Accessibility

Adding a personal touch to the Disability Rights Movement,”Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution

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To begin “Crip Camp”, the viewers are introduced to a cast of colorful people all who attended or worked at Camp Jened. The cast is comprised mostly of people with disabilities so they offer a rarely seen view on the 1960s and 1970s. Each cast member gives their accounts of their time at the camp, not at camp and how it impacted their views on life. The film transitions to focus on the campers’ life after the camp, in particular the community they had become for each other. Many of the campers were in the frontlines the Disability rights movements allowing the viewer to get a more in-depth view of the protests for the enforcement of the Architectural Barriers Act.  A while providing examples of why it was necessary. The film provides context and details for a not necessarily informed audience well, making it a good introduction to the disability rights movement. The use of personal narratives allows more complex issues for the disabled community, such as access, independence, and sexuality, to be shown in way that person with no background knowledge in disability studies can digest. “Crip Camp” is a great guiding piece when introducing the fight for Disability rights to a new audience. It hooks the viewer with personal details, sometimes employing nostalgia to invest the viewer but the film does not rely too heavily on this tactic. It remains relatable to both a younger and older demographic, making perfect to introduce disability studies to older teenagers.

The films central message discusses how inclusion and exclusion affect the lives of disabled people. The start of the film is sets up view of the campers’ lives in a place where they felt included, where they had access to live life. One camper is makes a remark about never being sidelined at Camp Jened, relating to a broader aspect of access,” linked to a more inclusive society with greater opportunities for social and political participation (pp.15),” as put by Bess Williamson in Keywords for Disability Studies. Williamson asserts that the issue of access has two distinct facets that occasionally limit each other, one the access to be a citizen, to be a person and the other to have the ability to enter and move about a space(pg.14-15). The films central conflict the occupation of the San Francisco federal offices, Highlights the fact that physical access allows people to access their citizenship and personhood, but first they need to be seen as person by those limiting their access. The film overcomes this barrier easily by displaying the person first then calling for better access.

The film is most suited for an audience who has passed their late teen or is actively in their late teens. There are a couple points in the film that would need to be skipped due to graphic language, but for the most part they are not central scenes to main conflict of the film, they are just a couple of many scenes humanizing the campers. Due to nature of film’s topic a certain level of maturity and care is needed in the audience to get the full extent of the film’s message. That being said, for people to grow into this film’s ideal audience, showing them “Crip Camp” and discussing it with them is great step to take. I do urge any teachers thinking of showing “Crip Camp” to consider their classes and what type of discussion would be the most productive for their class. “Crip Camp” is a film with layers and certain groups may attach to one layer over the others, so any discussion or viewing should not be structured like a one size fits all.  Also some background information on the ADA, ABA and early disability rights movements may be necessary to contextualize parts of the film. 4/5

referenced sources:

Willianson,Beth, “Access” ,Keywords for Disability Studies.  Edited by Adams, R.Serlin, D., & Serlin, D. H. (2015). NYU Press. pp.14-17

Shining a Light on Disability Visibility

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Disability Visibility, edited by activist Alice Wong, is a collection of short personal essays written by a diverse group of disabled writers about their experiences with disability. As stated in the book’s back-cover blurb, “One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some are visible, others less apparent-but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture.” This fact necessitates a book like this one, because if disability is one day able to be seen as the norm, rather than a negative deviation from it, then nearly seventy million people in the United States will have their lives improve with the subsequent focus on necessary accessibility that many of the writers in this book advocate and create for themselves and the members of their community.

Among other uses, this book can give people with disabilities a sense of unity, faith in themselves and others in their capabilities to create change in the world, inspiration to tell their own stories, as well as a guide for building the healthiest relationship with their disabilities possible. For those who are nondisabled, this book can give them more awareness about the lives of people with disabilities, and help them recognize poor media representation that attempts to dehumanize disabled people. Reading this book can also inspire them to look within their own discourses for area where accessibility is needed so the responsibility of advocating for and creating it isn’t entirely placed on those who need accessibility.

One story in the book focuses on how an astronomer who became visually impaired during the height of her career. “How a Blind Astronomer Found a Way to Hear the Stars” by astronomer Wanda Díaz-Merced follows how she innovated her entire field by creating a technique of analyzing supernovas through sound, when previously, astronomers were only able to analyze them through visual reconstructions from data. This kind of novel innovation opened up an entire scientific field to people with visual impairments, and was only possible because of Díaz-Merced and a few of her colleagues’ determination to create accessibility. She states that, “If people with disabilities are allowed into the scientific field, an explosion, a huge burst of knowledge will take place” (Díaz-Merced. 173).

Another story called, “Imposter Syndrome and Parenting with a Disability” by writer and activist Jessica Slice who has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome focuses on her self-worth in regards to motherhood. She expresses in the piece that she is often unable to provide for her son in a way that other mothers based their identity of motherhood on, mainly in regards to physical activity. However, Slice gives the perspective that although she may not be able to pick her son up or drive him places, she is able to give him the emotional attention and steady presence that the children of nondisabled parents often lack from their caregivers. She writes that, “Love isn’t a collection of capacities, of practical contribution” (Slice, 132).

