maybe i’m wrong but??? disabled people sometimes need help??? and everyone should be okay with that???
for example: i am disabled. have two abled siblings. we are all adults; they’re a lot older than me. my siblings both have children. i get a lot of assistance from our parents. right now, i can’t work. right now i can’t go out into public spaces comfortably on my own (i can, but it’s hard and i prefer to have someone with me). that means i can’t shop for groceries alone; i can’t go out on necessary outings alone.
it looks a lot like i’m “coddled” and babied by my parents because of this, and my siblings are both so angry over it. they get so angry that i receive assistance. they talk about how they never do (which is extremely untrue). they talk about how unfair it is; about how i’m taking the easy way out. but they are abled. they have children and jobs. they take care of themselves extremely well–especially compared to me.
i get it. really i do. but look:
nobody who receives special assistance enjoys it. nobody likes being stared at while they get help. we all want to be able to say yes, i have a job; yes, i can take care of myself; yes, i am abled. but not all of us can.
i am an adult who is often seen as a child because of the assistance i receive and the life i lead. of course i don’t like it. nobody would like it. i hate “taking the easy way out” as my siblings and so many people refer to it. i want to be an independent human being. i want a career and a life. but right now i can’t; some people never can.
tl;dr some disabled people need help, and that should be respected. we aren’t taking anything away from abled people. we are getting the help we need to survive.
Like, 90% of infomercial style products were designed by/for disabled people, but you wouldn’t know that, because there is no viable market for them. THey have to be marketted and sold to abled people just so that any money can be made of off them and so the people who actually need them will have access.
I think snuggies are the one example almost everyone knows. They were invented for wheelchair users (Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a coat on and off of someone in a wheelchair? Cause it’s PRETTY FUCKIN HARD.) But now everyone just acts like they’re some ~quirky, white people thing~ and not A PRODUCT DESIGNED TO MAKE PEOPLES DAY TO DAY LIVES 10000X EASIER.
But if at any point you were to take your head out of your own ass and go “Hey, who would a product like this benefit,” that would be really cool.
This makes informational make so much sense now.
Like… of course there’s no reason for that guy to knock over that bowl of chips. However, the person it was actually designed for has constant hand tremors that would make this pretty rad, but since we don’t want to show that in a commercial, here’s an able bodied guy who can’t remember how gravity works.
Shit. Those commercials suddenly get a lot less funny when you realize it’s pretty much just people ineptly trying to mimic disability.
Or like the thing for the eggs? Like, oh, it cracks eggs perfectly, you only need one hand?
IT WAS DESIGNED FOR PEOPLE WHO ONLY HAVE THE USE OF ONE HAND.
Or the juice bottle pourer? For people who’re TOO LAZY TO POUR THEIR OWN JUICE? Or FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE DIFFICULTY BEARING WEIGHT IN THE HANDS.
It’s amazing how with just a few words by a few people, my whole perspective on something can shift entirely.
I feel so ignorant for never having realized this before.
Most people I know who own infomercial products are elderly, disabled and poor.
thank you – best public service announcement I have seen in a really long time
The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) was just reformed so that disabled people can’t sue public businesses for discrimination because it would be discrimination against that business.
50% of all US murder victims by police officers are disabled
Bathrooms, entryways, seating, parking, and other public spaces are segregated for disabled people
Disabled children are required to go to segregated schools
Disabled people can’t…
Get married without losing their health insurance which is a death sentence
Have savings accounts
Have more than $2000 at any given time
Own or inherent property
Own jewelry worth more than $100 or other items worth more than $500 without reporting them to the government
It is legal for a parent to murder a disabled child if they consider that child an undue burden
This is an extremely short list of things you are leaving out of your social justice
Here’s some examples awkward accessibility being a thing:
Your at a hotel that has a lift to get you from one sub-floor to another, but the lift can only be unlocked and operated by one specific person that the hotel now has to go find. Sure, they’ve made the entrance to the sub-floor is accessible, but now it’s a thing.
The buses are wheelchair accessible but the driver has to stop the bus, take 30 seconds to lower the goddamn ramp, move passengers out of their seats, hook up the straps and then secure you in the bus. Sure, they’ve made the busses accessible but now it’s a thing.
The restaurant has an accessible entrance, but it’s past the trash room and through the kitchen. Sure, the restaurant is accessible, but now it’s an insulting thing.
Here’s some great examples of accessibility not being a thing:
The train to the airport pulls up flush with the platform. I board with everyone else and sit wherever the fuck I want. Riding the train is accessible and not a thing.
