Which Kinds Of Ableism Do You See Most?

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Illustration of a laptop computer with a red pencil marking a box with a checkmark, symbolizing taking a survey

 It’s a fun survey! Which kinds of ableism do you see most? At the risk of reinventing the wheel, I've come up with my own categories, which I hope covers all the necessary bases. See some explanations below the survey.

 Why am I asking? Because I'm curious to see if there are any interesting patterns in the responses. Also, frequency of Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook references can only tell you so much about what people are really feeling and experiencing.

 Please feel free to share this with others. The more people respond, the better. I'll post results after about a month.

 Added note: In response to a question on Twitter, I ask that you report things you have either experienced yourself or witnessed happening to others ... but not things you've only heard about or read about. Thanks!

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

 Use of outdated terminology
  • Handicapped, differently-abled, special needs … or whichever terms you don’t like.
Insulting jokes on disability themes or using disability language
  • “I’m telling you, that guy is a total moron, a real mental defective!"
Snubbing, freezing out, shying away from social engagement
  • When it’s obvious someone is avoiding dealing with you because your disability makes them uncomfortable.
Condescending attitudes, speaking to disabled adults as if they are children
  • “Heeey buuuddy! That’s a pretty snazzy hat you’ve got there!"
Physical barriers that shouldn’t be there, could be removed
  • When you can’t even enter because of the way a place is constructed.
Explicit exclusion based on disability
  • “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to leave.” “We’ll need to see a doctor’s note if you want to participate."
Refusing to accommodate
  • “I don’t have time to deal with you … why don’t you bring someone to help you?” “But the policy says …” “If we let you do it that way it’s not fair to everyone else."
Assumed to be incompetent, unreliable, immature
  • When people ask the person with us instead of us. When we say what happened and people just don’t believe us; we must have misunderstood. Most employment discrimination.
Unsolicited advice
  • When someone we don’t know graces us with their brilliant idea about how to cope with a disability they know nothing about.
Held to a higher standard of polite behavior than most non-disabled people
  • It’s very important for us to be patient, civil. There’s no call to get mad; people just don’t know.
Administrative rules and procedures that impede our progress and independence
  • Nobody actually wants us to end up in a nursing home, dropped from college, denied benefits. It’s just policy.

Some Thoughts On Employment

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Penny Gould, Research On Disability / UNH - February 6, 2015

Comparing the employment data in the infographic above to a similar report from last September, it does look like more disabled people are getting into the job market … some actually getting jobs, others actively and intentionally looking for them. That’s good news.

I guess I’m part of the trend. After a year and a few months without paid work, I got a part-time job tutoring students in writing at a local community college. Right now it’s the perfect job for me, given my health and the state of my disability. You could say I am “under-employed”, but I am participating in the labor market and satisfied with my current situation.

Of course the big picture is that by every measure, employment for disabled people has been extremely very low for decades … probably for as long as anyone has bothered to collect statistics. What could possibly change those numbers dramatically? What could we do to bring “employment” and “labor-market participation” for people with disabilities up to, say, 50% or higher?

I used to think that the gold standard for disability employment was the traditional, 9-5, full-time job, in an office. I thought anything less, or anything less traditional, was a defeat or a cop-out. I still feel that way about sheltered workshops, “enclaves” (where all-disabled work crews go somewhere to do a job, basically in isolation), and businesses set up specifically to employ disabled people. In some cases, it feels like an important principle to stick to. In others, well, maybe it’s just a prejudice for me.

The thing is, I’m starting to think that the key to really moving the needle on employment for disabled people is to be open to a wider variety of work models. Part-time. Flexible schedules. Consulting. Working from home. Freelancing. Jobs crafted to fit a particular person’s abilities and talents. Seasonal employment. These kinds of models, coupled with firmer income support programs to fill in the gaps and self-adjust with the ups and downs of erratic employment, could make a real difference.

Which is not to say that anyone should assume that any of us has to work in some non-traditional setup, just because we have a disability. Plenty of us, maybe most of us, are fully capable of doing traditional full-time jobs The viability of “lesser” options should never be an excuse for relegating any of us to them if we want more. Also, non-traditional models need good policy development and vigilance, to make sure they don’t end up being exploitive.

It’s been a long time since I talked at length with a Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor. I wonder what they are thinking these days?
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More Like This, Please!

