Weekly Wrap-Up
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Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Friday, April 3, 2015
Saturday, April 4, 2015
#DaredevilDVP
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Disability Visibility Project - April 4, 2015
Netflix’s live-action “Daredevil” TV show may turn out be the biggest disability on TV story of the year. Based on the Marvel Comics series about a blind superhero, the whole first season of “Daredevil” will be posted at once on Friday, April 10. Alice Wong of the Disability Visibility Project will host a live Tweeting event starting 8 PM Eastern, under the #DaredevilDVP hashtag. We will be posting Tweets while we watch the first episode. Anyone interested is invited to follow and participate.
I am not a comic book fan. I never have been. Nor have I clicked into any of the superhero movies and TV shows of the last 30 or so years. Going in, my interest is mainly curiosity about how Daredevil’s blindness is portrayed.
There is a familiar stereotype baked into the premise … that being blind intensifies the other senses. It’s a popular idea that is only partially, if at all true in real life. I'll be interested to see whether making these heightened senses "superpowers" will make them more of a blindness stereotype or less. Also, as far as I know, the actor, Charlie Cox, isn’t blind. That is disappointing, and puts me on alert for possible inaccuracies and shortcuts in the portrayal of a blind man. On the plus side, it looks like Daredevil might be trained and advised by another blind man. That kind of peer mentoring is one of my favorite things to see in disability on TV.
I will try to keep an open mind. If it’s a good show overall, then I’m prepared to be pleased if blindness is just another factor, the way paralysis is a factor, but not always a crucial one for “Ironside,” a less fantastical disabled TV crime fighter.
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Disability Blogger Link-Up
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Use the whatsizdigas below to post a blog post or article on something related to disability
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something you want to share.
To make the articles easier to browse, in the “Your name
” blank, type the title of the article.
In the "Your URL" blank, paste the whole website address of the thing 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. Look for the next Link-Up Friday, April 17, 2015.
Making Accessible Campaign Propaganda (ahem) Materials
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BBC News - March 26, 2015
I am not aware of anyone in the United States making a high-profile, publicized attempt to produce political campaign materials specifically for voters with intellectual disabilities. It sounds like a worthwhile thing to do, and a pretty interesting task.
For one thing, there are so many types and shades of intellectual disability ... which I believe is what the BBC means when they say, "learning disability".
And how, exactly, does one "translate" a party platform so that intellectually disabled people can understand it? What does "simplifying" mean? Do you take out all the metaphors and colloquial phrases? Do you use shorter words and fewer compound sentences? How does "large print" help an intellectually disabled person with (most likely) normal eyesight?
Or, is it about more than grammar and font size? Are there social studies texbooks designed to teach adults with intellectual disabilities what "liberal", "conservative", and "libertarian" mean? Do you try to alert intellectually disabled voters to opaque, misleading slogans that all sound good, even when they contradict each other?
Throwback Thursday
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A year ago in Disability thinking … Day Off.
A year ago today the weather was nice enough to tear me away from blogging. Today it might snow.
Disabled TV Character Face-Off: Sixth Round
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In the fifth round, Walter “Flynn” White, Jr. beat Max Braverman.
Here is the updated bracket:
Round six pits John Bates, of Downton Abbey, against Bran Stark from Game Of Thrones. Which character do you like best?
Actor: Brendan Coyle
Disability: Limp from a leg wound.
Role on the show: Secondary character in ensemble cast.
Actor: Isaac Hempstead Wright
Disability: Paraplegia.
Role on the show: Secondary character in ensemble cast.
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Video Of The Day
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Jared Sosa, BuzzFeed - March 29, 2015
I have to offer a light rebuke to Mr. Sosa, for saying that Santina has “been in a wheelchair since she was 5 years old.” I’m not sure, but I suspect that at the time of filming this, she’d been in a wheelchair since she got up that morning.
I found this because Tonia of "Tonia Says” linked to it and gave her own interesting answers to the questions Santina answered.
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Two Ways To Improve Disability Journalism
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It would be so nice if journalists would stop using weird synonyms for “disabled” … like handicapped, mentally challenged, and wheelchair-bound. We say it all the time, but they keep appearing in news stories. Just say “disabled” and leave it at that.
Now that we have that out of the way, there are two other ways journalists can improve coverage of disabled people and disability issues. These are, I think, a bit more important:
1. Always look into the potential systemic, structural aspects of seemingly individual stories.
Personal stories of adversity, struggle, and triumph are appealing, but a lot of the problems disabled people face have their roots in laws, policies, and practices that affect other disabled people, too. Yet, many stories about disabled people fail to even address ways that individual disability problems might be solved in more permanent, systematic ways. This reinforces the rather lonely and discouraging idea that dealing with a disability is a solo endeavor. It also gives cover to people and institutions that perhaps should be doing more to make life better for all disabled people.
Example: The story of an Austin, TX high school student with Cerebral Palsy who raised over $80,000 to install push-button automatic doors at his high school. It’s a legitimately uplifting human interest story, but a reporter might have asked why the school wasn’t paying for the modifications, since accessibility is part of schools’ responsibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
2. Never print or air a story about disabled people without talking to and quoting disabled people.
The principle here is “Nothing about us without us.” It is a phrase with a long lineage in the disability rights community, but it is just as applicable in journalism. Normally, reporters will at least try to get a direct quote from every individual named in a story, to get their perspective on the issue and not just another person’s impression of their perspective. When it comes to disability stories, however, the standard seems to slip. It’s quite common in stories about disabled people to never hear directly from disabled people. Instead it seems to be considered acceptable to have parents speak for disabled children or youth, and agency staff to speak for “their clients.” It is true that a few disabled people can’t speak for themselves, but that is a very small number if you allow for “speaking” through non-verbal or adaptive means. Most people with intellectual disabilities, too, have meaningful things to say about their lives and experiences. In fact, a reporter at times may be in a unique position to give a public voice to people who are, intentionally or not, often left out of discussions that have a direct impact on their lives.
Example: TV coverage of the Bilodeau brothers, the Canadian Olympic Freestyle skier and his brother, who has an intellectual disability. Frederick, we are told, is a huge fan of his Olympian brother Alex. On camera he seems like he could have meaningful, specific things to say, but he is never interviewed, and none of the reporters even mention any attempt to speak to him directly. This happened the same way over multiple interviews with the athlete and the rest of the family, over two successive Winter Olympics. There is every indication that Frederick absolutely does idolize his brother and loves watching him win. The point is that he has never voiced those feelings to the world, in his own words, and we don’t know why.
For Senate
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Mark Murray and Carrie Dann, NBC News - March 30, 2015
As a Democrat and a disabled person, I am very excited about Rep. Tammy Duckworth running for Senate. I think it’s also interesting that her opponent, Sen. Mark Kirk, is also disabled … recovering from what I recall was a very serious stroke. How will the disability factor play out when both candidates are disabled? Do Duckworth and Kirk have different perspectives on their disabilities? Do they talk about them differently from each other? Or, will their individual approaches to disability just cancel each other out, making disability entirely irrelevant? I look forward to finding out.
I am also thinking that it might be fun to start following all of the major 2016 election campaigns that include candidates with disabilities. I don't tend to think that having more disabled people in Congress or more disabled Governors would necessarily make for better policy, but more of us being in office might have broader, more abstract positive effects on the disabled community.