Accessibility Fail

Welcome, BADD bloggers!

As someone who has one kid in a wheelchair, and, on occasion, one in a stroller too (I used to have one in the wheelchair and one in a sling!), I have a pretty good eye for accessibility.  Or should I say, the lack thereof.

Local footpath "options"... FAIL

Society's public spaces are just not accessible.  This is not just about the chair, or even just about disability.  It's about people with a disability, carers, children, young people, women, different cultures, different races.  It's about power.  All of our spaces are designed or function to satisfy the powerful, the status quo.  So, in Australia, that's about white, middle class men people who are invested in capitalism.  Our spaces are about celebrating that [or selling it to us].  Other people don't have things designed for them, we have things to "cater to" us, or to "accomodate" us.  We're a second thought.

In Sydney city: "ramp" to cross road - FAIL

I'm sick of it.  So I'm doing my bit, in a bloggy way, to point out Accessibility FAIL from my three main persepectives as a "second thought" in society:

1. As a carer for a child in a wheelchair.  This child is a tall, lanky 12 year old, with athetoid CP, very limited motor control, no independent walking, and who is incontinent.  Oh, and who has epilepsy.  Oh, so much potential here!  [I'm planning a whole post on the awesome that isn't 'the "disabled toilets" of the world, with their built-in assumptions that 1. you're in there alone, and 2. you're using the toilet, and 3. you're without any friggin bags, need for a rubbish bin, or have any kids/trolleys/cane's/dogs/etc with you.  That is, they're usually just a "normal" toilet with a friggin rail and more room.  FAIL.  More on this in future posts.../rant]  Here's the girl:

2. As a mother of a small child.  Who is 3, curious, enjoys running and exploring, and who is sometimes in a stroller (and who was in a sling).  So much of our public world excludes children, and (not by accident) their mothers carers.  Sometimes we are just ignored, rendered invisible, unwanted, excluded, and sometimes we are taken advantage of for the sake of the almighty dollar (lets just take the basics of paying for playgrounds, the display of sweets at checkouts, the goddam kiddie rides at the goddam shops.  Oh and none of those things are accessible for the chair anyway, so there's that). Here's the small girl:

3. As a woman.  Who finds it is just so awesome that she can't go any-friggin-where without being hit over the head with what she isn't, and what she should be, and that the world is set up and catered to the male gaze (trails off into feminist rant inducing much soap boxing and probably spittle...).  Here's me:

Welcome to Accessibility Fail.  I'm blogging the Accessiblity FAIL I see in my life, either in person or online.  Please join me!  Post a comment below, or add your own experiences on your blog and I'll link 'em (See Simply Link doohickey below!).  If I ever see Accessibility Wins, I'll post them too, but we all know those are few and far between!

The upshot of all this is:  Here is my basic bit of advice for all town planners, policy officers, architects, engineers, public officials, politicians, bureaucrats, and anyone having anything to do with public (and private) building, public (and private) space design, and public life in general NEED to do this BEFORE building or 'adapting' a space:

1.  Go there and push someone in a wheelchair.

2.  Go there and push themselves in a wheelchair.

3.  Go there and try any number of mobility "aids," vision "aids," and the innumerable ways and means with which some people with disability might access the world.

4.  Don't assume if you've done 1-4 that you've a) covered everything and everybody, and b) have any idea what it's really like. 

5.  Go there and push a kid in a stroller.

6.  Go there with with a small child who might behave unpredictably, or use the environment in ways adults won't.

7.  Which should really be numbers one to six: ASK.  Consult, converse, listen.  Don't add us on at the end like a PC nod to the outsiders.  We're not outsiders.  We're YOU.

Only then can you go design, fund, build and so on.

Grab a button and post a comment if you'd like to Play Along at Home [Fun for All the Family TM].  If we can't laugh we'll drown in a lake of unicorn tears.  Or something. 




<center><a href="http://memotoselfblogger.blogspot.com/p/accessibility-fail.html"><img border="0" src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5224/5671385157_9ef2c3ca91_m.jpg" width="125" height="94" alt="Accessibility FAIL button"/></a></center>

This post is for Blogging Against Disablism Day 2011, from the fabulous Diary of a Goldfish.  My 2009 BADD post is here.  I blog about being a stepmum to a child with a disability (and a teenager!), my 3 year old, Montessori doings, and general parenthood, feminist awesome.  You might also want to check out my living with a wheelchair post here, and my post on being a stepmother here!  A final link, to my post On Epilepsy, here. 