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I found this first on a blog called Doing Wheelies, and later posted on Facebook by Emily Ladau of Words I Wheel By. It would be great to see more “infographics” like this dealing with other disability-related statistics. I’m pretty sure most people have almost no idea at all what the key numbers are regarding disabled people.
Historical Facts 1869 was the year when the first wheelchair patent was issued in the United States. In 1933 mechanical engineers Herbert Everest and Harry Jennings invented the first steel, lightweight, collapsible wheelchair. 1933-1945 United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used a wheelchair in everyday life. Top 5 Wheelchair Accessible Countries to Travel to: Canada United States Australia United Kingdom New Zealand Top 5 Cities in the United States for Wheelchair Living: Seattle, Washington Portland, Oregon Reno, Nevada Albuquerque, New Mexico Denver, Colorado Best Vacation Destinations for Wheelchair Users in the United States The Skydeck in Downtown Chicago Silverstrand State Beach in Coronado, California The National Sports Center for the Disabled in Winter Park Colorado Facts and Numbers $2.9 Billion expected for the manual wheelchair market by 2018 $3.9 Billion expected for the power wheelchair market by 2018 There are an estimated 3.3 Million wheelchair users in the United States and the number is increasing every year The demand for wheelchairs is increasing due to the large need among the baby boomer generation 98% of public transit buses in the United States are equipped with wheelchair accessible ramps One out of every two taxi cabs in New York City will be wheelchair accessible The wheelchair industry revenue grew at an average annual rate of 2.5% from 2009 to 2014 There are about 2 Million new wheelchair users every year 1.825 million wheelchair users are the age 65 or older 17.4% of working-age wheelchair users have jobs 11.2% of adult wheelchair users have graduated from college, compared to 21.6% of the general adult population Sources: http://www.ibisworld.com/industry/wheelchair-manufacturing.html http://dsc.ucsf.edu/publication.php http://www.friendshipcircle.org/blog/2012/06/06/32-vacation-destinations-for-individuals-with-disabilities-or-special-needs/ http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2012/aug/24/accessible-holidays-disabled-people http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelchair http://www.christopherreeve.org/site/c.mtKZKgMWKwG/b.6150343/k.F282/Top_20_Most_Livable_US_Cities_for_Wheelchair_Users.htm https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb10-ff13.html http://www.doctorsreview.com/history/feb07-history_medicine/ http://www.disabled-world.com/disability/statistics/mobility-stats.php
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Schools Of Thought

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Word cloud around the word Ideas
It seems like one of the main differences within the disability community is over how disabled people actually interpret the importance of disability itself. They aren’t quite in conflict, but it often seems like there are two schools of thought about how to think about and above all explain disability to the wider society:

1. Disability doesn't matter.

Disability doesn’t define me. Look past my disability and see the real me. I have a disability, but it doesn’t have me. See my abilities, not my disabilities. Social acceptance and equal opportunities require people to see people, not their disabilities. We need to stop labeling people! People are people, and we all have some kind of disability. Disability is just one thing about me, like the color of my eyes or my aptitude for math.

and

2. Disability matters.

Disability is an important part of who I am. Disability isn’t a bad thing anyway, so I don’t need you to “see past it”. It doesn’t feel like a compliment when people say, “I don’t think of you as disabled.” Other people inevitably define me by my disability, at least partly, so it would be foolish for me to pretend otherwise. Disability really does impose hardships, as does the social stigma that comes with it … that’s just a fact. Disability isn’t just an characteristic I can shed; it doesn’t define me, but it greatly influences who I am. I don’t have to convince you that disability is no problem at all for me to show that I’m competent and capable.

Which school of thought you prefer has a huge effect on how you approach just about every possible disability issue. These different approaches also seem to underlie just about every conversation we have about disability.

It’s kind of obvious, but worth repeating, that there’s truth in both approaches. But I really think it’s important to figure out which you tend to use.

Thoughts?

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A Non-Soppy Disability Love Story

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3-D illustration of the word "Love", with little red hearts
Ben Rowe, Press-Republican - February 14, 2015

Here’s a rare sentimental disability story that I actually enjoyed reading.

I’ve written before about the mixed messages sent by stories of paralyzed people going to great lengths to “walk” down the aisle at their weddings. What bothers me most about them isn’t that some people want to do it. The real problem is that disabled people who choose instead to wheel down the aisle ... like they wheel everywhere else in their lives ... don’t get heartwarming newspaper stories written about them. Meanwhile, the people who do go to Herculean efforts to walk a few steps are portrayed as heroes, while their voices, and the stories of their everyday lives tend to get short shrift.

That’s partly why I liked this story about Michaela, a young woman who lives in my neck of the woods, who I’ve met and know a little bit. It helps that I know her, of course, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t spend 24-7 pining after a cure. At any rate, she reserves at least some of her time and energy for actual living, working, and of course loving. The story starts with her walk, but quickly becomes about Michaela and Kyle. It doesn't ignore her disability, or minimize it, but puts it into context. The story is really about more than her walk down the aisle. It is about Michaela and Kyle’s relationship, affected and given unique shape by her disability, but in other ways quite typical.

The story is heartwarming without for a moment being maudlin. We hear more from Michaela and Kyle than we do from parents, therapists, or the journalist. These are rare qualities in human interest journalism focused on disabled people. It’s even more admirable from a small-town newspaper, when so-called giants of journalism regularly give us much worse.

Above all, I’m left with an important reminder, that these stories of “recovery” are also part of disability culture, in that they are important to many disabled people. The issue we sometimes have about these stories is how they are reported, and whose voices are and aren’t heard. The stories themselves are fine, and deserve to be told.