One last story overview is about “If You Can’t Fast, Give” by Muslim actress and comedian Maysoon Zayid, who has cerebral palsy. She expresses how Ramadan, or month of fasting that takes place yearly in Islam is not a requirement for people with disabilities or illnesses to undertake. Despite this, she chose to participate for as long as her cerebral palsy allowed. When the time came that she couldn’t participate for serious risk of her health, she decided to instead follow the tenants of her religion by making donations to charity in place of Ramadan, instead of feeling ashamed that she could no longer participate in the way she wanted to. Zayid states, “Muslims fast so they can suffer a little. It is important not to die in the process. Instead, those who can’t should channel their devotion into charity. This will not only help you stay healthy but also will help someone who is genuinely suffering” (Zayid, 38).

What each of these stories have in common is the idea that although people with disabilities might not be able to participate in their discourses like their occupations, their families, and their religions in the same ways nondisabled people traditionally do, they still occupy an essential role in their communities and are able to create meaning in ways that greatly improve the world around them. In fact they often do so in ways that nondisabled people either cannot or choose not to. Disability Visibility highlights this idea very well, the only problem I found with the book was that I wanted to hear more than a few pages of the experiences of these disabled writers, and many others with disabilities not mentioned. After all every of the one in five people with disabilities in the United States experiences their disabilities differently, especially within the context of the other parts of their lives. Perhaps a sequel is in order.

A Supernova-Sized Burst of Accessibility: RAB Response

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  1. “How a Blind Astronomer Found a Way to Hear the Stars” by Wanda Díaz-Merced from Disability Visibility

  2. Summary:

Wanda Díaz-Merced’s short personal narrative, “How a Blind Astronomer Found a Way to Hear the Stars” was originally performed as a TedTalk in February 2016. Beginning with a description of how supernovas work, Díaz-Merced explains how the star she was studying at the time she lost her sight, became a magnetar. Detected by their gamma-ray bursts, astronomers are able create pictures of the most energetic part of the supernova explosion. Something important to understand about them is that people are unable to see these events occur with the naked eye because we can only see a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Díaz-Merced emphasizes this because the only reason why astronomers create visual constructions of supernovas is because its a common and generally easy way to interpret them. That is, if you’re a sighted person.

When she lost her sight, Díaz-Merced thought that she might have to leave her field because of the lack of accessibility. Instead, she decided to make the work accessible herself, so she could continue to study the work she loves. Díaz-Merced. Because all light is a curve which can be turned into a table of numbers, those numbers can be translated into sound. Her and her collaborators worked really hard on this sonification project that had never been done before, and now “she is able to do physics at the level of the best astronomer,” (Díaz-Merced, 170). After telling her story of accessibility innovation, Díaz-Merced bought the TedTalk to a close with a last thought for the audience, which is that anyone can develop a disability in their lives, and most people eventually do. However, this doesn’t mean people should be excommunicated from their area of work. Scientific fields in particular have many systemic barriers in place that aren’t keeping up the outer world’s increasing focus on accessibility.

3. Quotations:

-“If people with disabilities are allowed into the scientific field, an explosion, a huge titanic burst of knowledge will take place, I am sure” (Díaz-Merced, 173).

-“I think science is for everyone. It belongs to the people, and it has to be available to everyone, because we are all natural explorers” (Díaz-Merced, 172).

-‘While other countries told me that the study of perception techniques in order to study astronomy data is not relevant to astronomy because there are no blind astronomers in the field, South Africa said, “We want people with disabilities to contribute to the field”‘ (Díaz-Merced, 172).

4. Reflection and Review:

I found the last quote I listed to be particularly interesting because when the various countries Díaz-Merced offered her new techniques to rejected them because there was no perceived need, its so clearly obvious that the reason there aren’t blind astronomers is because of the lack of accessibility which she was attempting to correct. It reminds me of a piece I read once about planes that have seen combat, where when the surviving plane came back from battle, engineers looked at where the damage on them was, and wanted to reinforce those areas. However, eventually someone pointed out that these were the surviving planes that they were looking at, and what they really need to do is to reinforce the areas of the planes where there was no damage, because those were in fact the places that if hit, would send the plane spiraling to the ground.

My big takeaway from this piece is that organizations can’t look at the people who maneuver easily through their field to decide how to accommodate people with disabilities, because nondisabled people are the ones the organization was built to cater to. They have to look to the people who are being left behind. They need to listen to them and their needs, and then work to create space for them, by either allowing disabled people to innovate the system themselves like Díaz-Merced, or working in groups that have direct contact with people with disabilities and prioritize their thoughts.

Here’s a link to the TedTalk:

Wanda Diaz Merced: How a blind astronomer found a way to hear the stars | TED Talk