disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

“well you wouldn’t say x to a wheelchair user???”

wrong, they absolutely would. stop saying this shit while trying to raise awareness for neurodivergence and mental health.

#☝️☝️☝️ #stop assuming that any disabled person 'has it better'

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

Some very helpful resources here! If I may add another, for those of you would like to make digital art, but struggle to use a pen / tablet, or have tremors/shaking, vector art may be more accessible to you. The learning curve can be a bit steep, but you can make amazing works of art without ever having to draw a line. All of my vector art is made with a mouse and is much less hard on my hands and wrists than more traditional drawing methods. As a bonus, vector art looks very clean and is infinitely scaleable. Work as small or as large as you would like

Art Hacks for Physical Disabilities!!

I know art can be inaccessible to physically disabled people for a lot of reasons, and I think art should be accessible to everyone, so here’s a couple of the things I found to help for a few different issues you may face that stop you participating!

I have a link to all these items (UK) in my link tree!!

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Slide one: illustration of a white woman with pink hair, wearing a pink outfit, sitting in a power wheelchair, looking at the viewer with thumbs up. Text Reese “hacks to make art more accessible”

Slide two: illustration of three different kinds, using three different types of pencil grips. One hand uses a circular grip. 100 is a large, rectangular grip. Another uses a grip that is ergonomic and fit into the hand. Main text reads “Paul, grip, strength and dexterity”. Subtext reads “there are loads of different types of pencil, grips or design for different disabilities and conditions. Increasing the width of the pencil can give more texture for a better grip using a pencil with a thicker with also reduces the amounts of pressure needed to hold a pencil you can make your own using items like pool noodles. KT tape an air dry clay. You can also put these groups on things like paint brushes.“

Slide three: illustration of a hand using a tool that looks like a wrist support with a paintbrush connected to it text next to it reads “this talk next a paintbrush to your hand in a way that means you don’t need to hold the paintbrush with your fingers and you will need to move your arm around“ on the bottom right hand corner is in photograph of a guided hand device. Text read “regarded hand as a tool designed to reduce the need for moving your hands and fingers and relies on the movement of your shoulder and upper arms and can be used with different materials like paintbrushes, pencils, pens and styluses.

Slide four: main header reads “when in bed“. Illustration of an iPad pillow with a iPad in it is next to text that reads “iPad pillows, put your tablet at an easier to access level when sitting or lying down“. In the bottom left hand corner is an illustration of a girl sitting in bed in her pyjamas with a pillow behind her and a bed table as she is drawing. On the left hand side is a photograph of a bed table with the text reading “bed tables are used to give you a flat tire up surface while in bed, and are often height adjustable”. In the bottom right hand side is a bedsit, a pillow with the text underneath, reading “ bedsitters of specially shaped pillows that you put behind you in bed to help you set up and give you a soft surface to lean back on”.

Slide five: maisie had a read out “at a desk left”. On the left hand side is a photograph of the document holder with the text “document holders put your paper at an angle to help prevent crane in your neck down”. On the right hand, middle side is an illustration of someone using a armrest and on the bottom left hand side is a photograph of the armrest. Text next to them reads “economic arm rests clip onto your table or desk and give you a surface you lean you’re forearms or elbows on. This can be used to steady your arm and reduce pain and fatigue while sitting at a desk”.

Slide six: maisie reads “foot and mouth painters” . on the right hand side is an photograph of swapping Augustine, an Indian woman with no arms, wearing a sari painting with her left foot. In the bottom left hand corner is an illustration of a woman with green hair painting using her mouth. Text reads “foot and mouth painting is a technique used by artists who do not have, or cannot use their arms so hold the paintbrush in their mouth or using their foot. Swapna Augustine is a foot painter who has painted with her feet and participated in multiple exhibitions of foot and mouth painters. Her art is stunning and I would definitely recommend checking some of help work out.“

Slide seven: main text reeds “art without brushes and pens”. On the left-hand side is a photograph of a spin art device. Text next to read it reads “spin out involves using bottles of ink and squirting them onto a spinning piece of paper to create spiral art. On the middle right hand side is a illustration of a laptop with coding art written on the screen. Text me next to it reads “coding art involves making programs that design and create art pieces digitally. This could be used in conjunction with an eye tracking software.“ On the bottom left hand side is a photograph of a child in a power wheelchair with paint on their wheels painting onto a large piece of paper. Next to this is text reading “wheelchair painting involves putting paint on your wheelchair wheels and moving around and large piece of paper. Sometimes you can connect a roller to create more marks.“

Slide eight: text reads “what do you do to make art accessible for you?”

