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2021-10-11-how-i-deal-with-colorblindness-as-a-digital-product-designer.md +2 -2
2021-10-18-lets-say-the-word-disability.md +60 -0
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"biography": "Emily Ogle (she/her) lives in a condo with her two cats. They're often subject to her photography experiments whenever she gets a new lens. Emily will someday get a real, real camera that has all the things. When not snapping a shot of her two furbabies, she is snickering whenever anyone says they live “x miles above x city,” avidly watching fantasy shows, or reading something, probably by Stephen King. She happily works in the accessibility space but slightly wishes she didn't have such solid job security (slightly) given so much need for it. She's trying to make the world a more accessible place, one cat at a time. (What? Cats deserve access to software too!)"
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"biography": " I'm Dave Rupert, lead developer at Paravel. I co-host ShopTalk, an award-winning sound effects podcast that also covers web development. I'm a dad to two wonderful kids. I live in Austin, TX; the best damn city, in the best damn state, in the best damn country, in the whole damn world."
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"biography": "Alicia is a creative force for change and thought-leader in Accessibility and Inclusive Design, offering a positive perspective and innovative solutions to complex problems relating to universal usability. A proven track record of matching business goals with all users needs to lead the way in client experience."
"biography": "Soren is a UXer living in the NYC metro. They are currently doing design community outreach as InVision’s Design Advocate. They also host a livestream about UX, accessibility, and inclusion called Feature Disabled and write about UX for Modus, UX Planet, and UX Collective. Otherwise, you can find them eating large amounts of plants and making poems about space, loss, and inequality."
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Colorblindness is any visual anomaly where someone has an altered perception of colors. It can be total or partial. The A11Y Project already has an [article that exhaustively covers the different types of color blindness](https://www.a11yproject.com/posts/2017-10-18-understanding-colourblindness/) while also providing tools that you can use during your design phases.
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Even though I grew up with severe-to-profound bilateral sensorineural hearing loss (try saying <strong>that</strong> five times fast!), I was not often around other deaf or hard-of-hearing (HOH) people. I had little to no exposure to others’ shared experiences. As such, I did not interact much with members of [the Deaf (capital ‘D’) community](https://www.nationaldeafcenter.org/sites/default/files/The%20Deaf%20Community-%20An%20Introduction.pdf) and had no idea of the preferred terminology.
The group feature on Facebook was quite popular in the beginning years, and I was eager to talk to people around the world (omg, British people are real!) so I signed up for quite a few groups, one of which was Deaf/HOH. I gave this a cursory glance and moved on to my then favorite “I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar.” (I was an English major. Cut me some slack, yeah?)
I eventually circled back around to all these groups I had joined, and in the Deaf/HOH group, a topic caught my eye: “Why is it HARD? Why HARD-of-hearing?” In reading through the thread, I saw people discussing the negative connotations of the word ‘hard’ and objecting that something negative was being applied to those with partial hearing loss. (‘Loss’ is another word that is often up for debate in this group.)
I went down a rabbit hole. I came across several threads reinforcing that ‘impaired’ should not be used to describe hard-of-hearing people. I came across the word ‘audism,’ which is the tendency to push non-hearing people into a hearing world. People were “hearies” and “deafies.” People asked for tips on becoming employed and whether they should disclose their deafness.
A predominant theme throughout the group was “Stop trying to fix us! We’re not broken!” Many within the Deaf community viewed cochlear implants as erasing their culture. They would try to convince worried parents not to get them for their young children. In lieu of that, at least ensure their children would learn sign language. In the same vein as “don’t fix us” was “We’re not <em>disabled</em>! We’re <strong>DEAF</strong>!” Posters would write about not wanting to identify as disabled while also being discriminated against for being deaf.
Hesitance to use the word ‘disabled’ within the Deaf community stems from a variety of reasons. For this group, they were first Deaf, disabled a reluctant second. That was part of their identity. The [neurodiverse community](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/clearing-up-some-misconceptions-about-neurodiversity/) also generally prefers identity first. People in this group might not consider themselves disabled, actually calling their neurodivergence a superpower.
Another group of people who hesitate to use the word ‘disabled’ are those who worry it’s a pejorative or insulting. These are usually non-disabled people who, in trying not to accidentally offend, use other potentially offending terms: “differently abled” (immediately “others” us), “range of abilities” or “people of all abilities” (okay, but we’re discriminated against for our <em>disability</em>, are you going to ignore that?), “specially challenged” (again, “others” us), and so on. Note here that the push for labels other than ‘disabled’ is coming from people <em>without</em> a disability.
The <a href="https://disabledspectator.com/saytheword-power-language-disability/">#SayTheWord hashtag was created by Lawrence Carter-Long</a> to bring awareness to the actual word ‘disabled’ and to encourage everyone to use it. There are several reasons why non-disabled people may hesitate to <a href="https://web.yammer.com/main/search/threads?search=%23SayTheWord">#SayTheWord</a> ‘disability.’ Their impression of what entails disability is mostly negative; they think disabled people are sad, lonely, dependent, unhappy. So calling someone ‘disabled’ would imply you think they’re unhappy or incapable.
People also may not realize that disability can be invisible, so they think only people in wheelchairs are disabled, but not the coworker in the cube next to them who needs a lot of time off (due to a hidden disability). Hidden disabilities in particular pose a host of barriers for people. People who have invisible disabilities may find themselves facing skepticism that their disability is ‘real,’ exasperation about the time it may take them to do a task, anger about all the ‘free time’ they get off work. Given stigmas around mental illness such as depression or anxiety, people may hesitate to disclose, for fear that their experience will be minimized or dismissed and their needs ignored.
In hesitating to use the word ‘disability,’ people are unwittingly reinforcing the stigma that having a disability is a bad thing. It also erases our experiences because of our disabilities. In ensuring we use the word ‘disability,’ we can bring visibility to what all it entails and start breaking down the myriad stigmas associated with it. We can start humanizing the people behind them instead of caricaturizing them as wheelchair or cane users only.
Disability isn’t an inherently bad experience. Disability as a minority group is the only one that everyone can enter in and exit out of during their lifetime. When people break their arm, they’re experiencing a disabling event. However, they may just feel inconvenienced at having to type one-handed or use dictation software. But they’re <em>disabled</em>, even if just for a short while.
Making sure we [#SayTheWord](https://web.yammer.com/main/search/threads?search=%23SayTheWord) can help people relate to the various scenarios that life throws at us that disable us, whether temporarily or permanently. After all, we all age into disability. Disability is something we all will experience, even if we don’t realize it, and there is no shame in that.