In Portland, I press a button the side of the streetcar and a ramp automatically extends at the same time the door opens. I board in the same amount of time as everyone else. This is not a thing.
I get that it is difficult to design for wheelchair accessibility, but folks need to start considering the overall quality of the experience versus just thinking about meeting the minimum requirements.
For the love of all things holy please pay attention to this
This is why universal design is so important. I had a great class that focuses on applying universal design aspects of architecture into teaching. Accessibility ideally should be integral to the design in the first place, not added on as an after thought.
I’ve heard a lot of advocates of inclusion say things like “kids with disabilities work twice as hard as everyone else” or “my employees with Down’s syndrome never come in late or take a day off.”
This sounds like praise, but it isn’t.
The time disabled people spend working twice as hard as everyone else has to come from somewhere.
There are reasons why kids aren’t in school every waking moment. There is a reason why vacation time exists and why it’s normal to be late occasionally.
People need rest. People need leisure time. People have lives and needs and can’t do everything.
Being disabled doesn’t erase the need for down time. Being disabled doesn’t erase the need for play, or for connections to other people.
Working twice as hard as everyone else all the time isn’t sustainable. Praising disabled people for doing unsustainable things is profoundly destructive.
People with disabilities should not have to give up on rest, recreation, and relationships in order to be valued. We have limited time and energy just like everyone else, and our limitations need to be respected.
It is not right to expect us to run ourselves into the ground pretending to be normal. We have the right to exist in the world as we really are.
‘Believe it or not, there are still large portions of the population that are surprised that people with disabilities have babies. They may even be surprised that wheelchair users who have babies want to go on walks or run errands with their babies with them.’
A design made in conversation with wheelchair users, really intuitive. The stroller can be lifted over curbs and stand alone when needed.
The dos and don’ts of designing for accessibility are general guidelines, best design practices for making services accessible in government. Currently, there are six different posters in the series that cater to users from these areas: low vision, D/deaf and hard of hearing, dyslexia, motor disabilities, users on the autistic spectrum and users of screen readers.
[…] Another aim of the posters is that they’re meant to be general guidance as opposed to being overly prescriptive. Using bright contrast was advised for some (such as those with low vision) although some users on the autistic spectrum would prefer differently. Where advice seems contradictory, it’s always worth testing your designs with users to find the right balance, making compromises that best suit the users’ needs.
Wheelchairs are used for many disabilities; it could be very painful to walk, one may lack the strength to walk, have hyperflexibility, shortness of lung capacity, fragility of joints, muscles, skin etc.
REBLOG so people STOP harassing wheelchair users when they stand up and even WALK out their chairs in public.
I hardly ever add comments to posts but i feel the need to add on. A couple years ago i was in a wheel chair because of my chronic illness. I went to an amusement park with my school and each time we’d go on a ride the people who work there must ask if i was able to walk onto the ride. A lot of people found this offensive (my sister is working at disney world and she told me that whenever there is a wheel chair the cast members must ask if they are able to walk.) I of course told them i was able to walk and when i got out of my wheel chair i got so many bad glares. After that field trip i was bullied the rest of my highschool life because people thought i was faking it. It got to the point where these girls from church ended up breaking my wheel chair. Please please stop harassing people who use wheelchairs.
There are many times when due to breathing difficulities I’ve had to use a wheelchair or motor cart in the store or other places. That doesn’t mean I can’t walk or others can’t walk but it does mean we can’t go far and we do need the assistance. It’s no ones business judging people who need the help. No one should feel bad for using what the need when they need it.
I grew up with a bone deformity in my feet in ankles that was not visible to the eye and I was still able to walk. After walling for any more than about 30 ft my feet would begin to hurt so bad I could barely function. My family took a trip to disney world when I was 9 and I needed to use a wheel chair. I specifically remember hearing a woman scoff and growl about how lazy and disgraceful I was but also my family for raising such a lazy child. And this was just because I got out of my chair to go hug Tinker Bell. Please stop harassing wheelchair users who can still walk. You made an 8 year olds first trip to disney a lot worse than it should have been.
Keep telling your stories ❤
I remember a trip to the museum back when I was 10 and my Complex Regional Pain Syndrome was just starting to spread. I hadn’t been able to be in school much, so I was so excited to finally be able to be a part of a normal, exciting day with all of my friends. I hesitantly borrowed a museum wheelchair in lieu of using crutches; I felt very vulnerable and sort of embarrassed needing to be pushed around, but I wanted so so badly to be a part of the big day. After a couple hours, I set the wheelchair aside to go to the bathroom, and then lowered myself into it when I got back out. A museum guard went fucking ham, telling me I was lazy and entitled. I hadn’t fully explained my disability to a lot of my classmates, so when they gathered around to watch the shit show, I was so crushed and embarrassed. Because of that one incident, for years, I was hesitant to ask for extra help when I needed it and I ended up worsening my condition long-term. Respect ALL wheelchair users. Treat everyone you come across with respect. You are not always entitled to an explanation.
