Introducing Amazon Access and Prime Access for low income customers

[kestrell]

Kes: For those on limited incomes, Amazon offers a discount on their Prime membership, and now they have created a specific program for this. After the links to information about the discount Prime account and its benefits (apologies for the lengthy URL, I couldn't figure out how to get a more direct link), I include a link to an article about PWD who find their own hacks for everyday access problems and how they are forced to turn to Amazon because their own medical insurance fails them.

From the Amazon announcement email:

You're a Prime Access member, saving you 50% on Prime.
See benefits
https://smile.amazon.com//gp/browse.html/ref=pe_63384240_671560960_pe_super//b/?node=23945845011

All of Prime, half the price.

You’re already enjoying 50% off monthly Prime membership for qualifying government benefits recipients. Only now, it has a name: Prime Access.

....You can also check out Amazon Access for free—more programs, more discounts, and more features that can make shopping on Amazon even more affordable.
Check out Amazon Access
https://www.amazon.com/b?node=24189583011&ref_=access_surl

End of announcement

Article:
Laura Mauldin
no. 64
July 2022
Care Tactics
Hacking an ableist world

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/care-tactics-mauldin

Excerpt

HERE IS WHAT DOESN’T GO VIRAL: Ángel worked as a housepainter for decades but had a stroke three years ago that paralyzed the left side of his body. Now, his favorite spot is the recliner in his living room. From his perch, he can reach some essential items that he stores on a table to his right: a power screwdriver, painter’s tape, and a clipboard with paper and pen.

“I’d like to mount this new striker plate on the front door,” Ángel says. He transfers himself from the recliner to his wheelchair and leans over to pick up a small metal striker plate along with the roll of tape from the table. Using his right foot, he turns around and propels his wheelchair toward the front door. Then, he props the roll of tape between his knees in order to pull off a section. He sets the striker plate on the tape, pulls a little more while bracing it with his knees, and tears it off. Ángel wheels in closer to the frame and lifts the tape and striker plate onto the inside of the door jamb, pressing it into place. It stays there, mounted to the spot where he needs it. “Now, I just need to screw it on.” He wheels over, gets a screw from the table, and passes it through the hole in the striker plate so that it sits just inside the hole already drilled into the door jamb. “See?” Now, he’s set up to use the screwdriver with his “good hand.”

Here is what does go viral: braille decoder rings, sign-language-translating gloves, “haptic footwear” for blind folks, stair-climbing wheelchairs. In other words, a preponderance of innovations, unveiled to great fanfare, that purport to solve disability-related problems. While the press applauds the tech sector’s forward-thinking and sensitivity to the needs of underserved populations, the concerns of disabled people—voiced again and again and again—are disregarded. So much uncritical attention gets lavished on these seductive yet generally silly objects that the disabled design critic Liz Jackson aptly named them “disability dongles” in 2019. This concept was recently taken up again in a piece for
Platypus
https://twitter.com/elizejackson/status/1110629818234818570
coauthored by Jackson, along with Alex Haagaard and Rua Williams. In it, they argue that disability dongles generate feel-good content for brands that may be “promising in concept, but in actuality unattainable.” Indeed, they’re often just prototypes that designers have no intention of ever manufacturing.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Ah that Baffler article is great!

[kestrell]

It's brilliant and, in part, I posted the link to it so that I could find it later in case I ever want to refer to it in a future article about how health care fails PWD, because we talk specifically about how much money we spend out of pocket for all the everyday necessities that insurance won't cover, or takes up to six months and many phone calls before they agree to cover, and the more disabled you are, the more time you have to spend on these phoen calls to advocate for what you need. Now the Federal government is changing state requirements for Medicare/Medicaid and, here in Mass., we're just waiting to see how all the improvements we fought for over the past ten years will disappear.

[jesse_the_k]

There has been a lot of flexibility around state Medicaid provision in the past three decades -- mysteriously labelled waivers.

Wisconsin used to have great services, centered in Madison -- so good that all the other counties would urge their folks to move here and reimburse our county for "their" clients.

In 2011 those were all thrown in the trash by the radical right -- along with refusing to accept millions in Medicaid expansion.

My last civic contribution was chairing the committee which tore apart a paratransit system that almost worked so it would conform to the new rules (i.e., provide disabled people with as few services as possible while outsourcing all admin to private companies incapable of administering themselves out of a paper bag.)

I want to be hopeful.