End of ID.

#disability #disabled artist #art tips #disability tips #long post #described

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

I'd be willing to do captions for you. Message me if you're interested

Do you think you could try to add image descriptions to your posts to make them more accessible?

Hi friend. 🩵🥄

I've addressed this a million times.

I've practically begged for people to write image / post descriptions, as I do not have the spoons to do so. No takers.

I do what I can, when I can. I can't do more than that.

#I'm sure my captions aren't perfect #but I don't mind doing them

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

Disability will have you thinking shit like “I’m not even that disabled. I can manage as long as I limit myself to very specific careers, never go shopping for more than an hour or two at a time, keep my plans open so I can cancel and stay in if need be, and only go out a few nights per week at the most”

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

#img desc in alt text #positivity

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

so: masking: good, unequivocally. please mask and please educate others on why they should mask to make the world safer for immune compromised people to participate in.

however: masking is not my policy focus and it shouldn't be yours, either. masking is a very good mitigation against droplet-born illnesses and a slightly less effective (but still very good) mitigation against airborne illnesses, but its place in the pyramid of mitigation demands is pretty low, for several reasons:

it's an individual mitigation, not a systemic one. the best mitigations to make public life more accessible affect everyone without distributing the majority of the effort among individuals (who may not be able to comply, may not have access to education on how to comply, or may be actively malicious).

it's a post-hoc mitigation, or to put it another way, it's a band-aid over the underlying problem. even if it was possible to enforce, universal masking still wouldn't address the underlying problem that it is dangerous for sick people and immune compromised people to be in the same public locations to begin with. this is a solvable problem! we have created the societal conditions for this problem!

here are my policy focuses:

upgraded air filtration and ventilation systems for all public buildings. appropriate ventilation should be just as bog-standard as appropriately clean running water. an indoor venue without a ventilation system capable of performing 5 complete air changes per hour should be like encountering a public restroom without any sinks or hand sanitizer stations whatsoever.

enforced paid sick leave for all employees until 3-5 days without symptoms. the vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through industry sectors where employees come into work while experiencing symptoms. a taco bell worker should never be making food while experiencing strep throat symptoms, even without a strep diagnosis.

enforced virtual schooling options for sick students. the other vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through schools. the proximity of so many kids and teenagers together indoors (with little to no proper ventilation and high levels of physical activity) means that if even one person comes to school sick, hundreds will be infected in the following few days. those students will most likely infect their parents as well. allowing students to complete all readings and coursework through sites like blackboard or compass while sick will cut down massively on disease transmission.

accessible testing for everyone. not just for COVID; if there's a test for any contagious illness capable of being performed outside of lab conditions, there should be a regulated option for performing that test at home (similar to COVID rapid tests). if a test can only be performed under lab conditions, there should be a government-subsidized program to provide free of charge testing to anyone who needs it, through urgent cares and pharmacies.

the last thing to note is that these things stack; upgraded ventilation systems in all public buildings mean that students and employees get sick less often to begin with, making it less burdensome for students and employees to be absent due to sickness, and making it more likely that sick individuals will choose to stay home themselves (since it's not so costly for them).

masking is great! keep masking! please use masking as a rhetorical "this is what we can do as individuals to make public life safer while we're pushing for drastic policy changes," and don't get complacent in either direction--don't assume that masking is all you need to do or an acceptable forever-solution, and equally, don't fall prey to thinking that pushing for policy change "makes up" for not masking in public. it's not a game with scores and sides; masking is a material thing you can do to help the individual people you interact with one by one, and policy changes are what's going to make the entirety of public life safer for all immune compromised people.

#please read the entire post #You still need to wear a mask if you are able to #long post

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

[ID: A screenshot of a Twitter post by user @latkatdelrey that reads "do you ever get a headache so bad that you kind of understand why people 6,000 years ago saw merit in the idea of drilling holes in their skulls." /End ID]

#me and my mom both #when we found out that one of the treatments for chiari malformation #is basically a more sophisticated form of this my mom just yelled out #“!!! I told you!!!! I told you I needed a hole in my head!!!!!”