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Blogiversary II

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3-D illustration of a cake with 2 candles, with "2 years!" printed underneath
Two years ago today, I hit “Publish” on my first blog post at Disability Thinking. It didn’t take long for blogging on disability issues to become a more or less daily habit, which is exactly what I hoped would happen. My ambitions for a more complex, full-service website haven’t really panned out, but that’s because I don’t really think we need one. I did add the Disability.TV Podcast last year which I’ve enjoyed doing but needs a lot of work, growth, and consistency to become really good to listen to … by which I mean entertaining. Just recently, I started adding weekend link-ups, which I hope will become a reliable place to visit, for the best, most interesting disability blogging.

I don't expect to add any new features before Disability Thinking’s 3rd Anniversary. That said, I am always interested in hearing ideas for how disability-based blogging and social media can become more fun and influential … both for the disability community itself and for the world at large.

Of course, there’s always the possibility of a facelift … new colors, graphics, fonts, and widgets.

You can always contact me with ideas, or post them in the Comments below. You can reach me at:

Twitter: @AndrewPulrang

Disability Blogging Link-Up

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Word cloud around the word Blog

Another Friday … another Blogging Link-Up!

Use the doodad below to post a favorite blog post or article on something related to disability.

In the "Your name" blank, type the name of the author or website, and the title of the article or post. For instance:

Disability Thinking: Best Disability Post Ever!

In the "Your URL" blank, paste the whole website address of the article you are posting.

Then click the "Enter" button. That's it!

Note: If your post doesn't appear immediately, try "refreshing" the page a few times. Sometimes it takes a little while to show up. Also, feel free to post more than one item. Finally, you might want to add a comment at the bottom of this post, to identify yourself or add an explanation or comment about the items you are posting.

Have fun posting and reading! This Link-Up will close at Midnight Eastern on Sunday.

Don't Be Distracted

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Photo of a stack of newspapers with "Breaking News! in bold headline type
David Ferguson, Raw Story - February 10, 2015

The thing to remember about these incidents where people in caregiving positions lose their shit and spew vile ableism, is that it’s all too easy to focus on the awfulness of the individual.

I’d bet real money that behind this principal’s rant is what she considers a coherent, probably brave and rational philosophy of disability and education. It seems like she believes that most of her students are horrible monsters … probably not truly “disabled” in her eyes … who are far too coddled and indulged. She seems to think that the kids are deluded, too, and need to be told in the harshest terms that they are regarded by others as inferior, and will continue to be so unless they shape up. She’s there to whip them into shape and tell it like it is. If this is anything like her thinking, she is not alone.

It’s also important to note that this kind of ideology and behavior flourishes much more easily in segregated, disability-only “special needs schools” and classrooms. Fewer people see what happens there every day, and the “special needs” moniker is like a protective halo, shielding everyday practice from scrutiny and criticism.

The terrible irony, of course, is that there are probably quite a few families who chose to place their kids in this school because they feared they would be ground down and bullied in a “mainstream” environment. Separate and special often sound “safe”, when in fact, they are just as often the exact opposite.

 It's about more than a terrible person. It's a terrible system.
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The Definition Of Ableism

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Photo of a stack of newspapers with the words "Breaking News!" in big bold headlines
Elizabeth Picciuto, The Daily Beast - February 10, 2015

This is a great article on an important development in the legal rights of parents with disabilities.

This is how disability discrimination works. The whole issue is based on the premise that any disabled parent is less able to be a parent than any non-disabled parent. Yes, it appears the social workers cited a few specific instances of parenting flaws, but they are so minor and occasional that it looks like they sought out those incidents in order to check enough boxes to justify their pre-determined decision.

I suspect what happened is that one or two specific HHS workers got it into their heads that the mother is a mess of some sort … not inspiring confidence or some such “vibe" … and they’re sticking to their guns out of a mixture of what they must view as bravery and highly personal conviction.

For what it’s worth, I can imagine myself doing something like this, too. I can picture myself meeting a young woman and her parents and just not liking them, or maybe being weirded out by them. Maybe they’re super-religious. Maybe they come off as big time nuts-and-berries hippies. Maybe they don’t believe in vaccination. Maybe it’s one of those families that's adopted like 15 disabled kids. There are all kinds of things that might set off my personal alarm bells. But none of them alone would justify taking a child away from her mother and giving her to foster parents. The difference here is that conventional wisdom still supports the idea that disabled people make suspect parents.

Again, that’s the definition of disability prejudice … of ableism.

The part that really baffles me is how the role of the grandparents seems to have been forgotten. Did the social workers take a dislike to them, too? Or, did they initially not even realize they were in the picture, and never reevaluated when it became clear the mother wasn’t even planning on raising her child alone?

Finally, take a look at some of the comments to the article. Of course she’s incapable. The baby will suffer so she can have her rights. She’s probably going to crank out more and more babies. Lovely stuff, all based on broad generalizations and not at all on the specifics of this situation.
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