Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Halftime Handoff
[Video description: Children playing on an accessible playground, some visibly disabled, some not--they are sliding, climbing, rolling, and smiling--sunny afternoon, colorful autumn clothing]
[Audio transcript: "Thanks to your votes, Toyota is proud to donate $10,000 to Shane's Inspiration, a Southern California-based foundation that helps build playgrounds accessible to children with physical disabilities. Every week, visit facebook.com/toyota to vote for the next Toyota Halftime Handoff."]
Okay, 15-seconds of a corporate ad, probably not going to change the world. BUT--some of the folks watching football on Sunday night never thought about accessible playgrounds before. Now they've heard the phrase. Maybe one or two of those folks are on a town council or city planning board, and when they hear the phrase again, they'll associate it, subconsciously, with smiling children and a nice evening watching football. And maybe, just maybe, that means they vote yes on the proposed accessible swing in their neighborhood... not even knowing why.
(There's a two-minute version of the ad coming out next week, for the Toyota website and Facebook page and YouTube -- I'll post that here when it's available.)
Monday, November 14, 2011
Disabled and Proud at Occupy Oakland
Thanks to my friend Kathie for the link. I don't think there's a transcript for this video; I'll transcribe the segment specifically about disability activism below:
"We're here, we're loud, disabled and proud" repeated by a crowd of marchers using wheelchairs, crutches, etc.
Interviewee: "Um, I was moved to come out today because people with disabilities are being so strongly affected by cuts to the state budget, and also nationally, to Medicaid services, and it's just making it impossible to live independently because the cutbacks are so severe."
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
CFP: Society for Disability Studies (15-18 June 2011, San José, CA)
Society for Disability Studies
23rd Annual Conference
San José California, Doubletree Hotel
June 15-18, 2011
Beyond Access: From Disability Rights to Disability Justice
Deadline for submissions: December 15, 2010
http://www.disstudies.org
[Disability justice is] not self-sufficiency but self-determination, not independence but interdependence, not functional separateness but personal connection, not physical autonomy but human community.
--Paul K. Longmore
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and 2008 witnessed both the passage of the ADA Amendments Act and, on the international stage, the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD). In passing the ADA Amendments Act, the U.S. Congress sought to redress nearly twenty years of rulings that severely narrowed the scope of protections afforded in the original bill. The Convention formally marks a paradigm shift towards considering people with disabilities as subjects who must be able to exercise their own rights, rather than objects of medical inquiry or charitable intervention. These developments seem to suggest gains in the history of disability rights, and yet many disability activists contend that real gains can only be made if disability is conceptualized as part of an intersecting network of historic and contemporary power structures that must be addressed holistically and systemically.
We invite conference participants to reconsider the issues of rights and access in light of local, national and global commitments and resistance to achieving disability justice. We offer the following broad questions in a variety of disciplines and encourage interdisciplinary perspectives:
* How is social justice conceptualized? What competing visions emerge within these conceptualizations?
* What tensions have hampered social justice gains for people with disabilities?
* How might disability-based conceptualizations of social justice complicate and enhance other issues of social justice?
* How have coalitional politics shaped momentum---or barriers---to achieving disability justice?
* How do various technologies---and access to them---shape coalitions and enhance or hinder progress?
* How are or how can societies address the enduring poverty that people with disabilities face throughout the world? How does poverty shape / limit access to opportunities?
* How might institutions and agencies be transformed to better ensure justice for individuals with disabilities and their communities?
* How might community engagement serve the cause of enhancing disability justice?
* How does cultural context shape a local agenda for rights and access?
* How does the intersection of disability studies with other critical scholarship (critical race studies, gender/feminist studies, queer studies, immigrant studies, post-colonial studies) promote more nuanced understandings of social justice?
* How can and how do liberatory textual and / or performative practices enact disability justice?
* What liberatory moments, paradigms, practices, and aspirations have shaped the path(s) towards disability justice?