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

My trick to opening those pesky Talenti gelato jars is to walk around with the unopened jar while whimpering and looking as pitiful as possible until somebody offers to open it for me 🥺

#why are those jars so hard to open?!? #this is only somewhat a joke #hypermobility #hypermobile ehlers danlos #personal

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

Able bodied people cannot spot a small step to save their life I swear.

That “threshold” that’s two and a half inches high — that’s a step!

That “curb cut” on the granite pavement that’s three inches off the road— that’s a step!

I’m getting really fed up of being told that places are totally accessible just to find my only options are mild whiplash injuries or not getting in at all.

#☝️☝️☝️ #also hate when they're like 'there's a ramp :) it's accessible :)' #and it's so steep that it's impossible to navigate

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

My shoulder is super clicky and crunchy today, which is normal for my knees, but new for my shoulder. Had my mom feel it, and she said "it feels like a Barbie doll!!!" GIRL WHAT?? 😭😭😭

#personal #hypermobile ehlers danlos #ehlers danlos syndrome #caps tw

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

[ID: A series of three GIFs taken from the series "Golden Girls." They are at a fancy restaurant when this conversation occurs. One woman, Dorothy, says, "This is my treat, it is a celebration." The waiter then asks,"What are we celebrating?" To which, another woman, Sophia, responds,"my daughter found out she has a debilitating disease" while smiling. /End ID]

The Golden Girls S05E02 - Sick and Tired: Part 2

#so true! #sometimes you just have to buy yourself a cake! #sorry if the addition of names is clunky #I had to look them up and was pretty sure not everyone has seen the show

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

Full Transcript at the link; 3-minute listen.

Quote:

By taking biopsies from long COVID patients before and after exercising, scientists in the Netherlands constructed a startling picture of widespread abnormalities in muscle tissue that may explain this severe reaction to physical activity.

Among the most striking findings were clear signs that the cellular power plants, the mitochondria, are compromised and the tissue starved for energy.

"We saw this immediately and it's very profound," says Braeden Charlton, one of the study's authors at Vrije University in Amsterdam.

The tissue samples from long COVID patients also revealed severe muscle damage, a disturbed immune response, and a buildup of microclots.

"This is a very real disease," says Charlton. "We see this at basically every parameter that we measure."

#long post #if it primarily effects women or is more extreme in women #then doctors do not care #the male body has always been the default in medicine #they've used AMAB bodies to study the effects of medications ON THE UTERUS #they see men's bodies as 'less complicated women's bodies' #when that is in no way the case #it's always 'women are hysterical with all their pesky hormones' #and never actually looking into their complaints beyond how they effect men #I've heard people call ME and Fybromyalgia 'Lazy Wife Syndrome' #and if that doesn't tell you that a large part of the reason no one is doing anything about this #is sexism than I don't know what will

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

#image description in alt

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

Useful information

#I know it's exhausting to have to fight for answers #but you are worth the fight!!!

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

Hey hey! I dunno if you saw, but Chronic Fatigue Syndrome just got mentioned in a study that confirms its biological impacts.

https://www.sciencealert.com/landmark-study-confirms-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-is-unambiguously-biological

Very interesting! Not at all surprising though. This is obviously a fairly small sample size (17 subjects), but I think it definitely calls for further study.

I don't know how people can look at people with ME / CFS and NOT think that there is some underlying physical cause for the condition. So many previously active and healthy people have been, both literally and metaphorically, knocked to their knees by this illness. Diana Cowern's (Physics Girl on YouTube) struggle with ME / CFS after a covid infection, for example, was heartbreaking to watch. I had been watching her channel on and off for many years, and seeing her go from bubbly and vibrant to suddenly having difficulty speaking or even lifting her head... I don't know how anyone can see such a transformation and say that it's "all in your head."

Even so, people need to remember that even if an illness IS psychosomatic, that doesn't mean that no physical problem is present. Just because a problem is presenting itself indirectly doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist.

#me cfs #chronic fаtiguе ѕуndrоmе

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

Members of Lesbians with Disabilities Support Group, 1982, photographed by Cathy Cade (source: Gay by the Bay : a history of queer culture in the San Francisco Bay Area)

[disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word]

i am unreasonably proud and excited about this

#img desc in alt text #LOVE IT!!!! #no more spoons only knives