Why Accessibility?
When answering the question “Why accessibility?”, we could, and plenty of people do, focus solely on the Curb Cut Effect. The Curb Cut Effect references the fact that designs made to improve accessibility for disabled people almost always end up benefiting non-disabled people and the general society as a whole. The primary example of this being people with strollers more easily navigating public spaces because of the curb cuts in sidewalks, which were originally mandated to allow wheelchair navigation.
We could give example after example, ranging from electric toothbrushes and audio books all the way to the Oxo Good Grips brand. We could even talk about how disability activists saved healthcare– what little we have in the U.S., that is. But the constant need to look at accessibility through the lens of how it can benefit abled people is old and tired. Disabled people deserve better. Disabled people have the right to have their needs met for their own sake.
When we understand disability through the social model, which defines disability as originating from the barriers that society places upon disabled people, it becomes abundantly clear that making content accessible is the only option for those of us working towards any meaningful equity and social justice. This becomes even more clear when we compare it to the medical model of disability which now prevails. This tells us that disability stems from an individual’s body/mind being “wrong” and thus they need to be “cured” or “fixed”. This policing of what bodies can and should be deemed acceptable is steeped in white supremacy and colonialism. Additionally, it is impossible to be anti-capitalist while upholding the medical model of disability, as it upholds the idea that a person's value comes only from their ability to conform and produce.
Inaccessibility isn’t just an inconvenience, it’s exclusion. You have the choice to be accessible or not; a disabled person does not have the choice to engage if you don’t make it accessible. A d/Deaf or hard of hearing person will never get your message if it's in an uncaptioned video.
What’s more is that the disability community is your community. According to the CDC, 1 in 4 people in the U.S. have a disability. Disabled people are the largest marginalized group in the nation. Covid is only making these numbers go up, particularly in already marginalized communities. Simply put, there is no other community or demographic without disabled members. Therefore, failing to account for accessibility cuts you off from the people that you, specifically, are trying to reach out to.
Making your content accessible isn’t generosity, it’s the bare minimum needed to build relationships within the disability community. And you should be building those relationships, not just for our benefit but for your own. Disabled people bring so much to the table. Disability activists have been fighting for decades. Our very existence is resistance. We fight, not just for survival but for transformation. We know how to provide community care and how to survive in times of crisis. When the world was faced with sudden loneliness, isolation, and medical uncertainty, it was the disabled community that paved the way. In this time of upheaval we could all learn something from crip community care.
Disability justice makes room for, in fact it requires, intersectional cross-movement organizing. It understands that no body/mind is disposable, and rejects hierarchical means-testing to prove worthiness. It knows that those most affected are the best leaders. It’s committed to sustainable action that acknowledges all people’s wholeness and humanity. And it understands that liberation cannot happen unless it is collective and that the way we get there is through collective access.
There is no way forward while leaving disabled people behind– and being unaccessible is leaving us behind. Abandoning the disability community is succumbing to divide and conquer tactics. As the project Sins Invalid says, “We honor the insights and participation of all our community members, knowing that isolation undermines collective liberation.”
No matter what you’re fighting for, we guarantee you that the disability community is already involved.
Voting rights? Until polling places are accessible and vote-by-mail is easily available everywhere you are leaving us behind.
Fighting to end poverty and homelessness? Disabled people are massively more likely to be both.
Want to end police brutality and abolish prisons? Half of those killed by the police are disabled and the three largest mental health facilities are jails.
Working to end sexual assault? 83% of disabled women are victims of assault.
Think we finally have marriage equality? Many disaibled people are unable to get married and have thus been left behind.
History is littered with examples of oppressive power structures leveraging disability as a means of attacking other marginalized groups. Those in power know that we are often left without allies and rely on the fact that our oppression will normalize the actions that otherwise would be deemed unacceptable.
Here are just a few of the many examples:
Family separation of native Hawaiians by way of medical incarceration.
The Nazis’ “Final Solution” began with the murder of disabled children.
Forced sterilizations used as a eugenicist tool to harm multiple marginalized peoples. They are still legal today.
Homosexuallity was classified as a mental health disorder as a means to justify discimination. The current version of the DSM still lists transsexuality as a psychiatric disorder.
When you refuse to provide accessibility to disabled people you are upholding an oppressive system which ultimately seeks to harm us all. Additionally, you are leaving yourself open to manipulation and attack, as history teaches us that leaving us out means leaving a back door open to further harm. Beyond how all social justice needs disability justice to succeed, should we not be included by the very fact of our humanity? When you refuse to be accessible you deny us the ability to participate. When you ask us to justify why we should be included you ask us to justify our humanity by proving why our needs should be met. Inaccessibility isn’t just an inconvenience, it’s exclusion.
Image Description: A Latinx disabled woman and an Asian disabled genderfluid person chat and sit on a couch, both holding coffee mugs. An electric lightweight mobility scooter rests on the side. (Photo from Disabled and Here)
Disabled Voices to Follow
Tinu Abayomi-Paul
The King and Lies
“All of our oppression is connected. The sooner we see that, the sooner we build the strategies to become free. Not one oppressed group has become free in a vacuum.
Not one, not ever.
And in the modern day, each oppressed group contains multitudes. Ignoring those subgroups' needs is just oppressor cosplay masquerading as liberation.
Adopting the oppressor role, consciously or not, is not the same as being free. It’s a lesson that seems to escape so many, but it’s one that must be learned if progress is ever to become permanent.