We welcome proposals in all areas of disability studies, as well as submissions premised on this year's theme.
(See the website for the rest of the call, which is mostly logistical information about the proposal submission process.)
Thursday, September 16, 2010
"Aunt Carol" by Mista Cookie Jar
Visual description: Mista Cookie Jar, the singer, is a young Asian-American man with long hair and a mustache; he's wearing a hat and floral shirt. The video shows a birthday party for Carol Ware, an older white woman who uses a power chair. There are a lot of children and other older folks too, and there are scenes of the singer doing Carol's nails, marveling at her sunshine tattoo, and generally having a grand time.
The singer has posted all his lyrics online at his website (yeah!); find "Aunt Carol" in the lyrics menu (I can't seem to link to them directly, but they're there). (UPDATE: Katja put the direct link in comments.)
What I like here: Carol Ware is a real person, and the YouTube video label explains this. The singer has known her for years and this song is a genuine, specific tribute. He shares in the lyrics that she was a kindergarten teacher, that she likes Elvis, that she likes her coffee with Splenda, that she smokes (deal with it, she's an adult), that "we call her Aunt Carol, you can call her Ms. Ware," and that "she's a masterpiece from head to toe." All with a fun celebratory tone, and with Carol's participation and the participation of her fellow nursing-home residents. When so many kids live far from their older relatives and may not feel drawn to seniors, this song has a chance to change minds, and will definitely spark some smiles.
ETA: There's also a "making of the video" slideshow.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
RIP: Paul Longmore (1946-2010)

--Paul Longmore, "Why I Burned my Book"
Sad news today. Paul Longmore, professor of history and director of the Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University, has died suddenly. There will surely be many, many remembrances and obituaries; Stephen Drake's was the first I saw, at the Not Dead Yet blog. And Wesley J. Smith has something up (mostly the press release from Californians Against Assisted Suicide) at Secondhand Smoke.
Paul's facebook page is becoming an impromptu wall of condolences and memories. Here's what scattered items I'll add.
*When historians of disability submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the Garrett case in 2000, Paul was the one who invited the signatures of over 100 scholars, because he knew exactly who to tap.
*I've been co-editing H-Disability since it launched in March 2001. But I had nothing to do with its founding--that's credited to Paul Longmore and the summer institute where the idea was hatched, long before my involvement.
*I'm president of the Disability History Association right now--but in many ways, the organization exists and thrives because Paul Longmore was very, very persistent when he saw an opportunity to support scholarship on disability.
*And when Paul organized a conference for disability historians in summer 2008, you know it was seriously accessible, not only to the participants but to our families.
Paul Longmore was a historian, with a PhD in history from Claremont Graduate School. It was important to him to know what your degree was in, and he worried about non-historians doing disability history without proper training or rigor. Now, none of my degrees are in history, even if I do historical projects. So it was a real and happy surprise to get a brief email from Paul, one day in 2004, just saying "I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your essay in the volume edited by Noll and Trent. It's really good history. Thank you." I kept that email window open for a very long time on my desktop. Thank you, Paul.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
January 23 to be designated Ed Roberts Day in California?
"SB 1256, a bill that would honor every year the life and work of revered disability rights leader Ed Roberts, recognized across the world as the 'father of the independent living movement' for people with disabilities and special needs will be heard in the Assembly Education Committee Wednesday afternoon...SB1256...has already cleared the State Senate without any opposition voted... SB 1256 would provide that the Governor proclaim January 23 of each year as 'Ed Roberts Day,' would designate that date as having 'special significance' in public schools and educational institutions, and would encourage those entities to conduct suitable commemorative exercises on that date, remembering his life, recognizing his accomplishments as well as the accomplishments of other Californians with disabilities. The legislation could pass out of the Assembly and be sent to the Governor near the 2oth anniversary of the passage and enactment of the landmark federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)."Now, naming a day for Ed Roberts won't enforce any neglected accessibility laws, or improve Medi-Cal coverage, or keep anyone from using ableist language. But maybe schools will invite disabled performers to lead the celebration; maybe scout troops will learn to build good ramps or install clear signage on the day; maybe newspapers will seek out community activists for soundbites or more; maybe maybe maybe.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
RIP Ruth Shelton (d. 2010)
CLOSE THE DOORS
Testimony given April 30, 2002 to the Assembly Human Services Committee informational hearing on Olmstead Decision Compliance, State Capitol in Room 4202
I have come a long way.
