Disability Futures

Hearing people, eh? You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them.

Of course, the term ‘hearing people’ only really exists in the deaf world, because hearing folk generally see themselves as being, simply, ‘people.’ But to us Deafies, there’s something distinctive about them. We know there are things that only they would do.

Statistics show that five in six people are hearing. That’s a whopping 50 million people in the UK, and nearly 6 billion people worldwide. They’re literally everywhere.

So, listed for convenience, here are the 10 things we’d rather hearing people did a whole lot less – their very most annoying habits.

Apologies in advance for the low-fi sketches – I got a bit carried away.

“People with disabilities, particularly women and children, are the most vulnerable and discriminated against people in Somalia,” says Mohamed Ali Farah, director and co-founder of Somali Disability Empowerment Network (SODEN).

At 11 a.m. on Monday, the Supreme Court will hold one hour of oral argument on the duties that federal law imposes on police officers in dealing with a mentally disabled person who may be armed and violent.  Arguing for the local government and two police officers in San Francisco v. Sheehan will be Deputy City Attorney Christine Van Aken, with twenty minutes of time.  Representing the federal government as an amicus partly supporting the city will be Deputy Solicitor General Ian H. Gershengorn, with ten minutes.  Teresa Sheehan, a San Francisco resident with a mental disability, will be represented by Leonard J. Feldman of the Seattle firm of Peterson Wampold Rosato Luna Knopp, with thirty minutes.  Only eight Justices will participate in the case; Justice Stephen G. Breyer is not taking part because his brother, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer, was the trial judge in the case.

On a Thursday night in January, the atmosphere at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in SoHo was heavy with nostalgia. More than 100 people mingled, drank wine and swayed in place to hits of the ’70s and ’80s, featuring songs by Lou Reed, David Bowie, Elton John and the B-52’s.

Old family photographs were projected onto a big screen: images of parents hugging their children close, or teaching them to ride a bike.

Seventeen of those children were in attendance, grown now, and united by a common truth: The parents in the pictures are gone, all of them lost to AIDS. The playlist was a tribute to them, a mix of their favorite songs, as selected by the sons and daughters who traveled from as far away as Toronto, St. Louis and Los Angeles to be there.

Disability rights are about more than awkward looks, ramps, and accessible parking. While these are daily issues for many, there are also major issues of policy, civil rights, and even life and limb that most non-disabled people haven’t even heard of.

Most people have no personal reason to know about these issues. But anyone who cares about social justice should be aware of them. Each involves fundamental questions of life, death, equal opportunity, and the fight against prejudice. Most importantly, each of these disability issues are solvable.

If you want to understand disability from a social justice perspective, here are seven issues you should know something about.

When I first met Richard Stallman, he described his philosophy as “information anarchism” and explained his vision for a future of free software in which individuals and corporations voluntarily donate money to support the programmers bringing them free, libre and open source technologies. Stallman’s dream has been the NVDA reality for many years now. NVDA comes from an entirely unregulated system of voluntary donations and has allowed Mick Curren and Jamie Teh to deliver one of the best screen readers ever built to a community yearning for its independence, freedom from Freedom Scientific and its high priced competitors if you will.

Last week, my good friends and business partners, Christopher “Q” Toth and Tyler Spivey took the anarchy to another level, they found that this community would donate its hard earned dollars to an entirely independent effort. The power centers for screen reading had been based in St. Petersburg, Fort Wayne, Orlando/Minnesota and in the UK. Q and Tyler have acted in a manner that shows that some true authority can be derived directly from end users, they stepped up, took on the leadership of a single task (building NVDA Remote Access) and the community took notice, donated the dollars the boys had set as a goal and, soon, all of us will have a really cool free addition to an awesome free screen reader.

f you saw our recent staff pick of Alison Kafer’s Feminist, Queer, Crip it was only a hint of good things to come… we’re very excited to announce our latest section at Book Culture on 112th: Disability Studies! We’ll be adding more books in the coming weeks but the inaugural section currently features Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s Staring, an analysis of the visuality of our bodies and our emotions while under the gaze of another; Terry Galloway’s personal story of growing up as a Mean Little Deaf Queer that avoids the tired child-who-overcomes-his/her-disability narrative; and Far From The Tree, Andrew Solomon’s extensive and empathic tome of horizontal identities, the term he uses to designate those who have “an inherent or acquired trait that is foreign to his or her parents and must therefore acquire identity from a peer group.” With a mix of theory, social history, and personal accounts of living with a disability, our disability studies section explores difference while challenging ableism and stigmas of disease, illness, and impairment. Come check it out!

Persons with disabilities, when compared to the general population, face higher risks in emergency situations and are disproportionately affected by natural disasters. Available data reveals that the mortality rate of the disabled population is also much higher than that of the non-disabled population in many disaster situations.

People with disabilities have the experience and resilience to help find solutions when planning for disasters and emergencies.

Think DiDRR: Disability-Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction!

The purpose of this advocacy campaign "Inclusion saves lives" is:

1. To raise awareness of the urgency of disability-inclusive disaster risk reduction and resilience in society and development
2. To advance action at all levels to include persons with disabilities, their perspectives, knowledge and experience, in disaster risk reduction and resilience-building.