Over 19 million views in less than a week. This video is everywhere. It also has nothing to do with disability. But I’m taking a day off from blogging, and it is the happiest YouTube video I have ever seen. So, enjoy:
For the record, the second happiest video I have ever seen is one of the first YouTube videos I ever saw:
Ashleigh Livingston, Press-Republican - August 2, 2015
The local Center for Independent Living, where I used to work, is essentially asking the City of Plattsburgh, New York to do a new ADA Self-Evaluation and Transition Plan. The local newspaper did a pretty good article about the effort, and about accessibility here 25 years after the ADA passed.
Joseph Shapiro, National Public Radio - July 31, 2015
I am so glad to see a more in-depth story of Haben Girma, who introduced President Obama at the White House’s ADA Anniversary event. I have no trouble saying that she is and inspiration, in all the best ways and none of the gross ways the word is sometimes used.
It seems like a good idea to pass a Canadians with Disabilities Act modeled after the ADA. I don’t know if it is it would address the most urgent issues for disabled Canadians, but I suspect it would get a decent amount of support from all of the federal parties. What caught my eye is that Rick Hansen in my mind is more of a traditional “inspirational” disabled celebrity … inspirational in the super-crip, syrupy way that makes me gag. Yet, he’s using his notoriety to promote real, practical changes in policies and laws. It would be great if more disabled people who become famous for superficial or personal reasons would redirect the public attention to they have earned towards practical disability issues.
I am adding this to the long list of think pieces on the ADA for two reasons. One, it’s by a parent of a disabled child, and I’ve been curious about how “special needs parents” view the ADA. Two, Ellen makes a strong point about the fact that it takes massive time and resources to pursue an ADA violation claim with any sort of credibility. It takes money, but also long-term commitment and laser-like focus. Most disabled people and their families just don’t have these resources.
Speaking of parents … Carly Findlay did all us disability bloggers a huge favor by helping map out the tricky philosophical and ethical territory around parents blogging about their kids with disabilities. I really appreciated her strong advocacy and warnings about privacy and dignity, but also her understanding about why parents might be tempted to cross the line.
The Disability Visibility Project is an absolutely essential stop on any tour of disability on the Internet. It should be a daily stop for anyone interested in disability issues. Here, curator Alice Wong links her project with the current most pressing disability issues … the work left to be done, and maybe the next big steps for the Disability Rights Movement.
“Expertly plotted and beautifully written, Seinfeld was, above all, a celebration of juvenility, a paean to the sense of community that can arise when a group of wholly irresponsible inadequates bonds over a shared scorn for / loathing of the outside world.” — Sarah Dempster, The Guardian
In this episode of DIsability.TV and the next, we will examine how the show handles disability themes and disabled characters. What should we make of potentially offensive and upsetting disability stories, in a comedy about dispicable people? When is bad behavior on TV a satire and condemnation, and when is it just plain bad? And not for the first time, we ask what happens when disabled characters are given no voice, and used as mere props and plot devices.
Are you ready for another Disability Blogger Link-Up? As always, you can post anything you like, as long as its related to disability.
Technical note: To make the links easier to browse, in the “Your name” blank, type the title of the article. In the "Your URL" blank, paste the address of the item you are posting.
Then click the "Enter" button. That's it!
Have fun posting and reading! Please also share this with others. It's a good way to build our community and give exposure to new disability bloggers.
This Link-Up will close at Midnight Eastern on Sunday. Look for the next regular Disability Blogger Link-Up starting Friday, August 14, 2015.
22 years in Independent Living and I never saw this video about Ed Roberts until yesterday. There’s nothing in it I didn’t know from other sources, but I really feel like I missed out not seeing this much earlier in my Independent Living career.
The video does have a bit of a corporate instructional film feel, but focus on the words, which are as relevant today as they were in the early ‘90s. In fact, I am amazed at how current the content really is. Just update the technology from a “word board” to an iPad, make the music a little more energetic, (or just get rid of it entirely), shoot it in high-res digital, and this could be made today.
Sadly, we don’t have Ed Roberts anymore. He died in 1995. But, there are other people still living who share Ed Roberts’ philosophy and commitment. You might find them working at your nearest Center for Independent Living. If you want to understand what Centers for Independent Living are and what they are supposed to be, this video is an excellent place to start.
Shared Abilities just posted what I hope will be a series of items where parents of kids with disabilities “Ask Andrew” questions about what it is like to grow up from being a disabled child into a disabled adult. Obviously, I have mainly my own experience to draw from, and it’s not like everything went exactly the way it’s supposed to for me. But I figure the failures and shortcomings taught me just as much as the victories.
There’s probably going to be some kind of engineered showdown over funding Social Security Disability here in the United States. Disability activists are going to be pulled in a few different directions. Should we join the effort to “reform” the program and risk validating benefit cuts and narrowing eligibility? Or, should we line up to defend the program as it is, and miss the opportunity to reduce work disincentives and make other improvements we’d actually like to see?
Before we get too far down the road, we should pay careful attention to what’s been happening with “welfare” cuts in the UK, including cuts specifically affecting disabled people:
"One thing the welfare bill accomplishes is to put people who have failed a fitness to work test on to the same payment as people who have passed it, like some tent-revivalist preacher tipping sinners out of wheelchairs and screaming “Walk!” Who would have thought that electing people who hate the welfare state to run our welfare state could go so badly? In practical terms this change means people with things such as MS and Parkinson’s will lose £30 a week. That extra £30 a week was there because, sometimes, chronically ill people’s bodies don’t work so well and they might have to get a bus or a cab or pay the babysitter to stay for an extra hour so they can get to and from the latest humiliation from the Department for Work and Pensions."