When I was ten years old my parents put me in Sonoma State Hospital.
They had four little kids and another on the way.
This was during the depression.
I lived at Sonoma Developmental Center for over 45 years.
I was asked to live with a foster family in San Francisco.
The Foster Mom died of a drug overdose.
I moved into a Skilled Nursing Facility in Sacramento
because there was no other place to go.
I lived there for 5 years.
It was certainly not much of a life.
I had no choices about anything.
I was told when to eat. What to eat.
Where to go and when to go there.
They did not know I was an artist.
They did not know that I could sing.
They did not know that I had the right to vote.
But I showed them.
I think people should have respect for one another.
Just because we look different or talk different
doesn't mean we don't understand what is going on.
We are of worth.
We have good minds and good ideas.
Let us have a voice in the decisions which effect us.
I now live with my best friend Laura Lee.
We live and work together as a team.
I use In Home Support Services.
Alta Regional Center pays for my transportation.
And they pay for me to attend the Short Center North
where I am an artist, performer, and teacher.
As a member of Capitol People 1st,
I know a lot of people who need services to live in the community.
We need homes we can afford.
We need Supported Living services & choices in providers.
Each person's support needs are different.
Today there are a lot more choices than when I was a child.
But even with all of the choices that we have now.
Why do we still need institutions?
Why do we still have state hospitals
when they deny people their freedom?
I have a voice!
I have a mind!.
I have a choice!
I am of worth!
I am important!.
I am a child of God!
Close the State Hospital!
And open the doors to community living.
Thank you.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Virginia McKinney (1924-2009)
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Save the Dates: Events at UCLA in February 2010
Wednesday 17 February
Glorya Kaufman Hall
4pm-7pm
AXIS/Access-Ability: Choreographing Disability
with Petra Kuppers and Victoria Marks
Talk-back with Judith Smith and member of the AXIS Dance Company
led by Susan Leigh Foster, Professor, UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures
Thursday 18 February
Humanities 193
4pm-6pm
Disability, Queerness, and Spaces of Normativity
Robert McRuer, George Washington University: "Disabling Sex: Notes Toward a Crip Theory of Sexuality"
David Serlin, UC San Diego: "Was the Elephant Man Gay?"
Respondent: Helen Deutsch, UCLA
Chair: Arthur Little, UCLA
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Elyn Saks wins a 2009 MacArthur "genius" grant
Monday, March 09, 2009
March 9: Granville Redmond (1871-1935)

Well, a Temple U. blog should certainly take note of a prominent deaf Philadelphian's birthday, no?
Granville Redmond was born on this date in 1871, in Philadelphia. He became deaf after surviving scarlet fever when he was a very small child. Perhaps in recognition of young Granville's educational needs, his parents moved the family to San Jose, California, so the boy could attend the Berkeley School for the Deaf.
Granville Redmond was a student at the Berkeley school for eleven years (1879-1890). He was found to be a gifted artist and encouraged to develop his talents at the school. After graduating, he attended the California School of Design in San Francisco, where he was an award-winning student. From 1893 to 1898, Redmond worked and studied in Paris. When he returned to the US, he went to paint beach scenes near Los Angeles, and married a deaf woman, Carrie Ann Jean. They had three children together. Redmond gained a solid reputation as California's first resident Impressionist painter.
