged in the group benefit the most. White women benefit more than women of color. Affluent women benefit more than poor women. Those without disabilities benefit more than those with disabilities.

When the system is blind to intersectionality, those with multiple intersectional backgrounds get squashed by that seemingly unbiased system.

And the most insidious thing about systemic discrimination is the built-in gaslighting mechanism.

The system makes you think it’s your fault.

Except, autism is not a problem. It’s a solution. When there are too many variables to solve for, it makes sense to solve for the infinity – the symbol of both the infinite number of possible intersectionalities and autism acceptance.

There is rarely a need for special mechanisms for each intersectional identity. The same practices that would allow my autistic self thrive would allow every other aspect of me to thrive. Transparency, psychological safety, consideration of human differences in legitimate options for work organization, scientifically-developed job descriptions, the inclusion of a wider variety of voices – the same practices would make work better for all people. The same practices will make organizations more productive. When there are too many variables to solve for, solve for the infinity – for the infinite number of all possible intersectionalities, by embedding foundational principles of justice for all into systems and processes.

Source: Thriving at Work While Autistic, Introverted, Shy, and Otherwise Different: Part 3

See also:

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.

Disability, Hiring, and the Glass Staircase

I would argue that for a lot of graduate jobs, there’s a significant barrier to entry for neurodiverse and disabled people. I like to call this barrier the “glass staircase”. YouTuber Gem Hubbard is a wheelchair user and has a great video on the concept, but I’d like to extend her metaphor beyond physical impairments because I believe it provides a useful framework to understand the job-hunting process for those with invisible or neurological disabilities too.

For all intents and purposes, the “staircase” is the relatively streamlined application process for jobs, that appears simple to non-disabled people, but which has plenty of obstacles for disabled people.

While it’s possible to negotiate the staircase when companies meet an individual’s access requirements, this often requires disabled applicants to put in significantly more time and effort than their non-disabled peers. We are constantly dependent on other people to allow us to continue in the application process without disadvantage.

Having to explain the same thing again and again at different stages, to different people, at different employers, is mentally strenuous and time-consuming – and used to regularly makes me wonder if what’s at the top is even worth it if it’s so much of a hassle getting there.

Source: Serena Bhandari – Jobstacle Course | Touretteshero

Via:

Imani Barbarin launched another great accessibility hashtag, #AdaptTheFeed.

Neurotypicality is a grounding narrative of exclusion. The neurotypical is the category to which our education systems aspire. It is the category to which our ideas of the nuclear family aspire. And, it is the category on which the concept of the citizen (and by extension participation in the nation-state and the wider global economy) is based.

In the context of education, which is the one I am most knowledgeable about, the mechanisms for upholding the neurotypical standard are everywhere in force. Every classroom that penalizes students for distributed modes of attention organizes learning according to a neurotypical norm. Every classroom that sees the moving body as the distracted body is organized according to a neurotypical norm. Every classroom that teaches predominantly for one mode of perception is organizing its learning according to a norm. Every classroom that knows in advance what knowledge looks and sounds like is working to a norm.

Intelligence, understood as the performance of a certain kind of knowledge acquisition and presentation, is built on the scaffold of neurotypicality as the unspoken norm. To speak of the normative tendencies of education is not new. My concern is with what remains largely unspoken in that conversation. Having “special needs” classrooms upholds neurotypicality, for instance, as the dominant model of existence. Drugging our children because of their attention deficit is upholding a neurotypical norm. Sending our black and indigenous children to juvenile detention centers in disproportionate numbers is upholding a neurotypical norm which takes, as neurotypicality always does, whiteness as the standard.

Source: Histories of Violence: Neurodiversity and the Policing of the Norm – Los Angeles Review of Books

The joyful celebration of pluralism through song perks me up when the world gets me down. I started an inclusion song playlist. What should I add?