I’m preparing for a weekend with my brother, which will likely include a certain comic book movie and perhaps a little collaborative gaming. I leave you with a video of adorable tykes with disabilities riding around in miniature powered wheelchairs. Oh, and May the Fourth be with you.
The Atlantic Monthly Technology blog has a great post on how people who are blind have embraced the iPhone after initially dismissing it as an inaccessible slab of glass when it was first introduced. What changed? Apple made great strides in improving the accessibility of iOS and clever app designers exploited the hardware capabilities of each successive iPhone model. But some advocates worry that the blind are now becoming overly dependent on the technology:
Yet for all that technology has helped achieve, many in the blind community fear it might result in illiteracy in the generations to come. “I think the technology that’s coming out right now is wonderful,” says Chalkias,”but I also think it’s dumbing us down because it’s making everything so easy. I have a lot of teens who have speech technology and they don’t know how to spell, and it’s horrifying to see that.
I’m hopeful that mobile computing will eventually be embraced by those of us with severe mobility impairments, but that day may not arrive for at least a few more years.
A few months ago, I wrote about the plight of Charles Van Heuveln, a man with a physical disability who had worked for many years as a school aide. He was being forced into retirement and poverty because Minnesota’s Medicaid buy-in program (Medical Assistance for Employed Persons with Disabilities) was not available to anyone over age 65. His story earned a lot of local media attention and it served as a catalyst for legislative efforts to change the law. Yesterday, Governor Dayton signed a human services bill that includes provisions allowing workers with disabilities to remain on the buy-in past age 65 if they choose to keep working. Another provision allows workers with disabilities to keep their retirement savings once they do stop working.
Congratulations to all the advocates–including Van Heuveln–and legislators who worked together to pass this legislation. Little by little, workers with disabilities are beginning to enjoy the same benefits of working as their able-bodied counterparts. I look forward to the day when I can retire without worrying about losing my nest egg.
This post is part of Blogging against Disablism Day.
I’m not much of a winter sports enthusiast, but plenty of wheelchair users enjoy getting out and playing in the snow. Unfortunately, wheelchair tires don’t navigate the stuff very well. But a clever Swedish inventor has developed a simple ski attachment for wheelchairs. They aren’t for sale yet, but I look forward to the inevitable YouTube videos of wheelchair users wiping out on the slopes.
Salon looks at the controversy surrounding The Undateables, a new British documentary series following the efforts of people with various disabilities to find romance. As you might expect, the show’s title doesn’t sit well with a lot of disability activists. It’s worth noting that in the trailer for the series, the “Un” is dropped from the rest of the word in a way that I guess is meant to be cutely subversive, but instead strikes me as pandering.
I haven’t seen the show (although I’ll try to track it down through the usual back channels), so I can’t comment on its treatment of the subject. But a quote in the Salon article from a British blogger with a disability struck me:
That said, Egan does take issue with the actual content of the series. “My problem with the show is its obsession with ‘confidence,’” she says. One of the issues with “the confidence rubbish” is that “there’s an element of victim blaming going on,” she explains. “If you’re disabled and you can’t get a shag it must be because you’re just not confident enough. ‘It’s nothing to do with our prejudices, oh no. It’s you. You must try harder.’”
I also received a lot of well-meaning advice about being confident as I coped with my own dating struggles. And I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to be that confident guy without totally losing the self-awareness that has served me so well in other respects. After a while, I decided I was being too hard on myself. We all battle insecurities; some of those battles are just more visible than others.
Perhaps I will be part of that small segment of the population that remains unpartnered for the vast majority of their lives. It’s not the kind of life most people would idealize, but it’s certainly not the worst fate imaginable. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be devoid of sex (a topic to be addressed in my still-under-development companion blog: The 19th Floor After Dark). Or perhaps I’ll meet an amazing woman tomorrow who doesn’t mind that I come equipped with a couple additional orifices. However things turn out, the ride is sure to be interesting.
I often deride Stephen Hawking, my arch-nemesis, for being a bit of a publicity hound. “Stephen,” I say in between our zero-g practice bouts aboard the Vomit Comet, “have you ever met a camera that you could say no to?” But Hawking’s position as the world’s most famous gimp might not be not be such a bad thing for the rest of us. If his testing of brain-computer interfaces allows me to one day browse my collection of fishnet-themed photography with just a few eye blinks, who am I to begrudge the man his stardom?
But that doesn’t excuse his constant trash-talking. The man recently questioned my parentage using language that would make Al Swearengen blush like a schoolgirl.
Tonight got away from me, but I wanted to post this video of a man with a visual impairment using Google’s prototype autonomous car to get around town:
I’m always cautious about overhyping new technologies and I don’t expect to see fleets of robotic cars on the road for at least several more years, but the video does illustrate how valuable such vehicles could be to people with disabilities. Access to reliable transportation is a huge barrier for people living with all manner of impairments. Public transit and paratransit are certainly available to many, but do little to help people living in rural or exurban areas. The ability to get in a car and be safely driven to one’s destination of choice would be a life-altering experience to those of us who have always had to rely on human assistance.
Of course, whether such a car would be affordable to most people with disabilities is a question for another time.
Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the tip.
For a gimp, I’ve taken my share of risks. I moved to another state, traveled overseas, and engaged in various other activities that are best not mentioned here. But I have not been tossed over the side of a bridge with a bungee cord attached to my wheelchair. The woman in the video below did just that.
Many items remain on my bucket list–admittedly, a good third of them involve women in fishnets–and this is not one of them. It’s good to know that other gimps are blazing that particular trail. You can read more about the young woman’s exploits here.
Thanks to Kassie for the tip.
I stumbled upon this YouTube video demonstrating the Tecla Shield, a device that allows people with disabilities to operate iOS devices using a single switch.
It appears to use some sort of scanning function to navigate and use apps. I’m not sure I’d want to type many e-mails using this method, but it might suffice for basic web surfing and watching video. Pricing information for the Shield isn’t available yet, but I’ve contacted the developer to find out more about its capabilities. Perhaps I can give it a try with my iPhone to see how well it works.