Disability Futures

Today’s episode is about crip bodies and crip aging. Alice speaks with Patty Berne and Leroy Moore, two people who have a lot of wisdom to share about their bodies and aging. How do we listen, honor, and treat our bodies? How do we value and treasure the elders in our communities? Patty, Leroy, and Alice reflect on this and more.

On Saturday, November 18, Perkins School for the Blind Diversity and Inclusion Speaker Jaimi Lard took the stage at TEDxBeaconStreet for the first time, delivering a 10-minute talk on the importance of inclusion. Lard, who is deafblind, was accompanied by her interpreter, Christine Dwyer.

Although she couldn’t see the audience or hear their applause, Lard said she could feel the energy in the room as she told her story and the story of Helen Keller, who was also deafblind and attended Perkins.  

“It was invigorating,” she said afterwards. “My message was: don’t exclude, don’t ignore, don’t shy away.”

Here are six of Lard’s tips on how to be inclusive:

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Authors: Lana Grant, Robyn Steward, Ella Tabb, Rachel Townson

What is key to forming meaningful relationships?

Rachel Townson

For me, a meaningful relationship is to having someone in my life that is willing to accept me as myself - the good the bad and the ugly. I am fortunate to have a group of people who accept me for who I am, but who also challenge me cognitively and emotionally. This helps to remove any internal doubts I may have that the relationships are token gestures. 

I’ve had a number of toxic relationships with other people in the past. If I was to give my younger self any advice it would be to listen to my “gut”, and to observe the behaviour of others. In the past I’ve made friends with someone toxic for me, and I ignored my “gut” and other signs such as her telling me others had abandoned her in the past. I felt sorry for the person and ended up feeling like their slave where I masked and abandoned my own “self” to fit in with their expectations of me. I will not be down this path again.

Ella Tabb

For me a meaningful relationship is one in which there is trust, shared enjoyment and support. I think the key to forming meaningful relationships lies in three areas. 

Firstly, shared special interests. Special interests are important to most people on the autistic spectrum. When you find someone with similar interests you always have something to talk about. This can lead to other, potentially more personal, areas of discussion.

Secondly, starting slowly. This can be hard for autistic people as we tend to be very direct, but in my experience, building rapport slowly leads to stronger, more meaningful relationships. Starting with small talk helps people to become comfortable talking about the bigger stuff.

I did some graduate work in Montessori and observed its use in pre-schools (70's). I was impressed by nuance that Montessori's materials-based affordances for development lent to the supposedly ordinary act of play, especially 2 year-olds cleaning, say, a table top....

https://goo.gl/4PeSvk

A new longitudinal study from the University of Virginia has been published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology comparing the Montessori educational method to regular preschool education. The results show marked differences between the two approaches, with the Montessori education leading to better performance on several measures and, importantly, to more equalized outcomes between groups of children coming from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

The Montessori method was developed by Dr. Maria Montessori in the first half of the 20th century and stemmed from Montessori’s observations on how children developped in their natural environment. Central to the method is creating an environment with specialized educational materials in which the child learns through discovery rather than direct instruction and is free to make constructive choices.

Some major differences from regular schooling methods are lack of exams and grades as well as a multi-age classroom in which children can choose whether to work alone or with peers. Sergei Brin, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, and Jimmy Wales have all attended Montessori schools, which are thought to be better at developing creativity.

The newly published study is one of few on the Montessori method that has overcome study limitations like good controls, sample sizes and program quality. It lasted for three years, and included a total of 141 children (starting at age 3) who were randomly assigned via a school lottery to a Montessori (70) or another preschool (71). 

Although there were no differences between the two groups at the first test point, by the end of the third year Montessori children fared significantly better on measures of academic achievement and social cognition, were more likely to have a growth mindset (a belief that intelligence is not fixed and one can master new challenges by putting effort into developing new abilities) and had a relatively more positive attitude towards school activities. There were no significant differences between the two groups on measures of creativity or executive function. 

Far From the Tree — the documentary adaptation of Andrew Solomon’s landmark study of difference within families, coming to the Doc NYCfestival this week — explores the porous, ever-shifting line between “illness” and “identity.”

It’s become somewhat of a universal assumption that when we get to a certain age, we’ll move out of our long-lived-in homes and into a nursing home or hospital of sorts. After all of the years, renovations, and work put into our homes, why would we want to leave? With universal design, we can enjoy our homes—our safe havens—as long as we’d like, or can.

Universally designed homes are usable by everyone without the need for an adaptation or adjustment, regardless of age or ability of the inhabitants. Universal design allows seniors to easily and safely continue to live in their homes with the use of various features including wide doorways, heightened toilet seats, non-skid bathroom tile, no-step front doors, and double handrails on staircases.

