Trouble Is Everywhere

I'm sorry this image is so small. It's an image from the new Google video that explains their plans for how to change your privacy policies! it's not subtitled, despite Google's recent commitment to totally being accessible to people with disabilities. Thus I turned on YouTube's AutoCaption.

The video says:
With fewer words, simpler explanations, and less legal gloop to wade through.

The captions provide:
With fewer words simpler explanations and leslie copeland tweeter.

The TTC is putting drivers on wheelchair accessible routes who have never been shown how to use the basic safety equipment provided for people who use wheelchairs.

According to our driver home this evening, he has never been shown how to use any of the equipment required to stabilize a motorized wheelchair on the bus he is driving. He advised us (politely) that our options were getting on the unsafe bus, waiting "maybe all night" while he tried to figure out how to use the safety equipment on the bus, or waiting for the next bus. As you all may recall, our luck with "waiting for buses" has been poor, so we chose the option that was unsafe.

Don's electric wheelchair weights 250 lbs without a person in it. Don, who is 6'10" tall, weighs around the same amount. Can you imagine the injuries that could be sustained by Don, or anyone near him, if his wheelchair tipped over because it was not safely secured? The wheelchair swayed back and forth during the whole trip, and on at least one tight turn I was worried it was going to knock right over into the window. I imagine Don's experience of this was even worse.

Don's disability includes a chronic pain condition that is exacerbated by both movement, and having to brace himself. Right now he's doped up on a full morphine dose just to recover from the bus ride home.

PS: Tried five times today to call Wheel-trans. The line was busy every time.

The TTC is putting untrained drivers on late evening routes. Do you feel safe?

Well, in general I'd say no one, but apparently I am wrong! This is both strange and a bit frightening, even though of course the difference between talking about disability and doing something that impacts on the lives of Actual Disabled People are two entirely different things.

The Council of Canadians with Disabilities (the CCD) have sent out a press release informing everyone that the Liberals have actually put disability-issues on their platform. I tried to find this information out on the Liberal website, but I struggled. See, their website is a mess of inaccessibility, which I know they've been informed of because I informed them of it. WebAim detects 46 accessibility-related errors just on their front page, and none of their videos provide actual captioning. Lucky we have YouTube auto-captions to the rescue, right?



Description: It's a screen capture from a YouTube video. Michael Ignatieff, an older white politician, is captioned as saying "And we met start ninety one for you".

Larger versions of the image are available.

I would tell you what he's actually saying but I have an ear infection so I have no idea. And neither would the indeterminate number of Canadians who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing.

You can watch the video yourself, though.

When I did finally poke around on the website, all I found about the Liberal election platform on disability wasfamily care and a national pharmacare plan.

(I will address the national pharmacare plan briefly: I think it's relatively pathetic. I know I should be all happy because pharmacare! but all I can think is "Okay, yes, catastrophic illness, go you! But what about chronic long-term ones?" It's possibly this will be covered, as they mention diabetes and arthritis, but they specifically use the language of catastrophic illness.)

The Family Care plans that have been bandied about by the Liberals and Harper have been really firmly aimed at a particular demographic: two-income homes where either a child or an elderly parent is in need of long-term care from a family member (because the hospitals refuse to accept them because they're too sick to treat). I know this because of what they're offering. Harper offered a $300 tax credit to people who stay home to take care of a family member. The Liberals are offering either six months of EI benefits or, to people who do not work in jobs that contribute to EI, a "Family Care Tax Benefit", which is a monthly tax-free payment.

Gentle reader, let us consider that "Family Care Tax Benefit" for a moment. This is the thing I'm supposed to be most impressed with, the thing that is most likely to help my family.

First, some background: I am the caregiver to my wonderful husband, Don, who was born with Marfan Syndrome. In July of last year his health took a series of hits, and by January of this year he was in bed basically 24 hours a day except for twice a day trips to the bathroom. He is taking enough pain relieving drugs that he cannot operate a stove safely, he cannot risk a shower even with the shower chair, he has difficulties keeping track of how many of his meds he's taken, and just earlier this week flew into a panic because he couldn't find one of his medications because he had completely forgotten that I had handed him the new prescription the day before. Many of his current problems are being blamed on his gastro-intestinal issues that cropped up in July, and the current theory is that once those are actually treated, his pain levels will drop, he'll be able to go back on his lower-dose medications, and he'll go back to being able to get out of the house three or four times a week, run errands, take care of the garbage and recycling and laundry, and all of those things that he does when he's not crippled by the health care system. His GI appointment is on Thursday.

I've taken off three months this year in order to care for him.

