Weekly Reading List
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A collection of disability-related articles and blog posts I read last week, but didn’t have a chance to link to or discuss. It’s an opportunity to catch up with some of the good stuff that’s out there, but doesn’t fit neatly into the week's “big stories.”
Dr. Peter Rosenbaum, Bloom - June 18, 2015
Cheryl M. Jorgensen, Swiftalk - November 10, 2014
Rachel Kassenbrock, The Mighty - May 16, 2015
Three straight-up advice lists, all from writers who I am pretty sure don’t have disabilities. Ordinarily I would be skeptical, and I was at first, but these articles all include good ideas worth reading.
Beth Parker, KTTV Los Angeles - June 18, 2015
Stuff like this will continue to happen much more frequently than can be explained by pure happenstance. These are unfortunate omissions, not deliberate exclusions. But they happen more often because people continue to treat disability concerns as “special” issues and afterthoughts. My guess is that someone thought of accessibility the night before, called the company, and the company said “no” because nobody had asked them about it earlier. Or, someone at the company originally said, “of course we’ll accommodate a wheelchair user,” but kinda forgot to write it into the contract or work order or whatever. Plan it all out, then, if you remember, ask about accessibility. That’s the way things happen, and it does say loud and clear where disabled people come on most peoples’ and organizations’ priority lists.
Ari Ne’eman, Autistic Self Advocacy Network - June 18, 2015
No offense to our many great leaders, but I wish the disability rights movement as a whole had a few more leaders as eloquent as Ari Ne’eman is for the autistic community. It’s a real bonus that he often includes the broader disability community in his statements of principle.