Film by Christine Sun Kim
“Time Owes Me Rest Again” is a powerful and thought provoking film by deaf artist Christine Sun Kim. The film investigates ownership of sounds for the artist, also known as CK, who sees sounds as being for other people. She builds performance pieces using a variety of sound equipment and materials to tell her story of reclaiming of her ownership and feeling her freedom, yet displaying how feedback loops are intrinsic to communication and that with transformation from sound to a kinetic sense we are able to hear with our eyes. This is a nice perspective to think about while preparing lectures, how could sound be more visual?
UAL Disability Service Webpages
The UAL Disability Service webpages are a little confusing for someone like me. Having a neurodivergent condition I was looking for specific information about getting support. The website is very corporate and cold, but there is an audio described video explaining how UAL disability services can help students and information on procedures and links to a myriad of documents.
A lot of the language is confusing for people who are not ‘in the know’, however. Values and quotes are nice for a shop website, but not really adding anything for the user here. I basically got so confused on here when I needed it, I just emailed in and got the support from a human person instead of the site. I would tell any student to do the same.
This site should have clear route of engagement, like the different coloured lines one follows in a hospital to find a department. I would suggest a differently abled designer could redesign this site from their perspective, and test that out. The Learning Difficulties Resources Foundation have some ideas about making websites more accessible here: https://www.ldrfa.org/how-to-make-websites-more-accessible-and-inclusive/ and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are available here: https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/.
#DisabilityTooWhite article/interview with Vilissa Thompson
In my humble opinion, the Huffington Post has always been a respectable platform for contributing and discussing topics of many natures, although it is quite USA-centric. Way back in 2017 they published this article: Confronting the Whitewashing Of Disability: Interview with #DisabilityTooWhite Creator Vilissa Thompson.
The story starts, as it has been for the last number of years in our social network culture, with a tweet of an article about beauty and disability and not representing people of colour. Vilissa started the hashtag #DisabilityTooWhite and it was widely adopted by disabled people of colour, opening up a wider discussion. The article talks about the reasons for the movement, and twitter as a platform for misunderstandings and the inevitable backlashes from trending with any controversial topic.
I think for a accidental creation, this campaign has shed light on people of colour with disabilities. I have a very close friend who is black and in a wheelchair, and he’s told me he felt under-represented in the media, and many other places (he calls himself a disabled diva)- yet just in this last year, the new Queer as Folk series from Peacock features a black wheelchair user as one of the main characters, living life to the full, and perhaps this wouldn’t have happened without this movement.
‘Deaf Accessibility for Spoonies: Lessons from Touring Eve and Mary Are Having Coffee’ by Khairani Barokka
I’d never heard of this term ‘spoonie’ until I read this paper.
“Spoonie is a term coined by a chronic illness blogger, who used spoons to demonstrate how much energy a person with a chronic illness has each day, and how much is used up doing simple tasks like washing or getting dressed.”
https://alsnewstoday.com/social-clips/what-is-a-spoonie/
In this 2017 paper Deaf-accessibility for spoonies: lessons from touring Eve and Mary Are Having Coffee while chronically ill, Barokka, a deaf-spoonie, talks about “lessons learned from harsh difficulties and successes in making a show accessible to some disability cultures, whilst struggling with one’s own”.
A lot of disabilities are invisible, and we all only have so much energy and some are constantly painful. Barokka made a poetry/art show that made the pain visible to the audience with a paint they run into their body as part of the performance, yet they refuse to stand up and perform.
The idea that disabled being the opposite of enabled, rather than ‘unable’ makes lots of sense to me, and making content accessible is imperative, and giving the script to the audience is one way to help with that.
The intersectionality of representing a country, a gender, and the largest minority- disabled people, came with a cost, people didn’t see the artist or the scholar, but rather a charity case. It’s so important, like in health-care, to see the person, not the condition. So here we have a delicate balance of on one hand not being able to see a disability, but on the other not seeing the person with the disability as a whole.
As someone with a hidden disability, I have had to get letters and appointments with specialists to show that I have a recognised disability. UAL have provided me with adjustments and I feel appreciated, however I almost always feel in a low state of mind when I have to state or declare that this is the case, yet every time I have had respect and have made it possible for others to share their conditions openly too. I feel coming out in this way is helpful in some situations, yet most of the time, like almost everyone else, I just want to be treated like anyone else, but please have some patience, I like a bit of space to get my meanings across, and may need a little extra space to hold every now and again.
I must say though, to wrap up, that the Shades of Noir widget (userway.org) to play with the font and colour of the website is genius. Made things a lot easier for me.