Kestrell

*so* much is happening on the Disability Readathon, and you can view it all on most of the major social media platforms, or just Google
Disability Readathon
but here is the Twitter link, which I am occasionally checking in on
https://twitter.com/DisabilityRead

Also, I just tweeted about Crip Camp, which I only just watched for the first time. You can find it on Youtube, but Netflix has a decent audio description track, and also offers a downloadable transcript of the documentary.

This was *so* amazing! And there is so much history that never gets mentioned, like the way the Black Panthers fed the disabled San Francisco protesters who staged a sit-in for 23 days, and the gay and lesbian protesters and supporters.

The Disability Readathon begins today and continues throughout the entire month of April.

Note: I'm working on a disability fanfic for Naomi Novik's _A Deadly Education_, but I will also be posting abut some of my favorite fiction and nonfiction books that relate to disability.

You can find the Disability Readathon on most of the social media platforms or just do a web search for "Disability Readaton"

Here is a brief description and some links from the website:

We are asking participants of the readathon to share their reading experiences with us via social media to encourage disability inclusion and representation in books and oral or signed storytelling.
https://www.disabilityreadathon.com/

Please head over to "How To Join In" to learn more about the readathon, and check us out on Twitter and Instagram for more bookish content.
How to join in
https://www.disabilityreadathon.com/how-to-join-in

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
https://www.disabilityreadathon.com/book-recommendations

Twitter
https://twitter.com/DisabilityRead

I only came in recently, with the introduction of Monica, but there was this moment when she showed up for her first day of work, after being missing for five years during the Blip, and her job, her department's mission, everything has changed, and her boss is explaining this to her, a black woman, and he says, "It's a different world than it was five years ago," and I thought, That could be a pretty pointed political commentary about the Trump administration.

January 28, 2021 | 5:00pm ET
Damon Beres, editor-in-chief of OneZero, will interview science fiction novelist and technology activist Cory Doctorow to discuss surveillance capitalism, tech monopoly power, and the quest for a more open web.

Medium in Conversation: How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism
Description
Join Damon Beres, Editor-in-Chief of OneZero, in conversation with Cory Doctorow as they discuss surveillance capitalism, tech monopoly power, and the quest for a more open web.

It’s a new era for Big Tech. Weeks after the deplatforming of Donald Trump—and with a new administration in the White House—the time is ripe to reexamine the power wielded by the giants of surveillance capitalism. How did corporations like Facebook, Google, and Amazon amass such power? How do we build a more open Web? What are the critics missing? We’ll explore these topics and more in an illuminating discussion about the past, present, and future of the internet.

Register here
https://medium.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_GfnYHzZCSY-cCMVL5ZCDBw#the-main-content

I just read this post on images of disability in the recently released remake of "The Witches"https://themighty.com/2020/12/the-witches-ectrodactyly-disability/
and it expresses something I've been feeling lately.

Alexx has been reading me a relatively recent issue of Hellboy, and this particular story is set in approximately 1950s Appalachia, and involves Hellboy taking on a group of witches.

Most of the witches are portrayed as old and extremely ugly and possessing disabled bodies, except for the one sexy one who, of course, is totally to blame for one of the male characters having made a pact with the devil.

I don't mean there is just one or two images of these witches and having disabled bodies: the images occur over and over again, the same way that Frank Miller's negative images of people of color, of queer people, of people with disabilities, repeat over and over.

One might say, these images occur so often as to be obsessive: the artists must have spent *days* drawing this many only slight variations of the same thing.

When I was a kid, and still sighted, I used to draw horses all the time. I had never ridden a horse, or even seen one close up, but I was still really good at drawing these horses in hte same two or three poses, and other kids (especially girls--what is it with girls and horses?) really liked them and were always asking me to draw more. Most of those kids had never seen a real horse, either.

So, this is my ultimate criticism of using one's creativity to reproduce cliches: it's not actually creative. Creative people thrive on the same things scientists do: new ideas, observation of the real world, and personal experience with the world.

The cliche of the ugly deformed witch that equates disability with evil isn't the least tiny bit creative: it's just a worn out placemarker that someone puts in that space instead of creating something they've actually thought about and are using to add further meaning to the story.

In other words, it's intellectually and creatively lazy, and it's often this laziness that bothers me more than the stereotype itself, because it expresses a certain disdain, or condensation, of the creator toward their audience. It says, Oh, I can skive off here, no one will be able to tell the difference, no one will notice that I didn't really think a lot about what I put here.

Images used in creative works are supposd to *mean* something, to work with the rest of the story in saying something of significance, and there are many artists who have taken a cliche, an empty skin, as it were, and invested it with new life, new meaning.

This is one of the reasons I love Alan Moore's Swamp Thing: I don't just love the character, I love the fact that Moore took what was basically a rubber suit-type monster and transformed it into a Green Man. Then Moore went even further and used that first transformation to create a complicated narrative about how we all have the potential to transform ourselves, whether it is into heroes or into monsters, and how we can transform the world around us into fertile places full of life and joy, or hellish barren landscapes that reflect our own inner barrenness.

Think about the things you create before you send them out into the world: do you want them to be empty skins, mere "bags of bones," or do you want them to be something unique, something of significance?

A friend and I were talking about books that have made us, or make us, feel better, and we got talking about comics, and I mentioned Squirrel Girl. My friend didn't know who Squirrel Girl was, and I was at a loss as to how to describe the wonder that is Ryan North's Squirrel Girl, so all I said was, "Trust me, Squirrel Girl who who you need right now."

