Disability Perspectives – Page 13

Top Ten Reasons Why the Blind Can't Get Ahead

10. The public still thinks blindness is a great misfortune.

9. Vocational and orientation-mobility training are horrifically funded—that is, its left up to the states and nonprofit organizations when it should be offered by every eye clinic and billable to Medicare.

8. Blindness advocacy organizations fight amongst themselves like the characters in “Gulliver’s Travels” who start a civil war over the question of which end of the hard boiled egg to break first—the big or small one.

7. Just try using a cell phone or a Macintosh pc. I mean “off the shelf” “ready to go”—just try it.

6. Just try using a PC “off the shelf” without expensive “third party software”—just try.

5. Just try going to a movie and asking for audio description.

4. TV can’t be watched—probably a good thing.

3. Bank machines; vending machines; signage; endless roulette of incomprehensions…

2. Blind students drop out of college at higher rates than other disabled student groups. See above problems.

1. Access to printed or electronic information remains highly provisional. Thank you Google; Microsoft; Apple; Adobe; Mozilla; Sun Micro Systems; and all the rest of you bongo whacking Information Technology designers who continue to think of the blind as “add on” people. In Disability Studies we call this principle “the defective people industry”.

Why am I posting such a riposte on Memorial Day? Ask the Blinded Veterans of America.

S.K.

Of Parchesi and Blindness

Do you remember playing "Parchesi"?

You’d roll the dice and move your wooden nubbin up a row of squares until you jumped a row and arrived at another identical and deterministic block of squares.

Parchesi, like most board games was originally invented as a soft way to kill time.

Basically it was a pastime for palace courtesans who had to wait around until the King came home.

It’s what you played while you wondered if your head would be cut off at sundown.

Lately the news has been filled with stories about the decision by a Federal Appeals court in favor of a lawsuit calling for the U.S. Treasury to issue "blind friendly" money.

I think any reasonable person would agree that having currency that the blind can identify is a good idea. Heck, those Europeans (you know, those people who make better hair care products and automobiles) have been issuing "blind friendly" money for years.

The Parchesi game starts when one group of blindness advocates disagrees with another group.

The lawsuit calling for accessible money was filed by the American Council of the Blind, a national blindness advocacy organization located in Washington, DC.

Continue reading “Of Parchesi and Blindness”

Iowa blind advocates (Steve being one of them) disagree over court ruling on paper money

Advocates Disagree…(click for complete article)

Updated May 20. 2008 6:04PM
By Diane Heldt
The Gazette
diane.heldt@gazettecommunications.com

A federal appeals court ruling Tuesday that paper money — indistinguishable by touch — is discriminatory to blind people was hailed by some advocates as a long-awaited step forward, while others said a change is unnecessary and plays into negative stereotypes about the blind.

Blind people have adapted and often fold money to distinguish the bills, but no longer would have to rely on others to help them if the Treasury Department makes bills of different sizes or prints them with raised markings, supporters of a change said.

"What’s at issue here is the ability to identify money without other people helping you," University of Iowa English Professor Steve Kuusisto, who is blind, said. "My view is, the most accommodations possible help the most people. To be opposed to accommodations that help people is narrow."

The American Council of the Blind sued for such changes, but the government has been fighting the case for about six years. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruling could force the Treasury Department to alter money, though the ruling is subject to appeal.

Continue reading “Iowa blind advocates (Steve being one of them) disagree over court ruling on paper money”

Blind professor helping UI students, doctors see disabilities in a new light

Steve Kuusisto, an English professor at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, also has a joint appointment in the Carver College of Medicine as a "humanizing agent," helping educate doctors about disability issues. In this video, Kuusisto talks about his blindness, interacts with his students and discusses his current career ventures. GazetteOnline video by Michael Barnes.

LINKS:

Project 3000

May 16, 2008

EDUCATION
Opening others’ eyes
Blind professor helping UI students, doctors see
disabilities in a new light

By Diane Heldt

The Gazette

IOWA CITY — Blindness is thought by many to be a great calamity,
still viewed in 19th-century Dickensian terms, says University of Iowa
professor Steve Kuusisto.

But the reality, says Kuusisto, who has been blind since birth, is that
his talking computer, his guide dog and public transportation allow him to do
most anything sighted people can.

“It’s not an obstacle to having a good job and a full life,” he said.
“Nobody has to have a second-class life. Really, the sky’s the limit.” That
philosophy, the 53-year-old Kuusisto said, fuels a new vision of disability
that is emerging. That vision moves away from viewing people with disabilities
as “defective,” he said, to finding ways for technology and society to help
them lead the richest, fullest lives.

It’s a vision Kuusisto (pronounced COO-sis-toe) brought to the UI last
fall when he joined the faculty as an English professor with a joint
appointment in the Carver College of Medicine.

At the medical college he is a “humanizing agent” who helps educate
doctors about disability issues. UI officials hope Kuusisto bridges the goals
of disability advocates and health professionals.