The hospital tells me that this has nothing to do with his health at all, while simultaneously telling me that they're sending him home instead of admitting him because he's got someone at home who can help him with tasks like eating and going to the bathroom.

Okay, so, here is our household, where there is only one adult who is able to work, rather than two, because the other adult in the household is permanently disabled, and the working adult has had to take time off to care for the other.

How much money do you think we would need in order to run our household and ensure Don received regular meals he can eat (which right now is limited to dry cereal, apple sauce, pudding, and frozen waffles), the power and phone stayed turn on, and we could afford the medications that he needs to live? Oh, and rent. Absolutely nothing else: not internet, not fancy meals, not even food enough for me, just food enough for Don. Just, add that up in your head.

The Liberals think it's, at the maximum, $112.50 per month.

Oh, but Anna! You should have savings! Things you can draw on. And yes, gentle reader, we do. We are currently living off money that we have been gifted by extended family members. We can do this because our families have both regularly been sending money to support us. If we didn't, I'm sure I would have to go back to working two jobs in order to have enough money to keep Don comfortable and ensure he was never out of meds, because that's what we had to do before. And when you're working two crappy-paying jobs, you can't find the time to get out of either one of them into something that pays better. And how much of my income would end up going to someone else to take care of Don (or at least check in on him) because I'd never be home?

"Poverty Eradication Plans" often do not include people with disabilities because the costs associated with living with disabilities are quite high. People with disabilities are disproportionately living in poverty: while 10% of Canadians overall live in poverty, 15% of Canadians with disabilities do. They end up doing things like splitting their life-saving medications to make the prescriptions last longer. They don't take their meds and get sicker. They don't get access to things like canes or walkers or wheelchairs because those things cost money and the amount of paperwork required to get in on charities that will pay for them is very high. It is difficult to get work when you're disabled. It is difficult to access community supports when you're disabled. It is difficult to get housing when you're disabled.

$112.50 per month, and that's still more than the Conservatives are offering.

According to the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, this is what the Liberal platform includes:

• An "action plan" for implementing, monitoring and reporting on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Canada ratified in 2010.


• Restoring funding to the Court Challenges program, which has been used by Canadians with Disabilities to force Via Rail to follow the law and have wheelchair accessible train cars.


• The Liberals have "promised to address the housing needs of persons with disabilities" in their Affordable Housing plans

I promised I would vote for the first party I felt was actually going to address the needs of Canadians with disabilities. I've been encouraged to vote for the Liberals because of these highlighted issues.

Perhaps this post makes it clear why my vote is still up for grabs.

Lawmaker Advocates Eugenics in New Hampshire

A 91-year-old state representative told a constituent that he believes in eugenics and that the world would be better off without "defective people."

Barrington Republican Martin Harty told Sharon Omand, a Strafford resident who manages a community mental health program, that "the world is too populated" and there are "too many defective people," according to an e-mail account of the conversation by Omand. Asked what he meant, she said Harty clarified, "You know the mentally ill, the r#tarded, people with physical disabilities and drug addictions - the defective people society would be better off without."

The thing is, honestly? I don't know why this is news, except someone "important" said it outloud.

A lot of people like to pretend that the eugenics movement is in the past, and I'm certain that this man's age will be held up in order to demonstrate that. But that's ... incredibly simplistic and ignores the way that certain types of people are prevented or discouraged from having children in North America.

I talked a bit about it in a Feministe Thread that went off the rails, if you are curious. Kaz is in there representin', as is abby jean, and La Luba. I should content warn for Hugo man-splaining, Clarisse asking people to do work for her so she can make a better presentation, a few disenvoweled comments, and people insisting that critiquing the modern pro-choice movement, and the "heroes" of the past for being explicitly eugenicist, sound too much like anti-choicers. Honestly, it might be worth skipping the whole conversation, but a few people said really smart things. You can tell who they are because they keep getting ignored.

Oh, hey, was that bitter me speaking? It's probably because I'm evil.

(I have not yet sorted all the other people who wanted on the acafilter. I'll sort that today.)

Did you know that the folks behind Glee were explicitly invited to a best practices panel on disability at a major industry conference in Hollywood this past summer and turned them down?

Because, I guess, actually working with people with disabilities in the industry to talk about representation and stuff is too much work for someone getting awards for diversity while publicly mocking disability rights advocates and activists who have talked about the problems with Glee and representations of disability.

I will have more details about this later.

Via the F-Word UK, the Daily Mail decided to mock Jody McIntyre for rioting while crippled.

No, really. Here's The Guardian's discussion of the 500 complaints the column has garnered so far.