So what's with the photo above? Well, Redmond and Charlie Chaplin became friends in Los Angeles (a much smaller town then, of course). Chaplin, being a silent film star, was always interested in visual communication, and wanted Redmond to help him learn how ASL worked--which seems to be what's happening in the photo above. Chaplin also supported Redmond's artistic career--he set up a studio for Redmond on the film set, he bought Redmond's paintings, and he invited Redmond to appear in a few silent films, including the 1931 Chaplin classic City Lights (Redmond plays a sculptor). The Redmond/Chaplin friendship is also mentioned in Martin F. Norden's The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies (Rutgers UP 1994): 70-71.
Interested readers can go see works by Redmond--mostly landscapes and seascapes--at the Irvine Museum, the Laguna Art Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among other collections.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Antennae for everyone


Antennae for everyone
Originally uploaded by pennylrichardsca
Another post for Kay at the Gimp Parade--unlike some theme-y bathroom signage, the wheelchair user in this sign is included in the antenna fun. (Found at Disney California Adventure, in the "Bug's Land" area.)
Monday, January 19, 2009
"Accessible" swingset

"Accessible" swingset
Originally uploaded by pennylrichardsca
This is the new swingset in my neighborhood. See the nice new blue accessible swings? Very nice, but... See how there's no wheelable way to GET to the two blue accessible swings? Sigh. So close.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Rose Parade float, Helen Keller, and Braille

The route was quite wheelable (we saw quite a number of other visitors using mobility equipment), and there were accessible buses from the park-and-ride sites. And the second float we saw was.... the Lions Club International float, titled "the Miracle Worker," with a giant black-and-white image of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan (made of rice, poppy seeds, and onion seeds, we were told); behind it, a giant pair of glasses, a white cane, and a stack of books titled "Braille," "Helen Keller," "The Miracle Worker" etc. The "white suit" at that float showed us a braille version of the Parade program, and invited the kids to feel the braille pages.
Further along, another "white suit" invited us to go inside the barriers to touch a float and examine it at even closer range. Apparently this is an accommodation offered to disabled visitors--so my son was soon holding a starfish made of lima beans and whiffing irises.
[Photos depict the Lions Club float as described in the text of this post.]
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Sylmar Fires and Guide Dogs
The LAFD has a blog (who knew?) with constant updates for specific places, including Sylmar--seems like a good place to check if you know which neighborhoods you're worried about.
Monday, June 23, 2008
"Reflections On the Physical and Moral Condition of the Blind (1825)"
The Holman Society Presents
Selected Reflections On the Physical and Moral Condition of the Blind (1825):
A Conversation and Performance
Written By Therese-Adele Husson
Introduced by Catherine J. Kudlick
Performed by Carrie Paff$5-20 sliding scale at the door
No one turned away for lack of funds.
The Holman Society invites you to a live performance of selected passages
from Reflections: Writings of a Young Blind Woman in Post-Revolutionary France (NYU Press 2001). This brief yet surprisingly expansive treatise on blindness was probably dictated in desperation to one or more sighted scribes in the early nineteenth-Century French equivalent of a renter's résumé, only to be rejected, set aside, and lost for almost two-hundred years. The blind author's first-hand observations about blind people and their social status, rules for marriage, prospects for romance, and appropriate pedagogical approaches paint a portrait of a bygone place and time with hauntingly familiar themes which remain with us to this day. The style is 100% over-the-top, unedited nineteenth century, translated French hyperbole, with all of the linguistic curlicues and semantic serifs one could possibly wish for. Blind women are referred to as "female companions of misfortune," and chapters have titles such as "On the Inflection of a Sweet Voice on the Heart and Senses of a Blind Person." Nevertheless, an amazing amount of what she has to say strikes strong resonant chords in today's blind world. Even when her observations seem antique or deliberately demure, her writing raises deep questions as to why her experience was what it was, and why ours is what it is (or isn't).
We welcome Carrie Paff - a treasure of stage and screen - who will read for us, and Professor Catherine J. Kudlick - the manuscript's re-discoverer and translator - who will help us to place Adele Husson in her proper historical context.