“I’m probably the firstever poet named to a faculty of ophthalmology,”
Kuusisto says with a smile.

Continue reading “”

Track 61 Revisited

The Today Show this morning featured a story about the abandoned train siding located under New York City’s historic Waldorf Astoria hotel, a section of rail known as "Track 61". (View HERE)

Because American news shows are largely "info-tainment" this story was presented as a piece of espionage: this site has been secret for decades—hidden from the public; never discussed; "hush-hush"; and these assertions are partly true. What is a partial truth?

Invariably a "partial truth" is a narrative about disability. The "track 61" feature this morning is no exception.

The rail siding beneath the Waldorf was built for wealthy hotel guests in order that they might arrive directly at their lodgings without having to leave their private railroad cars.

During President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration this private section of track was converted to an accessible rail platform, complete with a freight elevator that could accommodate the president’s automobile.

President Roosevelt could in effect depart his rail car by using his wheelchair; transfer to his Pierce Arrow convertible; drive the car aboard the elevator and then roll out onto the streets of Manhattan.

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin appeared briefly during the Today Show segment and pointed out that the president didn’t want the public to know that he couldn’t walk. This is partially true.

F.D.R. was in fact "out of the closet" about the fact that he had polio. He championed the search for a cure for the disease and promoted the rehabilitation facilities at Warm Springs, Georgia. The Roosevelt’s played a major role founding "The March of Dimes". Yet despite his public acknowledgement that he had an illness, F.D.R. felt that it was imperative that the public imagined that he could stand on his own.

Nothing would have been more politically damaging for F.D.R. than to be seen being lifted in and out of his car or being helped to his feet by the secret service.

The president mastered the art of shuffling forward while wearing painful iron leg braces that held him severely upright. He used the prodigious strength in his upper body to move these metal leggings forward.

The crucial component in this ruse was that the president would never be seen needing assistance.

The "Track 61" site was one of many special rail platforms constructed in order to stage manage the president’s arrivals and departures.

This is a story within a story within…

The rail siding beneath the hotel wasn’t a secret. The elevator that could lift the presidential car was a secret.

The siding has remained hidden from public view because subsequent presidents have reserved the option to exit the hotel through this underground egress.

In the meantime, New York City has fought long and hard to prevent people with disabilities from having easy access to the subway system. How sad to realize that we’ve known how to do this since the forties. How sad to sense that at least in part this secret might well have been furthered by a city that didn’t want to invest in disability accessible subways.

As they say in New York: "I’m just sayin’"

S.K.

What If?

I walk around just as any pedestrian walks save that owing to my blindness I manage each day to get lost in "soft" ways—to borrow an Irish term. The Irish say that it’s a "soft day" when it’s raining ever so gently.

This morning I was softly lost in a drugstore in Iowa City. I was on my way to the office and I found that I really needed some over the counter sinus medication and I made a little detour into the CVS Pharmacy that’s adjacent to the university’s main campus.

I managed to get lost in a way that most people won’t recognize, which is to say that I found my way correctly to the proper area of the store and I even managed to get the attention of a pharmacist who was able to help me with my purchase. All of this was plain vanilla.

Then a young guy started talking to me. He liked my dog and just wanted to chat. And soon I was talking to him about his Ph.D. in physics and his course of study.

Even this isn’t really about getting lost—conversation is after all a form of cultured distraction and Thank God for that!

This young fellow is working on semi-conductors—chiefly in the area of maximizing their energy efficiency.

And I got lost not because of the technicalities of what he was saying but because I began thinking about how much money the current forms of assistive technology cost and how in turn if we could make a leap to more efficient forms of micro-processing we could by degrees imagine a leap to a new kind of technology that would be customizable and affordable for blind people and others who have disabilities.

I was talking this afternoon to a fine gentleman who sells pocket pcs for the blind and we agreed that the cost of the product we were discussing is very dear.

Current technology that can really help the blind and visually impaired costs a lot to manufacture and to sell.

Why should this be so?

Why can’t we start customizing technologies out of the box so that specialized applications are no more expensive than mass production devices?

So today I got lost not because of my blindness but because the literary writer in me wants to know how to make a leap of engineering and of physics.

I’ve been walking around in the soft sensibilities ever since.

I think we are very close to some significant leaps forward. I may be feeling a bit like Lana Turner, waiting to be discovered in the drug store.

S.K.

The Big Picture

I don’t believe in identity politics anymore.

I gave up on the idea that my disabled identity was in any way
singular when my nation began bombing Iraqi children and civilians with
a slogan for god’s sake: “Shock and Awe”.

We have destroyed Iraqi hospitals, neighborhood housing, electrical
generating plants, and all with the goal of devastating every woman,
man, and child in sight. As a human rights activist I realized that the
Pentagon’s campaign meant that I couldn’t spend any additional time
imagining that my disability is a meaningful category of humankind.