Thanks for stopping by!  Leave me some comment luv!  If you feel like sharing your own experience of Accessibility FAIL, link yourself below, I'm making it a regular feature here.

Homebirth with an Independent Midwife to be made Illegal!

The rights of women to birth at home with an independent midwife are about to be taken away. From July next year, it will be illegal for an independent midwife to attend a woman at her birth at home. This is a basic human rights issue. If you can choose a caesarean, you should be able to legally choose birth at home with an independent midwife.

This back-door outlawing of true midwifery is a great shame for our government. Here is hoping that they listen to those of us protesting this erosion of our human rights. Attend the rally (in person or virtually) on September 7th.


Midwives Victoria summarises the issues - stemming from these clauses in the proposed Bill (Health Practitioner Regulation National Law.

The Hoydens have a good post on this issue: here -

The die is cast. It is likely that independent midwives offering homebirth services to women are going to be struck off and bankrupted in a year’s time. Midwives will only have access to these New(tm!) and Wonderful(tm!) registration conditions if they attend women birthing in hospital under the thumbs of medical “collaboration”; which, in practice, means the doctors set the rules on just who midwives are allowed to care for at all. According to RANZCOG’s latest statement (Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists), “risk factors” that should trigger a referral to an obstetrician include not only previous C section or postpartum haemorrhage, but previous recurrent miscarriage, more than two terminations of pregnancy, postnatal depression, “morbid obesity” (Death Fat!), uterine fibroids, low maternal weight, or pregnancy beyond 41 weeks – and, get this – postpartum conditions such as the newborn having a poor suck. Because we all know obstetricians make fabulous lactation consultants. [/sarcasm]

See Illythia Inspired for several fabulous posts on this issue:

On the Rally

On Why all Birthers should care that Homebirth is being Outlawed.

On an Important Security Message *chortle*.

And Monica Dux in The Age: It's a Woman's Right to Choose how she Births: an extract -

In the past century we have seen a profound shift in the status of women, from being virtual chattels owned by husbands or fathers, to the attainment of full citizenship and (supposedly) equal rights with men. This hard-won legislative and cultural change has allowed women greater freedoms, but it has also given rise to an expectation of physical dignity, and of ownership over our own bodies, as epitomised in liberal abortion provisions and stricter sexual assault laws.

The legislative squeezing-out of home birth represents a serious regression in this reform process. Given that the new laws will effectively make private midwife-assisted home birth illegal, the Federal Government is acting to deprive most women of the ability to make a fundamental choice about their own bodies; the choice to birth in a non-medicalised environment.

Birthing is an extremely intimate, uniquely visceral, sometimes terrifying physical experience. There is much that will inevitably be out of a woman's control during her confinement, so allowing her to birth in the place in which she is most comfortable is fundamental to maintaining both her personal dignity and her sense of ownership over the experience.

Just as adequate abortion rights are important for all women, not just those with unwanted pregnancies, so the fundamental right to birth in the way one chooses is an issue for us all. In this respect the proposed legislation is a setback for all women, not just those who would take up the option of a home birth if it was offered to them

Lisa Barrett at Homebirth: A Midwife Mutiny has a great post: EXTERMINATE

If you read nothing else on the issue, read this at Looking Glass Alice.

People just don’t get it. Australians are prone to apathy at the best of times although perhaps it’s more a sense of disenfranchisement and disconnection which lies behind our ready acceptance, in the main, of laws like this. Everyone who refuses to support the campaign has some reason or other they’re using to justify it: I’ve finished birthing, I’m a bloke so I’ll never give birth, I like birthing in hospital (um yeah ok, whatever but I don’t so how about you put yourself in my shoes?), you’re exaggerating the dangers of hospitals you weirdy, it’s not worth it for so few women and they’re just noisy whingers anyway. Or any of the other myriad of misogyny-soaked excuses I’ve heard so far. It is tragic stuff that we don’t see beyond the end of our noses or our genitals to see the wider picture of basic rights being smashed and how that demeans all of us not just homebirthers.

[...]

I don’t need anyone making those decisions for me, thanks. Oddly enough I know even without a law to tell me that stabbing yourself in the eye with a biro hurts and that standing on lego is one of the most painful things an adult ever experiences. And I manage it all without the benefit of legislation that would criminalise my children for playing which is pretty much what children do. Women, likewise, have the physiological potential to just birth, and making criminals of us because of where and how we choose to pursue that potential is so offensive it’s almost beyond belief. Luckily for Big Daddy and his patriarchy, feminists have well developed senses of humour so we seldom go postal. One could perhaps argue however enough was enough and the straw which broke the camel’s back was the law that criminalised the very act which patriarchy seeks to force us to perform because we’re not performing it to Big Daddy’s rules. Talk about wanting your cake and eating it too. As a friend said, “What 99% of births wasn’t enough for you?”

[....]

Your human rights matter to me. I will continue in this struggle for the rest of my life. Join me as we pledge ourselves to keeping visible the women who choose homebirth and as we lovingly continue to maintain a safe space for each of us. I'm proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with each and every one of you. You are my sisters. Whatever the legislation says, we will still be here, no one can legislate us away.

Yup. That.

Get angry, write a letter to your local MP, go to the rally, make your opinion known!


[thanks Sazz for the image - more here]

Linkfest

Some links from my blogular travels of the past couple of weeks:

- on the "mum" issue: Arwyn at Raising My Boychick.

- for the Doctor Who fans, a nice peice on Ace from Chally guest posting at the Hoydens About Town: Ace.

- on abortion arguments, how to defeat, from Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy.

- Bene on Dollhouse, I've been reading reacitons to the show with interest (as a Joss fan thus far, with some high hopes for Dollhouse that are yet to be fulfilled). See Lauredhel at the Hoydens on this here. And qeerty on the show here. The Hoydens thread has more links, it's an interesting debate, one I might write more on once I've seen more of the show.

- I loikes the Post Logical Parenting Conference cartoons at Mama is... start here.

- I read with interest the feminism blogosphere as digital colonialism that started with the What if peice at Professor, What If? here. Many many links and responses there in the comments.

- ETA - more on the digital colonialism storm, the author's apology here. And in the comments there, a link to this post by Portly Dyke on how to fuck up which is well worth a read.

OMG!!111!!!! Octuplets!

Though I would post some thoughts I had on a forum about the "OMG Octuplets". Though Twisty's post said it with style here: exerpt below - read the rest at I Blame the Patriarchy

Quote:

All this shit about whether it is “ethical” for poor, single women to have litters of babies is a red herring. What’s really going on here is “Hey, let’s rip on this mentally ill woman because she has appropriated her personal uterus to flout social convention!” [...] Whether it’s one kid or eight, once the placenta is buried (or eaten — yipes!) women are reviled. They get isolated in nuclear family situations. They suffer postpartum depression. Child-rearing is unpaid, low-status work. They can’t advance in the workplace. They are denigrated as “soccer moms” or MILFs. It’s a crap deal. But I digress again. The conditions under which a woman may become pregnant and undergo childbirth are rigidly monitored by the megatheocorporatocracy; these conditions are entirely rooted in keeping a firm hand on the sex class. You must be married to a man, have money and religion, and submit to medical authority. Also, you may only spawn one or at the most two babies at a time, and you must stop spawning when you’ve reached your community’s ick-saturation point — any more than three or four, for example, begins to make you look weird. The slightest deviation is aberrant — for instance, if you’re a pregnant teen slut, or you want to bring an “abnormal” fetus to term, or you want an abortion, or you have a glass of wine while pregnant, or you want to eat your placenta with fava beans and a nice chianti, or you’re a single woman seeking in vitro, or you’re on the dole, or you’re queer, or you already have 6 kids, or you have no money, or you’re a single woman with 6 kids and no money having wine and octuplets — bada-boom! The cold claw of community censure claps you upside the head, and people write blog posts on whether you should be allowed to mingle in polite society.

Whatever we may individually feel is "right" or "wrong" about this, the main furore about it is because she's a woman who did something out of the normal rules the partriarchy lays down for us womenfolk. Sure, there are ethical issues, but good luck separating them from the "OMG!!!!11!! Woman does something different!!111!! Man didn't tell her it was ok!!!!11!! And there's no man in sight to help her make it right!!!!!" And so on....signed, the patriarchy.

I also find the debate around the ethics of the doctor problematic. The whole discourse around the doctor's actions in implanting them smacks of it being HIS problem, as a representation of the patriarchy. The woman herself is disappeared, AGAIN, while everyone focusses on the RESPONSIBLE MAN who SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER because the CRAZY WOMAN was CLEARLY INSANE FOR WANTING ALL THOSE BABIES. Women can't regulate themselves, men have to do it for them. The mother's agency is taken away by removing the debate to the DOCTOR/MAN. Can you even imagine if the specialist had been a WOMAN!

I'm not saying here that there are no problems with what was done by either party in all this. What I am saying is that in very few places has the debate been really about what actually happened, and it effects. It's all patriarchal bullshit about who's allowed to do what with the uteruses of the world.

And the media blow up and calls for OMG regulation!!111!! annoys me. It implies that all the stupid WOMEN, now that they KNOW they can have OMG 8 babies at once!!111!!! will rush out to get them implanted. FFS.

In a sane world, the very few women who might choose to have multiple births of this kind would be fully supported in that DECISION by the people in that society, and by the the systems of that society.

Must read breastfeeding article from the New Yorker

Here is a link to a recent article from Jill Lepore, "Baby Food: If breast is best, why are women bottling their milk?" Lepore provides a great analysis of the curent value of mothering and mother's milk in a capitalist environment. Really interesting. My fave bits:

"More important, the name falls something short of capacious: only female mammals lactate; males, strictly speaking, are not mammals.

"By the turn of the century, the cow’s udder, or, more often, its head, had replaced the female human breast as the icon of milk.

"Year by year, bottles became less like breasts. The familial cylindrical bottle, called the Stork Nurser, dates from 1910 and is tied to the rise of the stork myth: milk comes from the milkman; babies come from storks.

"A brief history of food: when the rich eat white bread and buy formula, the poor eat brown bread and breast-feed; then they trade places.

"Non-bathroom lactation rooms are such a paltry substitute for maternity leave, you might think that the craze for pumps—especially pressing them on poor women while giving tax breaks to big businesses—would be met with skepticism in some quarters.

"It appears no longer within the realm of the imaginable that, instead of running water and a stack of magazines, “breastfeeding-friendly” could mean making it possible for women and their babies to be together. Some lactation rooms even make a point of banning infants and toddlers, lest mothers smuggle them in for a quick nip. At the University of Minnesota, staff with keys can pump their milk at the Expression Connection, but the sign on the door warns: “This room is not intended for mothers who need a space to nurse their babies.”"

Thanks to an online friend who posted this link at a forum I belong to.

Link-fest, or, on things I read about while holding my in-arms baby

I've been following a few blogs and sites around the traps and thought I'd collect some links here for the interested (oh yeah, coz my blog is so popular and has millions of readers!).

On the US election and Sarah Palin, the quandary's of the current election saga, (which I've been following in public in this thread in the Online Feminist Workshop at Joyous Birth) I liked the Women's Media Centre piece by Robin Morgan: When Sisterhood is Suicide, her other great piece is Goodbye to All That #2, both some wonderful insightful commentary on the state of the union, and the state of feminism generally.

"Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing they’re not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten thestatus quo), who can’t identify with a woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any age again feeling unworthy, sulking “what if she’s not electable?” or “maybe it’s post-feminism and whoooosh we’re already free.” Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, “I could have saved thousands—if only I’d been able to convince them they were slaves.”" (Morgan's Goodbye to All that)

I wish Hilary had been chosen too. I feel completely ripped off that she wasn't. Obama should have waited his turn. But given the choice they've got over there, women should remember (from Morgan's Sisterhood piece):

"Bottom line: Obama’s book title: Dreams from My Father. McCain’s book title: Faith of My Fathers. Patriarchy? You think? Neither one gets it. BUT. One doesn’t not get it much more than the other."

*sigh*

Echidne of the Snakes has some great election posts, I appreciated the October 8 entry Politics in Pictures: A Feminist Essay.

"Not being "the other" has some great advantages. For instance, when John McCain or Joe Biden do something stupid they only affect their own reputations, because white men are not "the other". They are individuals. When Barack Obama or Sarah Palin do something stupid they affect the reputations of African-Americans or women respectively (at least among all racists and sexists). They serve as embodiments of the groups they represent. This is the case as long as Firsts are necessary, as long as we only have a handful of individuals on which to base our group assessments.

On some level most women, for example, know this. Thus, when I look at the pictures in this post I can see them as making fun of Sarah Palin but my stomach thinks differently. It suspects that the pictures also make fun of me."

Too true.

The Huffington Post offered this perspective on the last presidential debate:

"What John McCain said last night, in front of millions of viewers, was belittling to women. He not only mocked Barack Obama for supporting women's health, he mocked women across the country. The debate last night was just the most vivid example of what we've known all along: John McCain is out of touch on women's health.

Just a couple months back, McCain had the deer-in-the-headlights look, and couldn't answer whether he thought it was fair that insurance companies that cover Viagra should also cover birth control.

And, remember the time when McCain was asked whether he thought contraceptives helped stopped the spread of HIV? McCain's response, "You've stumped me."

And there's more. Let's count the ways that John McCain is out of touch on women's health and women's rights

*He's voted 125 times against women's health.
*He wants to overturn Roe v. Wade.
*He opposes funding to prevent unintended and teen pregnancies.
*He opposes requiring health care plans to cover birth control.
*He opposes equal pay legislation, saying it wouldn't do "anything to help the rights of women."
*He's proposed a health care plan that will be worse for women."

The Hoyden's offered a good summary here.

The Feminist Law Professors (I love this blog, it's sooooo nerdy and I wish I belonged to it!) offer some great pieces on the election, this pictorial was quite the eye opener. I can't beleive what passes for advertising. Do these people not THINK, have they never heard of FEMINISM for fuck's sake! Get annoyed here.

Finally, at Femmessay, a blog I only recently discovered, which I am really enjoying, this post on what Palin means to feminism.

"This entire election cycle has been drifting somewhere between bizarre and fiasco. I am convinced that I am witnessing, in glorious technicolor, the sharp undeniable summary of the loss of decades of progress slipped away inside of a single decade. This is not my beautiful house!

All of it is terrifying and weird, but perhaps I take Palin the most personally. I hate that I do, but there it is. It is bad enough that we have such an inept person sapping up tax dollars at all, but that she is a woman meaning to represent a more “ladylike”… *snarl, wince*… “glide through the glass ceiling” makes the entire thing unbearable. Every male I know, and many I didn’t know before they imposed on me in a rush of trying to find a woman to whack pinata-like with their misogyny sticks, have asked me to account for her, forcing me to constantly have to explain that I am, in point of fact, a completely separate human being who only happens to have a karyotype in common with her. Why the fuck should I explain her?

Oh, but the measure of woman has just resurged in earnest, hasn’t it now? Thanks to the wonder of the Patriarchy, that charming nightmare carousel that you just can’t get off of, every single woman who ever aspires to that office will be instantly tarred with the same brush. Every woman with a “Fargo” accent, every woman with brown hair and glasses, every woman who is attractive to men, or has children, or is Christian, or is running for executive office, or is, well, female… will always and forever invoke the memory of Palin and the world will wonder aloud if she will be as stupid and incompetent because she’s… well, a she.

Thank you, Patriarchs, for rummaging through the list of potential contenders for veep nomination and plucking out the candidate who manages to meet every possible fantasy the Patriarchy has ever had of women in order to play her hamhandedly like a card, crumpling her up under the pressure of serving the interests of a dying political faction comprised largely of people who hate women, and lobbing her at us like so much garbage, then having the cheek to claim sexism when we say that she looks like a crumpled up card of the Patriarchy. This entire series of events revolving around Palin is the most loud and painful display of political carnage that I have ever witnessed against women in my lifetime. We’ll be cleaning this blood off the walls of the White House for years."

I love the misogyny sticks imagery! Hilarious (and sad).

On a lighter note, here is a post at 365 Days of Trash with a Tie fighter made of disposable coffee cups! Awesomely cool! Check out the blog while you're there, it's a good one. I'll have to do a link-fest to some of the urban homesteading and other green (and brown) blogs I like next time.

Go the blog! It's an interesting way for everyone to express themselves, and get their opinions out there. Fascinating stuff really. The academic in me wants to go look up some literature on it right now - lol.

Enjoy the links!