Gonna reblog this every time I see some foolishness on or offline about someone thinking a wheelchair user is “faking” because they stood up and walked some. This time it was a YouTube video and the comment section, a curse on both their houses!!!!
Dear folks who think these sorts of posts don’t do anything: A few years back, one of these kinds of posts was circulating in response to a that meme about “fakers” with the woman standing from her wheelchair. The folks talking there really opened my eyes to how common it is for a wheelchair user to still be able to walk (this despite the fact that I’d used one temporarily when flying with a bad knee injury and that my gran needs one occasionally when her arthritis is bad). Before that, it wasn’t really something I’d thought about much, and I admit I’d made those jokes and shared those memes out of ignorance and societal ableism/fatphobia.
A few months later, I happened to be with someone in the store and we saw a guy in a wheelchair get up to reach something. The person I was with was really offended and started making some fatphobic comment about how he was probably “just too lazy” to walk. I relied, “How do you know? There’s a lot of things that can make you need a wheelchair that aren’t paralysis. Heck, I used one when I was fifteen and had a really bad sprained knee because the airport wouldn’t let crutches past security and I couldn’t walk.”
“Oh. I didn’t really think of it that way.”
“It’s ok, just… do think of it that way next time. I can tell you from experience using one of those is a total pain in the ass. Trust me, he wouldn’t use it unless he needs it.”
Telling your story and how that shit affects you in real life has real-world consequences. So keep telling your stories. You make the world a better place because at least some of the folks reading them take it to heart.
I had an interesting series of thoughts at work today.I started off thinking of a solarpunk zombie apocalypse story – society has collapsed, survivours rebuild from the ashes with solarpunk tech and the like while dealing with zombies, marauders, bandits and other threats. I was enjoying the idea until I realised something:
The post apocalypse genre is inherently ableist.
How often do you see disabled people in post apocalypse fiction anyway? Not very – off the top of my head I can think of Eli from The Book of Eli, Tomonaga Ijiro and Joe Muhammad from World War Z (the book) and Davis, Jodie and Jennifer from Dead State. Everyone else, able-bodied and neurotypical, with nary a chronic illness in sight – anyone who isn’t 100% mentally and physically “normal” is left behind or dragged along with reluctance and openly considered “dead weight,” with no consideration given to that person’s skillset or other qualities they might have that could come in handy. Even people with PTSD – a perfectly understandable thing to have after the apocalypse – are often looked down on as being “weak” or “unable to handle it” and are rarely given any decent help or support from those around them.
The entire genre feels like it’s designed with this ableistic outlook in mind and while I acknowledge there is limited realism to it – a lot of people with chronic illnesses or disabilities do need support to work at their best ability, and most post apocalypse settings won’t have anything like this in place which will put many of them at risk – that doesn’t mean we have to drag it all along in our stories with no questioning of why. Just because some may not make it through doesn’t mean every single person who has a condition that isn’t 100% curable is going to vanish with them.
We can do better than stories that tell disabled people that they’ll be better off dead so they don’t drag everyone else down; that tell people with chronic illnesses that they are worthless; that tell people with mental illnesses that they are a drain on resources; that tell the neuroatypical that they are nothing more than liabilities. Even people that stay behind to care for their loved ones who have such a condition are seen as noble but naive and generally condemned by the narrative as unfit to survive unless they leave the person “holding them back.”
Given that (in my opinion) post apocalypse stories are about how we’d like to rebuild society if we had to start over, the fact that disabled and neuroatypical representation is so rare in the stories across this genre says so much about society, and none of it positive. Neuroatypical and non-able bodied people aren’t all magically going to go away just because society has, and their absence in your story just says more about your attitude than about any “harsh realities” of the setting you’ve created.
This is such a great observation, and I definitely think a big part of the appeal of post-apocalyptic fiction for a certain kind of reader and writer is that you get to wipe out huge swaths of human complexity with “They all just die but it’s not eugenics because the zombies did it.”
But I don’t think it has to be that way, and I think a solarpunk approach could be a great way to bring that out. It would be harder to write, sure, because if the nature of a setting is to say “any shortcoming is a justification for letting someone die,” then it’s got to be a much bigger deal to the protagonists to resist that kind of thinking.
