9:21pm August 17, 2014

athomewithlana-abled-persion-or-disabled-person

athomewithlana:

karalianne:

thisisableistasf:

karalianne:

athomewithlana:

abled persion or disabled person who doesnt have reading comprehension issues:

*writes 10 paragraph long dissertation on ableism, each paragraph 8-12 lines*

*doesnt put a ‘tl;dr’ at the end*

That’s not actually fair.

I know at least one person who writes really long…

Oh for the -

I’m out of spoons, can someone take this please?

Because all I’m hearing is “not all neurotypicals!!!”

Oh my God.

I have ADHD. The person I was talking about is autistic.

What I’m saying is that having good reading comprehension has nothing to do with writing ability.

Comprehension is not the same thing as expression, and vice versa.

That is literally all I meant. I’m pretty sure that’s what I said.

I didn’t say reading comprehension had anything to do with writing ability; what I meant was that the people who write these dissertations, abled or not, do not take into account those of us who would really like to read them but literally can’t because of the way they’re FORMATTED.

Except that saying that people who have good reading comprehension make these posts that are formatted with really long paragraphs is implying that comprehension is linked with writing ability, which isn’t true.

Like I said in my first response, there are people who write long posts with long paragraphs who have trouble reading their own posts because of how they’re formatted, but that’s how they were able to say the thing and trying to say it differently isn’t a thing they are able to do either.

I myself have ADHD, and I often can’t read long paragraphs or even long posts (even if they have short paragraphs) because while my reading comprehension is good my attention span isn’t so hot.

I try to keep my paragraphs short, or at least to vary their length, but I can’t always do that because the only way I can say a thing in the moment is the way I’ve written it. On my personal blog, I can try and rephrase things for people if they ask but most of the time I need the question to trigger different words.

Basically, sometimes people have disabilities that interact poorly with other people’s disabilities, and sometimes people have multiple disabilities that interact poorly with each other (like, in the same person).

Yes, people need to remember that not everyone can read long posts that have long paragraphs. At the same time, we need to remember that not everyone who needs short posts and paragraphs can actually WRITE short posts and paragraphs.

I write things.

I can’t summarize long things to make them shorter.

I can’t “pad” short things to make them longer.

They come out the length they come out.

This is EXPRESSIVE LANGUAGE.

This is not READING COMPREHENSION.

My reading comprehension sucks.

I am totally incapable of reading most of my long posts.

This factors into my total incapability of summarizing my long posts.

I do every, single, fucking, damn, fucking thing I can to make it easier because I HAVE READING COMPREHENSION ISSUES AND I CAN’T READ IT EITHER AND I KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE. I do everything I can. Sometimes I have written myself into meltdowns trying to make things easier to read. As in, meltdowns that may have resulted in long-term brain damage, so fuck anyone who thinks I don’t try.

And to be told I’m just not trying is the end. I shouldn’t even fucking write anymore. It doesn’t matter what I say. It doesn’t matter what I write. It doesn’t matter how many times I explain that receptive language and expressive language are totally separate skills and that the ability to have one is not the ability to have another. It just doesn’t matter. I explain it constantly, I explain it constantly. Constantly. And it doesn’t matter. Nobody gives a shit.

All they care about is burying the complicated issue of competing access needs under a pile of “You should be able to do this because I can’t read it so you should just be able to summarize it or do something to make it so I can read it.”

I’ve been trying for years.

I can’t come up with something.

The only thing that works.

The only thing.

Is a community where people set up a translation system where people willing and able to translate, translate from (person who writes what someone can’t read) to (person who wants to read what the first person wrote). This isn’t just about length, it’s also about grammar and lots of other things that can affect both comprehension and expression.

The trick?

It only works if everyone assumes good faith.

It only works if people aren’t assuming abilities that don’t exist, in people who don’t have them.

It only works if everyone wants it to work and tries really hard to make it work.

And I don’t see that happening here.

Not when someone tells me I have good reading comprehension because I can’t control the length of what I write.

Not when someone makes it “ableist” to write long things when it’s ableist to demand that a disabled person write in a way they can’t write, or just stop writing altogether, because for people like me those are the only two options.

It’s not ableist for me to write things you can’t read. Not when I’m not capable of writing otherwise.

It’s ableist for there to be no system set up to translate.

There should be a system.

We should be organizing a system.

But fuck it all, I’m not going to explain this again, I’m not going to go through the anguish again, I’m not going to go through the utter hell that is trying to explain my abilities when nobody wants to know because my abilities don’t fit what they want me to be capable of.

Bonus: I can’t read what I just wrote. I can’t read what I just wrote. I can’t read what I just wrote. So how the fuck am I supposed to summarize what I can’t even read? Oh yeah, and I can’t read what I just wrote, because I have massive reading comprehension issues. And they’re acting up in particular tonight. I have language comprehension issues in general. I compensated by learning to regurgitate and spit out huge numbers of words, but that does not mean that I have no reading comprehension problems. I can write without being able to read one single word at all. FFS. Please. I can’t take this anymore. Someone make it okay?

Notes: