as small as a world and as large as alone

11:54pm April 22, 2014

chordatesrock:

youneedacat:

autieblesam:

[Image is a poster explaining briefly the origin and meaning of green, yellow, and red interaction signal badges, referred to above as Color Communication Badges.]

deducecanoe:

justsjwthings:

oldamongdreams:

greencarnations:

CAN WE DO THESE AT CONS

SECONDED.

if youre not autistic or suffer from an actual disorder, dont use these. its not cute.

er… you know a lot of autistic people go to conventions, right? And people with social anxiety disorders and panic disorders? Shit if I could get away with using this at work I would. 

Hello there, justsjwthings.

I would like to introduce myself.  I refer to myself as Sam Thomas, though my legal name and how a lot of people know me is Matthew.  I am officially diagnosed autistic.

Over one week in June 2013 (last summer), I was in Washington, DC for an autism conference called the Autism Campus Inclusion (ACI) summer leadership program run by the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network for autistic college students.

If you have any question as to the truth of this, I would like to direct your attention to this YouTube video that ASAN produced promoting the above-mentioned conference.  I appear as the first person in the video and you can find more images of my face on my blog.

At this conference, not only did we use these communication badges pictured above, but we actually had the opportunity to meet Jim Sinclair, the inventor of these badges.

During the part of the conference in which Jim Sinclair gave us a history of Autism Network International (ANI)—which they were a co-founder of—they talked to us about the establishment of this particular piece of assistive technology.  Basically, it was a simple idea that seemed to fit a need and quickly became very popular among many autistic spaces for it’s practicality and ease of use.

The conference it originated from is called Autreat and is held annually by ANI. This is an autism conference that accepts Autistics and Cousins (ACs)—that is, anyone diagnosed or otherwise self-identifying with any disorder autistic or similar that may share a number of autistic traits.

There was a need.  The need was met.  This is how we can safely assume most technology either emerges or becomes popular.

We also talked about something called Universal Design and the Curb-Cutter Effect.  The Curb-Cutter Effect is when something to fit a specific need is found to create convenience in a broader area than intended.  Curb cuts allowing for wheelchair accessibility to sidewalks proved to also be convenient to anyone who may have trouble with steps or even simply a mother with a baby stroller or maybe a child with a wagon.  This is a desirable outcome with disability rights advocacy as creating convenience for non-disabled people often makes the assistive technology easier to advocate for.

In this sense, these colored communication badges could serve that Curb-Cutter effect.  Not only would this be perfectly acceptable for non-disabled people to use for convenience, but would also help to increase their effectiveness and convenience for those of us who need them.  Here are a few examples:

• Increased popularity makes the colored communication badges more easily recognizable to the general public, making them as effective outside the above-mentioned autism conferences as inside.
• Increase in demand would create increase in supply and availability, likely making these available to pretty much anyone and even being included with, say, the name tags you are required to wear at most cons.
• In addition to these helping people recognize the communication state of the wearer, the wearer will be able to recognize whom they can feel more comfortable to approach.
• Increased popularity would make these badges more acceptable for public use and less alienating to those who would wear them frequently.

This is not something that we are completely incapable of surviving without; this is something that was convenient and made our lives a lot easier.  If that can be easily shared with the general public, then what purpose does it serve not to share it?

Thank you for reading.

All that plus —

It diminishes the entire world to treat things like this as some kind of proprietary thing owned by people with certain disabilities that nobody else gets to do.  I’m getting really fucking sick of reading posts that treat assistive tech as something owned by disabled people that nobody else gets to use for any reason.  Nothing, nothing at all, nothing whatsoever, is served by that attitude, other than maybe people’s egos.  give it a rest.

Do you think that applies to all assistive tech or do you think that, e.g., raising prices can be a concern? That is, there was a post going around recently about how cosplayers who buy cheap wheelchairs to cosplay disabled characters are 1. appropriating, and 2. driving up prices or reducing the available supply of secondhand chairs. And so I’m wondering whether you disagree with the economic arguments, too, as well as the political ones.

I don’t really think it makes sense to treat things like wheelchairs as a limited resource that should only be available to disabled people.  In many cases, they are limited, but the primary cause of them being limited is not the tiny number of people who use them who aren’t disabled in some way.  As far as the idea that this is ‘appropriating’, I totally reject that idea and think that the idea of appropriation has become vastly overused in disability contexts to the point that it’s making actual disabled people afraid to do things they need to do, because they’re too afraid they’ll be “appropriating” something from someone else.  At any rate, I don’t really think that cosplayers and pretenders and the like using wheelchairs make up a large enough group of people to have much economic effect, and that the economic argument is mostly made up in order to justify the political and social arguments.

Mind you my head is really fuzzy so my point of view isn’t being fully explained in this post.  My back hurts from standing over the toilet draining my g-tube to prevent puking because I’ve had a really bad night physically. But the gist of my point of view on this is, no I don’t buy it at all.  And where it is a concern, it shouldn’t have to be – as in the solution should be to make things more available, not to police who is allowed to use them.  You don’t see these sorts of arguments over who should be allowed to use bicycles, and I see wheelchairs as no different than bicycles.

51,461 notes