When I mentioned this conversation to Alexx he replied, "Squirrel Girl is who we all need right now."

So, if you feel as if the world is a big scary place and everything you read just makes you feel more anxious:

Go read Ryan North's Squirrel Girl. Trust me, you'll feel better.

Note: Ryan North's incarnation of Squirrel Girl is also a great comic to read to blind people, because she has lots of conversations, even with supervillains, instead of just punching them. One of the best parts is her conversations with her best friend Nancy, and her squirrel partner, Tippitoe (I hope I spelled that correctly) and, if you really need a perk, check out the pictures from fans at the back, including all the girls of all ages who cosplay Squirrel Girl.

Finally, if Ryan North reads this: you may not be an astronaut- Lieutenant Governor of Canada, but, in Kestrell's world, you are very cool.

EndeavorRx is being used as a therapy for kids with ADHD, but the genre is definitely science fiction
https://slate.com/technology/2020/06/endeavorrx-fda-prescription-video-game-adhd.html

I'm on a committee of people with disabilities who are working with Mass Health to improve services and, ultimately, health policy regarding PWD. A few days ago, the insurance company which is developing this pilot program did a couple of presentations on their role and what they do.

Let me state right here: everyone in the room is working really hard and worthy of respect for the energy they put into this program and the willingness they show to listen to each other.

But sometimes, when the insurance policy people are talking about what they do and the services they provide, I seriously worry about what my facial expressions are giving away.

Example: the policy person stated that the company provides transportation to medical appointments and social events, without taking away resource such as the Ride (our local para-transit provider).

At this statement, I think my eyebrows attained lift-off.

When it came time for my comments, I had to say that these statements made it sound as if these resources were functioning systems, which they are not. I then told the story about how I missed the previous meeting because the driver from the transportation service used by the insurance company never showed up, never texted me, or called. As for the Ride, it's literally a joke local PWD mention in the black gallows way soldiers mention a military snafu (situation normal, all fucked up). As for the recent policy of using Uber and Lift drivers to transport PWD to medical appointments, it's pretty obvious that these drivers are just not qualified to be doing this.

But the big storm came in response to the insurance reps mention of how they purchase medical equipment and assistive technology for PWD. There were stories about the company purchasing the wrong cane/walker/mobility device, which was useless to the individual; assistive tech, ditto; hours spent on the Web site (which, btw, is still inaccessible to screen readers after the year I've been doing this), and a complete lack of technical knowledge on the part of reps to whom PWD had attempted to explain their needs.

But the worst cases were regarding the denial of a generator --the individual lived in an area where power went out frequently-- because the generator was outside of the house, and therefore not medical equipment; another case was the denial of a small fridge for medicines, because it could be used for other things. (Btw, Alexx bought me my own fridge because the shared fridge is so full of tupperware tetris that it's really difficult for me to find anything in it, let alone do so quickly when I have a migraine or low blood sugar.)

This is where the disability and technology advocate part of my brain kicked in. I had been assuming he issue was that we, the PWD, were just failing to connect tot he correct, informed person who could make a knowldgeable decision about what we needed.

The truth is: there is no such person.

It reminded me of my experiences as an undergrad at UMass Boston: I was trying to explain about why I needed a technology and how I used it to people who had absolutely no knowledge concerning what I was talking about.

So this was the point I tried to make: that insurance companies and health agencies that worked with PWD need to begin informing themselves about the technologies we use, and to accept the idea that at some point there had been a cultural shift that radically changed the concept of what kind of technologies PWD are using. PWD are early adopters and adapters, and as long as policy is going to try to restrict the definition of those technologies to "medical equipment," we were going to continue to have two very different conversations. And there needed to be at least one person somewhere in their company or program to whom a PWD could talk and have a useful conversation regarding their tech needs, someone who knew the difference between one kind of walker and another, the complexities of storing different medicines safely, and why someone would choose one type of cane over another, and why that personal choice is a legitimate reasonable decision.

One last point: the assumption is usually made that the person with a disability is making a coice that costs mroe money and resources. This is untrue. The cost of one trip in an ambulance is exponentially more expensive than a generator. The cost of buying the correct piece of technology the first time is less expensive than buying two pieces of the same item. And frequently, the tech a person prefers is cheaper than whatever some morally-questionable medical equipment company is pushing the insurance company or government program to purchase (yes, Maxi Aids, I am talking about you--I've met used car salesmen with more morals).

This is a rant I have had many times in the past few months, especially as so much media attention is given to high-priced, complicated cutting-edge tech for people with disabilities that turns into hardly more than a publicity stunt for entrepreneurs
https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/4/30/18523006/disabled-wheelchair-access-ramps-stair-climbing

It seems that a new high-tech expensive device to replace the white cane comes along every few months and then disappears into vaporware like all of its predecessors, which is no big loss, for the most part, because white canes don't require charging and rarely crash, unless a sighted person steps on it.

What this kind of flashy but insubstantial tech does do is reinforce the idea that blind people shouldn't be using white canes--maybe because it makes us quote look disabled unquote, and that makes able-bodied people uncomfortable? Wouldn't everyone feel better if none of us looked different, you know, if we looked more, what's the word? Normal?

Of course, it also lets designers off the hook for designing accessible buildings, because accessibility interferes with their creative vision for designing buildings that look like Tokyo after Godzilla came stomping through. Why are there still buildings being constructed without sufficient elevators and accessible bathrooms? Why are there still Web sites that are inaccessible to people using assistive technologies? Why is conforming to ADA laws still considered to be optional?