This is from an angry article in The Guardian about the Labour Party, the UK’s main left-of-center party that historically has fought for the welfare state and defended the UK’s poor and working class. It’s roughly … and I mean very roughly … equivalent to the US’s Democratic Party. Yet, apparently they are pretty much going along with the Conservative Government’s austerity policies, which include a two-faced stance on disability policy.
Publicly, they use the language of empowerment and confidence in disabled peoples’ ability to work and be self-sufficient, while policy-wise they cut benefits and make everyone who gets benefits prove to poorly-trained bureaucrats that they really do need their government support. Meanwhile, they nudge and wink and tisk-tisk about “welfare scroungers."
It sounds familiar. The same kind of thing could easily happen here, if we aren’t very careful.
By the way, £30 a week, £120 per month, is equivalent to almost almost $47 per week, $187 per month. That's more than the cost of a few lattes.
This morning, a disability activist here in Plattsburgh emailed a bunch of people this Op Ed piece I wrote for the Plattsburgh Press-Republican newspaper about the Americans with Disabilities Act, just before it was signed into law on July 26, 1990.
When I saw what it was, I had a moment of dread. I couldn’t remember writing it, and I wondered if it would be embarrassing. In fact, it’s not bad.
On thing I noticed is that there are actually very few people making the libertarian argument against the ADA anymore. Apart from a few think-tank theorists, hardly anyone uses the ADA as an example of government overreach anymore. That’s a good thing, but also a bad thing. It’s good that we mostly don’t have to deal with ideological opposition anymore. But it’s also disturbing because it is further evidence that most people don’t see the government as an active participant … a cheerleader maybe, but nothing anyone feels afraid of anymore.
Any residual venom seems to be reserved for a few lawyers, and for disability activists.
Anyway, enjoy this pre-ADA, pre-Web, pre-Blog, pre-Disability Thinking snapshot from the archives.
This week I am posting links to articles I have collected the 25th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The “mainstream” press rarely covers disability issues in any sort of depth. That’s why I decided to stick with the more journalistic pieces, even though most of what I have read about the ADA this week was on personal disability blogs and social media sites.
It’s all about the video above, which I have posted before on this blog. As the man in the video says, there’s a fine line between empowerment and pity. I think there are two key factors. First, it seems like the capitol crawlers wanted to do it, and came up with the idea themselves. Second, they did it for their community, not for themselves.
Robert L. Burgdorf Jr., Washington Post - July 24, 2015
This is the kind of history I love, and I’m amazed at how little I knew about the origins of the ADA. But to me, this is the most important sentence:
“After conducting consumer forums around the country, NCD concluded that discrimination was the biggest problem facing those with disabilities."
It’s easy to forget what a radical conclusion that was at the time. For many today, it’s still a surprise and a revelation that disability discrimination is, in fact, worse than disability itself.
News stories about ADA lawsuits usually make them sound either vaguely sleazy or unrealistic and selfish. This article shows how lawsuits are sometimes necessary to move progress along, and ensure justice for individuals who need it.
The Title I employment provisions may be the least successful part of the ADA, if success means a major shift towards employment for all people with disabilities. But I don’t think the ADA was really designed to deal with macro-level employment gaps. It’s better suited to dealing with very specific individual employment matters. And as a civil rights law, the ADA has nothing at all to do with preparing people for jobs. It removed some barriers to entry, but it was never meant to push people through.
Ananya Bhattacharya and Heather Long, CNN Money - July 26, 2015
Reading about the blind man at the start of this article, I wonder for the millionth time why there aren’t more disabled people who file complaints and sue under the ADA when faced with such straightforward discrimination and lack of accessibility. But it takes resources to pursue complaints and lawsuits, neither of which are likely to make the plaintiff more employable. Especially with employment discrimination, there’s something missing in the ADA, but I don’t know how it could be fixed.
Did the ADA make it harder for disabled people get jobs? It’s an interesting thought that makes some kind of sense, but I’m not convinced the law has been a net negative. After reading this article, I have the feeling that for many of us, the problem is that we are distracted by so many little inaccessibilities, discriminations, and disincentives before we even get to the workplace, and I think employers sense that. They might not think, “I don’t want to hire a disabled person,” but they will think, “This person’s life is too complicated, how would she stay focused on the job?” If the rest of our lives were smoother and more secure, I think we’d be more convincing in the job market.
I agree with Dot Nary’s strategy of letting smaller businesses go with some education, while saving really aggressive advocacy for the big companies that “should know better.” In rural towns like mine, though, that might not be enough. The bigger companies are all on the outskirts of town, and are mostly accessible by now. It’s just that a lot of disabled people can’t get there. The businesses they can reach tend to be smaller, in those old downtown buildings that ALL have steps up and narrow doorways. Eventually, something has to be done about them, too. And after 25 years, “eventually” is, arguably, now.
***
I have to say I’m disappointed that neither of my two favorite news websites, Vox.com and FiveThrityEight.com have posted anything about the ADA anniversary. I wonder if these were conscious editorial decisions, or just carelessness.
I’m going to take a couple of days off from blogging. I’ll be back Sunday, July 26, 2015 with a collection of my favorite articles about the 25th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. ----------