One tweeter described Littlejohn as "shameful [for] mocking the disabled". Another, referring to the Mail's coverage of Frankie Boyle's joke on Channel 4 about Katie Price's son, said: "When Frankie Boyle makes jokes about disabled people, the Mail complains. When Littlejohn does it, the Mail prints it."

(Not that the Daily Mail is somehow unique in this. I've pointed before to left-wing blogs and sites mocking people with disabilities for being out while disabled when protesting against stuff the left generally approves of, but when a disabled person is protesting on behalf of the left - especially when they're injured or attacked by police - it suddenly becomes worth supporting the rights of disabled people to protest. We notice these things, you know.)

Anyway, sorry. You'll have to scroll down a ways to get to the Daily Mail's mockery of Jody, but it includes a rather iconic drawing of Joey and his brother as characters from a show called Little Britain. I'm only dimly aware of it as that's not my sense of humour so I just didn't watch, and thus can't come up with something comparable in other countries.

*headdesk*

I fell asleep at 9:30 and then woke up at about 2 a.m. and so I went on twitter so I could check the news and what the shit is this?

University Decision To Withdraw Student With Down Syndrome Sparks Outcry

When officials at an Oregon university decided that a 20-year-old with Down syndrome could no longer audit a ceramics class, the woman’s peers responded in force.

Eliza Schaaf was auditing a ceramics course at Southern Oregon University until she received a letter from the school Nov. 8 indicating that her need for extensive one-on-one assistance “resulted in a disruption of curriculum delivery and interfered with the teaching and learning environment for the instructor and other students.” University officials informed Schaaf that as a result she would be withdrawn from the course.

That didn’t sit well with Schaaf’s classmates who said that she was not a disruption and that her inclusion added to their college experience. All 19 of the other students in Schaaf’s class signed a petition asking that she be allowed to remain in the course. What’s more, the university’s student senate voted to oppose the school’s decision.

So, let me see if I get this straight:

The university administration says Eliza is a disruption to her classmates.

Her classmates respond with "lol no". Every single person in the class signs a petition saying she's not disruptive. The student union votes to back her inclusion in the class. There have been student protests saying she's not disruptive. But hey! Let's kick her out of school 3/4s of the way into the term because .... Why exactly?

We have a word for that, you know.

I'm looking more into this case, but it looks pretty shitty to me.

(This post had a different title, but I have changed it.)

via lauredhel

Livery Drivers Protest Wheelchair Service Requirements (In New York) (There's a video at the link but it's basically the text in video form.)

"It's really unfair that Taxi and Limousine Commission and the commissioner would be punishing us by fining us thousands of dollars for not being able to respond to someone on a wheelchair within three minutes like we would with a regular person," Mateo said.

"We've seen cutbacks in Access-a-Ride and now we're being told we can't access the Livery system. We're being held hostage here," said Brooklyn Independence Center For The Disabled Executive Director Marvin Wasserman.

also:

"We are suspending all service to the wheelchair community," said New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers President Fernando Mateo.

( Read more... )

Oh goody! This is a presentation for all students, staff, and faculty!

As long as none of them use wheelchairs, because the presentation is down a flight of stairs and none of the presenters have any idea how to access the key-only elevator to the main level. Nor had they thought of it. They also decided this was the fault of people who manage the building, not themselves, who presumably had some input into the room used.

Okay, so.

Yesterday I phoned twice and got different stories each time I phoned. Last night the repair company called Don and said they'd drop the wheelchair off today, if that was okay with him. Don said "Fuck yes", except in Don speak (so something very polite, to which I responded with "Fuck yeah, wheelchair!").

The wheelchair has just arrived (yay!). Basically everything we were told on the phone is not what is evident in the chair or from what the actual repair person said. We were told what was holding it up was fixing the "pivot" on the seat, which is the incline (electric wheelchairs have a tilt that allows you to raise or lower the incline of the seat). The repair person who actually worked on it said that it was a loose wire and they've spliced it. (In doing so they've reversed the switch so now you push up to make it go down.) They person on the phone said the "cushions" were still damaged. None of the cushions on the chair are damaged. They replaced the legs, which are difficult to get in. Had they consulted Don (which they never did), they would have learned he didn't want the legs replaced at this stage because they're difficult to get in. (A lot of Don's height is in his legs, and so he has to get in special order legs for the chair.)

From what we can tell, everything we've been told in every single contact with this company has been incorrect.

Don has a meeting with the OT on Friday. He's going to talk to them seriously about some other option for repair, because this is fucking ridiculous.