» Disability

Back in April 2008, I wrote about the work that was done on our nearby park by M-NCPCC.

Shortly after that entry, they got back to us via email, saying

This situation will be corrected and you will once again be able to access the pathway that leads under Riverdale Road.

Unfortunately, there’s apparently still been no movement on this, the railing still cuts right across the park from one side to the other - and, in fact, it’s even worse now once you get past this huge metal barrier, because subsidence has caused a great big crack to appear in an older section of sidewalk.

Lisa Takeuchi Cullen runs a blog on Time Magazine’s website, “Work In Progress“, which sometimes can be almost close to approaching nearing the level of cynicism I occasionally use here.

Recently, she ran a blog entry, “Equal pay isn’t a partisan issue. Is it?“, explaining that the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act had been filibustered in Congress by the Republicans.

The Act was intended to be

[Updated April 9th 2008]

We live next to a wonderful park, beside a branch of the Anacostia River as it wends its way down towards DC and environs.

Until recently, it’s been impossible for us to use that park to get to the main road leading into town though.

The reason? This bridge over one of the drainage ravines to the Anacostia itself. The bridge is old, too narrow for wheelchairs, and has a virtual step up at either end where it meets the ground.

I love all these environmentally-friendly groups. They are wonderful examples of the heights of prejudiced stupidity political correctness can lead people to.

The latest bright idea these perfectly mobile people have come up with? Banning plastic grocery bags.

Now, this might not seem such a bad idea on the face of it. They take oil to make, and they’re possibly the most common source of unsightly trash littering the world, not to mention they’re not that biodegradable and are a choking hazard to children.

They also happen to be one of the best inventions for people in wheelchairs.

By now, everyone has likely seen the video of, or at least heard about, the quadriplegic in Florida who was detained by the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s department and dumped out of his wheelchair.

What’s less widely publicized in the media is the call in January of 2008 by Rod Liddle in The Times newspaper for people to do precisely what occurred.

It’s astonishing to me, there’s such an uproar about this one case, caught on video, but relatively speaking there is absolutely no practical reaction to Liddle’s column. I can’t understand the reason behind the silence in the UK from all “decent” people, when those same people are so vocal condemning what happened in Florida.

Some disabilities have obvious effects, some don’t. In either case, it can be hard to explain to someone else just how disabilities can make you feel.

Enter one of *the* best articles on the subject, The Spoon Theory. I’ve been using this ever since I discovered it as a handout to give to people that gives them a better idea of just how draining disability *can* be.

It’s great reading, and handy to use! The rest of the site there’s not too shabby either

No, the title isn’t “disability discrimination”, but “disabled discrimination”.The BBC has a series of (badly written) message boards, one of which is frequented by people with disabilities. A recent thread was started there, entitled “Does disablism work both ways“.

The question was about this new pseudo-word, “disablism”, that has become common on those message boards, and asked if the word also applied to discrimination by people with disabilities towards people who have no disabilities.

As expected, the responses varied from the term being solely applicable to discrimination against people with disabilities, and the more-than-expected comments from one poster that implied discrimination against people without disabilities were “sauce for the gander”.