I used to think otherwise. I liked imagining that being blind I was
oddly singular in terms of suffering. Blind people are more likely to
experience unemployment than the general population. I have experienced
at various times the degradations of social services and food stamps.

Nowadays I see that my hardships are part of a generalized policy
that’s aimed at putting as many people into straightened circumstances
as possible.

While western leaders talk about installing democracy in the middle
east they unleash terrible violence on that very region and create
disabled soldiers and civilians with astonishing efficiency.

The Iraqi people who suffer disabilities as a consequence of U.S.
foreign policy are out of luck. Veterans who come home to the U.S. with
disabilities are only provisionally better off—depending on where they
live they may or may not get good medical and rehabilitation treatment.

So I’m an angry blind dude who believes that we are living in
inhumane times and that the American people are not sufficiently
disgusted by the spectacle of what nowadays is called “collateral
damage”—as if a slick euphemism can disguise the fact that we have been
maiming innocent people as a matter of policy.

Don’t tell me that the children of Iraq are the same as Al Qaeda.
Don’t tell me that we can’t look after people who are the victims of
war. I won’t believe you.

I see disablism and ableism as constituent components of a larger
and terrifying inhumanity that is repugnant. Human rights cannot be
sequenced or sub-divided anymore. The dignity of all life depends on
this principle of unity.

I suppose I sound like Eugene Debbs. I’m sleepless when I think of the suffering of others. I really am.

Am I still fighting for disability access? You betcha. But I want to
be at the victory celebration where the elderly and the young, the
trans-gendered or gay people, or those who emigrated from Mexico are
accorded equal dignity. I’m chilled to the bone by the corporate
fascism that seems to have clouded our age.

S.K.

Take This and Weep

Dizziness or fainting may occur upon standing. That’s if you take a certain widely prescribed anti-depressant.

As of today we can apply this medicinal warning to the act of voting in the United States.

According to the Supreme Court the state of Indiana is perfectly within its rights to require voters to own a photo I.D. and to present it at polling stations. I wonder how many "mainstream" citizens know that voting in these United States is already nearly impossible for people with disabilities and that this latest requirement will likely make it even harder for pwds to participate in the democratic process?

How do you acquire a photo I.D. if you don’t drive? Can you get one at the local post office? Of course not…

You must go to the division of motor vehicles. Try getting there if you’re mobility impaired and without a car and driver. I’d personally like to see Antonin Scalia navigate his way to the division of motor vehicles using a wheelchair in an average American city where you will find nothing like a sidewalk.

During the 2004 presidential election in Ohio people with disabilities were prevented from voting owing to insufficient accessible facilities and unendurable four hour waiting lines. Such conditions are of course unacceptable for any citizen, but if you have a disabling issue these circumstances will effectively prevent you from casting a vote.

The situation is worse if you’re blind and you want to cast a ballot without the assistance of a polling station volunteer. While promises are made that new electronic voting machines will be "blind friendly" they are often unworkable and the volunteers in poling places don’t know how to make them function.

So here’s the bottom line: citizenship is now officially provisional in the United States. You need to have a valid driver’s license to vote. You better be able to get to the division of motor vehicles despite the fact that these places are not easy to find if you have a disability. And stop whining. If you’re unable to drive there’s obviously something wrong with your character.

Stock up on those anti-depressants. Now that citizenship for people with disabilities has been marginalized by making voting largely inaccessible you should not be surprised to find that additional forms of inaccessibility will be perfectly fine with this court.

Yes. I’m feeling dizzy. Will they make an affordable drug that disguises feelings of genuine persecution?

S.K.

Your Contribution Wanted: Blogging Against Disablism

You’ll find this post in it’s entirety (and so much more!) over at The Gimp Parade:

It’s time to be BADD!

Once again, the amazing Goldfish is sponsoring Blogging Against Disablism Day on May 1st. BADD is an annual event where disabled and non-disabled bloggers everywhere write about ableism, disablism and disability prejudice and discrimination.

Last year over 170 bloggers contributed. I’ve been proud to be a part of this the past two years and I can’t wait to see what everyone has to say this year.

Details on how to participate are at Diary of a Goldfish, including a notice of Language Amnesty. Goldfish explains:

You
can write on any subject, specific or general, personal, social or
political. In the previous two BADDs, folks have written about all
manner of subjects, from discrimination in education and employment,
through health care, parenting, family life and relationships, as well
as the interaction of disablism with racism and sexism.

It’s
a good chance for allies to get their feet wet on a topic they might be
hesitant to address, I think. Hope to see you there.

(Image description: The above logo for Blogging Against Disablism Day is one of several available —easy copy-and-paste code
— at Goldfish’s. This one is a square divided into a headline naming
the event and a grid of 20 colorful boxes, each featuring the simple
shadow of a person, with one box showing a person using a wheelchair
and one other person holding a cane.)