We exist as friction. The work that I do; it’s wildly painful.

Changing the Disability Design Narrative – UX Cake Podcast

People are creating interventions to get around actually having to talk to us.

And we burst that bubble.

Changing the Disability Design Narrative – UX Cake Podcast

We exist as friction, and it’s exhausting. Allies, load-share our burden of existing as friction against structural ableismable·ism /ˈābəˌlizəm/ nounA system of assigning value to people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness. These constructed ideas are deeply… More. “Staying alive is a lot of work for a disabledThe label “disabled” means so much to me. It means I have community. It means I have rights. It means I can be proud. It means I can affirm myself… More person in an ableist society.” Share some of that work and friction. We need respite from this wildly painful work.

Some ways you can help in your everyday life:

• Reframe yourself and others. This is hard and important work necessary to all other work. Change the narrativeWhen we successfully reframe public discourse, we change the way the public sees the world. We change what counts as common sense. Because language activates frames, new language is required… More.
• Advocate for accessibility at school, work, and in your communityWhat I have always been hoping to accomplish is the creation of community.Community is magic. Community is power. Community is resistance.Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century https://www.amazon.com/Disability-Visibility-First-Person-Stories-Twenty-First-ebook/dp/B082ZQBL98/ https://www.amazon.com/Disability-Visibility-Adapted-Young-Adults-ebook/dp/B08VFT4R9T/… More.
• Be a threat to inequity in your spheres of influence.
• Combat the myths.
• Use and promote Identity First Language.
• Elevate careThe activities that constitute care are crucial for human life. We defined care in this way: Care is “a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue,… More as infrastructure. Stimpunks exists because our systems effectively don’t.
• Celebrate our interdependenceInterdependence acknowledges that our survival is bound up together, that we are interconnected and what you do impacts others. If this pandemic has done nothing else, it has illuminated how… More!

We’re constantly educating others on, and hacking our way around, structural friction, to the betterment of all.

Disabled people, we are the original life hackers, right? Our innovative solutions have changed the world, right? Like, we created the Internet, we created the bicycle, we created the iPhone touch screen, we created audio books and curb cuts. And, you know, just item after item. And, you know, I think that it just demonstrates the value of really existing on the marginsFor me this space of radical openness is a margin a profound edge. Locating oneself there is difficult yet necessary. It is not a “safe” place. One is always at… More.

Changing the Disability Design Narrative – UX Cake Podcast

It’s tiresome work. We could use some help from abled and neurotypicalThe existence of the word neurotypical makes it possible to have conversations about topics like neurotypical privilege. Neurotypical is a word that allows us to talk about members of the… More allies working with us and alongside us instead of for us. Develop the lens.

…who is capable of developing this lens? I don’t think as a society we’re there yet, right? Like, we don’t always — we’re not so eager to have our bubble burst. Especially with one of the few things that sort of traditionally makes us feel good about ourselves which is what disabled people call inspiration pornInspiration porn. What’s that?It’s a portrayal of people with disabilities as one-dimensional saints who only exist to warm the hearts and open the minds of able-bodied people.Speechless on Twitter: “Not… More, right?

Where the objectification of our body is used to inspire other people, right? Disabled people make everybody else in society feel better about themselves. And I’m taking that away. Right? And that’s not fun.

Changing the Disability Design Narrative – UX Cake Podcast

Develop the lens by changing our framing from deficit ideologyBriefly, deficit ideology is a worldview that explains and justifies outcome inequalities— standardized test scores or levels of educational attainment, for example—by pointing to supposed deficiencies within disenfranchised individuals and… More to structural ideologyEducators with a structural ideology understand that educational outcome disparities are dominantly the result of structural barriers, the logical if not purposeful outcome of inequitable distributions of opportunity and access… More.

For the record: You only need empathyEmpathy is not an autistic problem, it’s a human problem, it’s a deficit in imagination.We all need to work on imagining things we have not been through.Empathy, Imagination and Autism… More in design if you have excluded the people you claim to have empathy for.

— Liz Jackson (@elizejackson) January 23, 2019

Design is tested at the edges. Invite friction into our companies, schools, and teams. We’ll all be better off for it.

So if intersectionalityIntersectionality’s raison dêtre is to reveal the systems that organize our society. Intersectionality’s brilliance is that its fundamental contribution to how we view the world seems so common-sense once you… More makes all of our social justice efforts so much better, why isn’t it a more prominent part of our social justice movements? I believe there are many reasons that may be why social justice movements have been slow to adopt intersectional practices:

• Intersectionality slows things down.
• Intersectionality brings people face-to-face with their privilegeTo not have conversations because they make you uncomfortable is the definition of privilege. Your comfort is not at the center of this discussion.Brené Brown Power can be understood as… More.
• Intersectionality decentralizes people who are used to being the primary focus of the movements they are a part of.
• Intersectionality forces people to interact with, listen to, and consider people they don’t usually interact with, listen to, or consider.

Oluo, Ijeoma. So You Want to Talk About Race (pp. 74-75, 77-79, 81-82). Da Capo Press. Kindle Edition.

Further readingThere are three types of reading: eye reading, ear reading, and finger reading.The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan: A Blueprint for Renewing Your Child’s Confidence and Love of Learning Most schools and… More,