Wide Doorways

The use of wide doorways a simple fix to a number of problems residents might face throughout their lifetime. Owning a home with wide doorways can be beneficial throughout all stages of life. Whether you have to move strollers in and out of the house to take the kids for a walk, own a large dog, deal with an injury that inhibits your mobility, or use a walker/wheelchair, wide doorways are suitable for all walks of life. Although a simple feature of universal design, wide doorways are undoubtedly a game changer, especially for senior residents.

Heightened Toilet Seats

This is such a small, unnoticeable feature that it’s surprising it isn’t more common in traditionally designed houses. Raised toilet seats cater to the needs of senior residents who might face struggles walking and sitting, either temporarily or permanently. Heightened toilet seats allow residents to safely use the bathroom without assistance. Typical toilet seats are so low that seniors frequently face injuries slipping off or falling down. With a heightened toilet seat, seniors can feel comfortable using the restroom and not worrying about potential injuries.

Non-skid Bathroom Tile

This universal design feature goes along with the previous one. The bathroom is one of the unsafest rooms for seniors. From tall bathtubs to low toilet seats to slippery floors, senior residents face a number of potential injuries in the bathroom. With non-skid bathroom tile, seniors can avoid a number of these accidents. Traditional bathroom tile isn’t just incredibly dangerous when it’s wet, but it can be very slippery when it’s dry, too. This hazardous tile can cause seniors to lose balance, with a painful fall on the solid ground. Non-skid bathroom tile allows seniors to feel safe in the bathroom, whether they’re stepping out of the shower or using the bathroom in the middle of the night.

No-step Front Doors

Sometimes the injuries begin before seniors even enter the house. Front porches with steps can cause accidents for seniors because many front steps lack effective handrails. Also, in the winter months, front porches and steps can get icy and incredibly dangerous to climb while maintaining balance. With no-step front doors, residents can easily enter the home without having to risk it on a small flight of steps. Also, residents with walkers and wheelchairs have access to their homes without having to install a ramp. Like the wide doorways, no-step front doors are convenient for residents throughout their entire lives. Whether you’re pushing a stroller or a wheelchair, no-step front doors take away the stress of entering your home.

Double Handrails on Staircases

While most staircases have a handrail on one side, it’s sometimes not enough for seniors using the stairs. Universal design offers double handrails for staircases, which help keep senior residents balanced when moving from floor to floor throughout the house. If the laundry room is in the basement or the master bedroom is on the second floor, the stairs don’t have to be an obstacle for senior residents anymore. With a handrail on each side of the staircase, seniors can use both to support their upper body as they step up or down. This can help prevent injuries due to tripping or falling down a long set of stairs.

The big summer action movie “Baby Driver”m ade waves in the Deaf community — CJ Jones, a Deaf actor, plays the deaf foster father of the film’s protagonist, Baby. It’s exciting for two reasons: deaf characters rarely appear in big mainstream films, and it’s even rarer that deaf people play themselves.

But the fight for authentic representation is far from over.

Many in the Deaf community now have their eyes on the new Todd Haynes film, “Wonderstruck,” which makes its mainstream theater debut today. It spotlights the Deaf community, yet stars Julianne Moore as one of the deaf protagonists. Moore is only the latest in a long line of hearing actors playing deaf roles—most recently Chris Heyerdahl in the new Syfy-turned-Netflix series “Van Helsing.”

Filmmakers have offered many excuses for not casting deaf actors—everything from not knowing where to find a one, to asserting a deaf woman would get injured during the shooting of an action sequence.

Chris Packham shows the bliss and affecting pitfalls of isolation in an excellent new documentary about living with Aspergers. The 56-year-old presenter publicly announced his autism in last year’s memoir Fingers In The Sparkle Jar. Despite being in the public eye on countless wildlife programmes, including his breakout stint on CBBC’s The Really Wild Show, it wasn’t until 2005 he was officially diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. This documentary however isn’t simply Chris’s journey of self-discovery and realising his differences, instead Asperger’s And Me takes a challenging dive into why this diagnosis shouldn’t be seen as a handicap, while being startlingly honest in execution.

We’re introduced to Packham’s isolated safe haven at his New Forest Sanctuary where he lives with his poodle, Scratchy. His girlfriend of 10 years, Charlotte, doesn’t live here and instead presides on the Isle Of Wight where she runs a zoo. From here, we journey through Chris’s upbringing and how his autistic traits magnified his intense love of wildlife. From eating a tadpole to admitting how he’s never loved anything more in his life than a pet kestrel bird while growing up – the documentary isn’t afraid of spotlighting the strange habits which both sadly and unsurprisingly, left him an enigma to his fellow schoolmates.