But that also makes it a great kind of story to showcase exactly the kind of values it’s often used to condemn: to show a group retrofitting their friend’s wheelchair with a solar powered motor and all-terrain wheels, or using precious power and backpack space to keep a supply of insulin refrigerated, or all learning sign language to accommodate their deaf teammate.
You could show people not failing because they chose compassion over pragmatism — maybe even succeeding because of it. All three of those accommodations have advantages, too: the group member with a powered wheelchair can probably carry more than other group members,* if you’re hauling a fridge you can refrigerate more than just insulin, and sign language is a valuable silent form of communication if you’re in a world filled with hostile zombies.
The important thing is to show groups choosing to stick up for their disabled or neurodivergent** members and not be punished for it. Those group members don’t need to ultimately be the climactic key to success — in fact, that’d probably be a problematic way to take it, because it would end up re-emphasizing the idea that their value comes from their ability to be useful.
But showing them as fully realized contributing characters in the story, whose teammates care about and support them (and vice versa), and showing them all make it out alive, flies in opposition to the ableist nature of apocalyptic fiction.
Of course, fiction where the world as it exists doesn’t have to end for things to start to get better is also important. But I can see a lot of value in post-apocalyptic fiction that isn’t a thinly veiled excuse to start gleefully describing the tragic deaths of everybody not optimally equipped to serve the new libertarian/military grim utopia.
* I’m not actually sure about this point — if anyone reading has personal experience with the physics and practical concerns of using a wheelchair re: carrying capacity, and wants to correct me, please do.
** I know I don’t actually have any examples of neurodivergence in the post. I’m gonna keep thinking about that aspect of this but I don’t have anything atm.
This is all spot-on and speaks to an understanding of the genre I’ve developed, having formerly been part of the problem.
I used to be really into post-apocalyptic fiction, especially zombie-apocalypse settings. I actually had discussions with one of my coworkers about the suitability of our workplace for survival during such an event (conclusion: too many windows, we were probably screwed). From the perspective of where I was in my life at the time, it seemed like a good bit of fun and, hey, if it did happen, at least I’d be ready, right?
Then I became medication-dependent. Now, when I thought about the logistics of survival in a post-apocalyptic situation, I had to consider where the hell I would be getting my anti-androgens and estrogen from. I didn’t think about it before, even though I knew I was trans, because I didn’t realize how fundamentally I needed to be on the right hormones. These meds doesn’t exactly grow on trees, and I’d hardly be the only trans woman who needs the stuff and, well… suddenly it’s not as fun as it used to be.
Moving from one category to the other really soured me on the genre. I still watch it, read it, hell, I even write it, but it doesn’t have the same appeal to me that it used to. I think that’s the problem, really. Cisgender, able-bodied, neurotypical people don’t think about this sort of thing because it doesn’t affect them personally, just like I didn’t think about it when I didn’t think it affected me. To them, survival is a bootstraps thing — if you’re HARD and MAN enough (but not TOO MAN, as Walking Dead’s perfectly shaven ladies helpfully illustrate), you are rewarded with continued life. At least, until the writers decide there’s too many black men on the show and whoops, time for one to get bitten. If you’re not HARD or MAN enough? Well, that’s your own problem!
If we could get post-apocalyptic media to a less relentlessly heteromasculist and individualist place, I think that would improve things immeasurably. Right now it basically exists to soothe the fears of men that they are not, in fact, HARD or MAN enough, and if the world would just give them the chance they could prove it. I don’t think this is the cause of the ablism in the genre, but it sure feeds into it.
All this to say that an inclusive community-oriented solarpunk post-apocalyptic setting sounds amazing and I would read the hell out of it.
Self-reblogging to add that there’s an anthology about this very subject!
“Defying Doomsday is an anthology of apocalypse fiction featuring
disabled and chronically ill protagonists, proving it’s not always the
“fittest” who survive – it’s the most tenacious, stubborn, enduring and
innovative characters who have the best chance of adapting when
everything is lost.
In stories of fear, hope and survival, this anthology gives new
perspectives on the end of the world, from authors Corinne Duyvis, Janet
Edwards, Seanan McGuire, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Stephanie Gunn, Elinor
Caiman Sands, Rivqa Rafael, Bogi Takács, John Chu, Maree Kimberley,
Octavia Cade, Lauren E Mitchell, Thoraiya Dyer, Samantha Rich, and K L
Evangelista.”
It’s going to be out on the 30th of May (two days from now) and you can get it from Twelfth Planet Press or Amazon.
Steel Phoenix Studios 