We don’t have a choice if we want freedom. We must align ourselves to achieve any true and lasting freedom.”
Mia Mingus
Changing the Framework: Disability Justice
“We cannot fight for liberation without a deep, clear understanding of disability, ableism and disability justice. The bodies of our communities are under siege by forces that leverage violence and ableism at every turn. Ableism is connected to all of our struggles because it undergirds notions of whose bodies are considered valuable, desirable and disposable. How do we build across our communities and movements so that we are able to fight for each other without leveraging ableism?
I imagine a world where our organizing and activism is less segregated, where our movements and communities are accessible and don’t participate in the isolation of disabled communities. I imagine places where we fight for whole and connected people, families and communities.”
Jen Deerinwater
ADA 30: No Justice for Disabled Native People
“I can’t often count on my communities to stand with me. The discrimination and erasure I suffer in mainstream society as a bi, disabled, Two Spirit, Native womxn is also present within my communities. Outside of my apartment I don’t have any safe or welcoming space. I used to have some hope and optimism that if I, and others like me, spoke out we’d be supported by other marginalized people, but that’s not often the case. I went from being a social butterfly who searched for community to feeling alienated and enraged.”
Alice Wong
A Disabled Activist Speaks Out About Feeling ‘Disposable’
“I am so tired of having to assert myself. What kind of world is this where we have to defend our humanity? What is valued in our society? Clearly, someone who can walk and talk and has zero comorbidities. It is an ideology, just like white supremacy. All our systems are centered around it.”
Imani Barbarin
Website | Blog | Twitter | Instagram
Shatner, the Senior Tsunami, and Coming Full Circle
“‘You will too be disabled one day.’ This is the dirty phrase in the disability advocates circle. Many of us, with good reason, don’t like to use it. Abled people should be invested in the independence and dignity of disabled people regardless of the possibility they may be at the mercy of the same physicality, stereotypes, and policies. But, human behavior doesn’t work that way—especially in the United States. Many don’t concern themselves with disability inclusion and advocacy until it personally affects them, even if there are those in their families with disabilities.”
Vilissa Thompson
The Overlooked History of Black Disabled People
“We as Black disabled people have always been here. We have steadfastly proclaimed our rights and humanity to the communities that chronically overlook us, and yet we still rise to do the work needed to free us all. Black disability history matters because without us putting our voices and very bodies on the line, the political and societal strides many of us take for granted would not have occurred. Our communities are forever indebted to the achievements made and the fights won by past and present Black disabled figures.”
Rachel John Setzer
Decolonization as a Strategy for Accommodating Disabilities
“The way I understand the Ancestral teachings of my own people (as well as a number of other Peoples), life has value because it exists. You, a disabled or not-currently-disabled person, have value because you are alive. You deserve to be able to meet your needs, care for your family, and be cared for by your community because you are alive. No means testing, no ability scores, no rationing of care to the “most worthy.” You are here, you are part of your community, you should be counted and cared for, and society has to be adjusted to help you get your needs met. Accommodations for your disabilities are your birthright because you were born and are still alive. This isn’t a radical idea thought up by the American Indian Movement in the 70s; it’s an ancient teaching the bones of which can be seen in societies around the world going back to the dawn of civilization.”
Image Description: A Latinx (invisibly) disabled woman talking and walking alongside her friend, an Asian disabled genderfluid person wearing compression gloves and driving a lightweight electric mobility scooter. (Photo from Disable and Here.)
Additional Resources
Disability Studies Quarterly
“Disability Studies Quarterly (DSQ) is the journal of the Society for Disability Studies (SDS). It is a multidisciplinary and international journal of interest to social scientists, scholars in the humanities, disability rights advocates, creative writers, and others concerned with the issues of people with disabilities. It represents the full range of methods, epistemologies, perspectives, and content that the multidisciplinary field of disability studies embraces. DSQ is committed to developing theoretical and practical knowledge about disability and to promoting the full and equal participation of persons with disabilities in society.”
The current issue is Vol 41, No 4 (2021), the theme of which is Indigeneity & Disability.
Disability Visibility Project
Founded by Alice Wong, a prominent disability activist, the Disability Visibility Project is “an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture.” Created in 2014, it is home to an extensive archive of articles written for and by those within the disability community.
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century was published in 2020 and edited by Alice Wong.
Nothing About Us Without Us
Abstract:
“This book is a ringing indictment of disability oppression, which, it states, is rooted in degradation, dependency, and powerlessness and is experienced in some form by five hundred million persons throughout the world who have physical, sensory, cognitive, or developmental disabilities. This book provides a theoretical overview of disability oppression that shows its similarities to, and differences from, racism, sexism, and colonialism. The book's analysis is illuminated by interviews conducted over a ten-year period with disability rights activists throughout the Third World, Europe, and the United States. The book finds an antidote for dependency and powerlessness in the resistance to disability oppression that is emerging worldwide. The interviews contain stories of self-reliance and empowerment evoking the new consciousness of disability rights activists. As a latecomer among the world's liberation movements, the disability rights movement will gain visibility and momentum from the elucidation of its history and its political philosophy of self-determination, which is captured in the title of the book. The book expresses the conviction of people with disabilities that they know what is best for them.”
Originally Published in 1998, it’s considered to be foundational to modern disability studies.
Photo Credits
Featured photos are from the Disabled and Here stock photo collection. The photos were taken by Tojo Andrianarivo, with make-up artistry from Lana Shapiro.