What's Next? The Disability Liberation Movement in The Covid Era

 

Before we begin, I am going to address that I am so happy to receive the support I have in the early days. I started this because I was told I needed to work on rediscovering my voice outside of my professional and academic endeavors. I started this blog and you as an audience have seemed to respond. The post I made yesterday is being received better than I ever could have imagined and one of my mentors in academia is allowing me to expand on my thought so there will be more to come on that. 

Today, however, I want to explore an ever-evolving topic and that is where do we go from here. We have ADA [Americans With Disabilities Act] (That just celebrated its 30th Anniversary) and that is great but there is so much more we can explore as a people. We need a reform ADA and have it reflect the evolving and expanding needs of the disabled population in this country. 

I know,  anyone who has followed my career knows what I am about to say. Yet, it bears mention once again. The next big step in the movement will be the adoption of an internet clause in the ADA that regulates websites and mandates that they are put in an accessible format for the visually impaired and print disabled. Everything and I means everything is trending to online formats half of our waking hours are spent staring at a screen. It is an instant gratification society that gets information almost up to the second. It is not fair that we are excluding an eighth of our population from that information because it's on inaccessible websites. 

Not to mention that there are guidelines to help websites do this and all we have to do is adopt some form of the Web Content Accessibility guidelines to the ADA. I do not want to get super political in this space that is not my goal. The goal is to inform and entertain without triggering people. Again though it is a relatively easy fix that has gotten blocked because of the pertinence of elections and then of course COVID-19. 

That will not stop me from making the argument that it may be even more important now in the era of COVID because the disabled population and society as a whole is becoming isolated. 

Then again I wake up this morning with an outlook of renewed optimism because we as a nation we now have a disabled lawmaker working in both chambers of the legislature. Let me explain. In the Senate, Tammy Duckworth is an Iraqi War veteran and double amputee that represents Illinois as a Junior Senator. We also have a nice surprise and a huge victory for the movement when twenty-five-year-old Traumatic Brain Injury Survivor and advocate  Madison Cawthorn won his bid to represent North Carolina's 11th district in the House of Representatives. Representative-elect Cawthorn ran on a platform to represent western Carolinians and all disabled Americans in the chamber. This is big for the movement because we now have disabled legislators from both parties and in both chambers. With the leadership of Senator Duckworth and Representative-elect Cawthorn, I am confident in saying that the movement has now infiltrated the establishment and we will be represented fairly and honestly. I commend them both and that is just the beginning. 

What are the trends the sociology shows about disability and COVID? That is again another loaded question that I pose but I am more interested in the cultural shift than the medical shift (please do not come to me for medical advice I am not your guy). However, I have seen an interesting cultural shift that you are unknowingly a part of. 

This cultural trend is that there has been a lot of connections made through social media and it has given people a platform that they could have only dreamed of before this. A lot of this has come in the form of positive Youtube Channels and what one sociologist Dr. Sami Schalk from SUNY's University at Albany has coined as the Super Crip or inspiration porn. It is a theory that presents the argument that the abled-bodied community is using our accomplishments as inspiration. If someone calls me inspirational I just laugh and I hear "If I were you I would've killed myself years ago," Yet it never falls there is a long parade of people on Youtube and Facebook that want attention and they talk about changing how people view disability but it all seems to be the same stereotypical tropes that have become toxic to the forward momentum to the movement. 

I know that's an unpopular opinion and it may make me sound like a 86 year old man that smoking a cigarette, drinking a Busch Light screaming get off my lawn, and maybe that is who you take it. Then there will be those of you who will say then why do have a blog, I have already said that and I will continue to write to improve my skill and I want to teach if you read it or not is your business. 

Lastly, I will say I am taking suggestions for posts, I want this to be as interactive as it can be. 

As Always Stay Safe and God Bless