The relaxed wine and cheese reception following the presentation will be an
extraordinary opportunity for open discussion and exchange of ideas. We
anticipate attendees from a rich maelstrom of interlocking backgrounds
including disability and gender studies, history, disability rights,
rehabilitation and rehabilitation engineering, and of course the Holman
Society and broader Bay Area blind community.
This event promises to be thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking,
and follows in the informal, yet deeply stimulating tradition of the Holman
Society. We hope you will attend.
Monday, June 02, 2008
Chess Lesson in the Park
All the best things happen at the accessible playground, right? Saturday at Aidan's Place in Westwood, young volunteers from Chess Tutors (a division of People Making Progress) were there to teach a free basic lesson to anyone who would listen, of any age or ability. (My son is the fluffy-haired kid on the hip of one of the tutors, Neisha, at left. I think she's Neisha Ellington, who is also a local unsigned hip-hop artist. She danced him through the songs.)
They taught some of the history of chess and rap-like chants, some of them in Spanish, to remember how to set up the board, what each piece can do, all that. It's hard to see, but they brought a large-scale chess set for demonstrating--each piece is about the same height as a seated child, but light enough for a child to lift or push into place; and a hanging banner showing the chessboard, with clear pockets for moving the pieces (on cards) around. They did a nice job with making chess interesting, using various media and models, to meet a very diverse group of kids wherever they were.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
May 8: Douglas A. Martin (1947-2003)
There's a really good, long, interesting oral history interview with Douglas Martin, conducted in 2002 by Sharon Bonney, available in transcript at the Bancroft Library website. (There are also audio and video clips. This might be limited access, I'm not sure.) One section that particularly caught my eye was about his three years in an Omaha hospital after contracting polio at age 5; television was new then, and a great distraction for a ward full of children in iron lungs. But the Army-McCarthy hearings were running on the only channel for much of the day! Martin remembers that planting a seed:
It just really gave me a sense of, there's a whole big wide world out there going on, and you know this political world and all this stuff. It was interesting. Didn't have that much to do with it at that point except take it all in. But later I guess, it might have been part of the reason I was interested in politics, and getting involved in Washington, and kind of having knowledge. There was so much information and detail about the system, and how it worked and how it didn't work, in those days. Some of the best and some of the worst in people in politics came out. It was fascinating, and I guess I got interested, I saw it to be a place where you could make a difference. I kind of filed it away in the back of my mind. I kind of remember that as possibly motivating, as some basis for later interest in trying to bring about social change, something more positive. (here)I don't watch TV if I can help it when I'm in the hospital. When my kid is hospitalized, it's usually in a shared room, and there's little choice. I remember being in a quad isolation room with him during the 1998 Clinton impeachment hearings; the mother across the room was shouting at the commentators a lot. Think I also saw an Olympics opening festivities in a PICU once? I know another mother whose son was born in July 1969--so she and the other women giving birth that week were among the Americans who did not see the Neil Armstrong moon landing live.
What have you seen--or not seen--on TV during hospital stays?
Monday, May 05, 2008
RIP: Harlan Hahn (1939-2008)
"Toward a Politics of Disability: Definitions, Disciplines, and Policies"
"Good Jobs, Good Benefits (but not for disabled workers)" at Ragged Edge (2006)
"Love, Sex, and Disability: Maintaining Interest and Intimacy" (transcript of a conference appearance with Sharon Bacharach)
ADDED LATER: Beth Haller has this remembrance.
This is for Kay at Gimp Parade

[Photo description: Signage outside a men's room shows two beige plaques--one, a symbol dressed in Western gear labeled "Men," and the other below is the usual access symbol; both are posted on a stone surface]
Disabled guy doesn't get a hat, neckerchief, chaps or boots, either.... spotted at Knott's Berry Farm last fall.
(There's an equivalent sign on the ladies' room, photo posted here.)