The 411

I don’t get all the noise we’re hearing about Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather and who’s going to sit in what chair on what nightly newscast. I haven’t watched a network news broadcast in at least ten years. All of my news comes from the Net, NPR, and a few weekly magazines. Sitting through a 30-minutes newscast (20 minutes if you exclude the commercials) seems like a monstrous waste of time to me. If I really need a dose of television news, I’ll flip on CNN for a few minutes. In general, though, I’m not compelled to listen to the dronings of a bland white male on a daily basis.
I heard an interesting analogy yesterday. It was in the course of a discussion about the difficulties people with disabilities experience when trying to access the services they need, whether it’s health care, job training, housing, etc. Here’s the analogy: imagine yourself in the Mall of America. Scattered throughout the mall are directories that list vendors specializing in categories like clothing, electronics, books, overpriced food served in a creepy atmosphere, whatever. The directory shows you where the vendors are located in the mall, making it a relatively easy task to find them. Now imagine trying to navigate the mall without the directory. This is the struggle that many people with disabilities confront. There is an abundance of services and programs available to them, but most people have no idea that those services exist or how to access them. It’s this information gap that is one of the biggest sources of frustration for those of us in the world of disability policy. The success of a particular individual in accessing appropriate services is entirely dependent on the quality of information they receive from teachers, social workers, peers, and any number of other sources. And if that information is inaccurate or simply isn’t conveyed, the individual is denied services or opportunities that could make all the difference.