Category Archives: Disability Issues

by | March 10, 2010 · 8:50 am

Accessible information is Relevant

This is the third in a series, Ten points to accessible information.

Focusing on the user is an important part of accessible information. The user also wants to be able to find relevant information. The two are, of course, closely related

Information providers must cut to the chase, and make sure they understand and provide what people really want. Give people the information they want most, rather than welcoming them to the web site, describing your policies and processes,  your vision, everything you do, your strategic direction, or how to use the site, (which should be obvious anyway,) or other wordy, jargon filled padding. The same goes for print information.

On the automated phone system don’t ask me to take even a short survey when I have to select from a raft of options. I want one piece of information about my account and I want it now, not later.
Don’t survey me about your service – just give it to me!

If your function is a complaints or claims body, for example, make sure people can find where and how to complain quickly and easily. ACC has changed its web site to do just that. It works.

The process of finding and using information has costs for disabled people, often more than for other people. These costs can be in terms of sheer effort, time as well as material resources. Costs are different for different people and impact on their use of information in different ways. Disabled people may also have fewer choices in the sources they use to access information.  They need to be able to quickly access relevant information with minimal effort.

If I can’t find the information I want quickly and easily on a web site I will pick up the phone and waste someone’s time until I get it.

And yes – if it works well for disabled people it will work well for everyone.

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Filed under Disability Issues, Disability Rights, Information Accessibility, Web Accessibility

by | December 16, 2009 · 9:36 am

Social media equals social action

Recent widespread outraged reaction over Paul Henry’s gratuitously insulting language on the Breakfast Show is an indication of the role social media is playing in establishing strong national disability networks. The response from across disability groups also shows that the silos between different impairment types are beginning to break down, which can only be a good thing.

Paul Henry, and perhaps also TVNZ clearly had no grasp of the effect that so many disabled people and their supporters being connected online would have. Facebook was running hot and hectic, with pages I thought too extreme to join. Feathers were ruffled on Twitter, even among people who had no connection with disability. Various blogs of excellent quality debated the issues raised.

Because organisations like the Human Rights Commission and Broadcasting Standards Authority have online complaint forms, making complaints has become easier, with guidance on the way to frame them being readily available. Henry thought that IHC had it in for him, but it wasn’t just IHC. A whole range of disabled people and organisations took up the cause of a popular figure and a group of people who have little access to the media to fight back.

This is not the first time such campaigns have been conducted. Back in the nineties, before social media were invented, an international sports-shoe maker created an advertisement extremely insulting and offensive to disabled people. Within a very short time international networks had distributed the email addresses of advertising and other executives. This resulted in a flood of emails making it very clear that the shoe-buying dollar would be spent elsewhere. The advertisement was withdrawn and individual apologies emailed.

Establishing a new social action group on an issue previously hidden and not discussed has also benefited from social media and online connectedness,

This combination has meant the Disability Clothesline has been able to establish a national project quickly, and begin debating the issues of violence towards and abuse of disabled people in a way that would have been impossible even a few years ago before there was a critical mass of disabled people online

Such actions and campaigns can only become more sophisticated and organised. Watch this space.

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Filed under Disability Issues, Disability Rights, Information Accessibility, Media

by | November 19, 2009 · 1:44 pm

The Disability Clothesline

A black triangle on a white ground has a clothesline with pegs wound round it. It is interesting to hear Judge Peter Boshier from the Family Court calling for a radical rethink of the way we deal with domestic violence in New Zealand. He cites cases of suicide because of the lack of support for victims. He also cites the lack of accountability of the perpetrators through programmes never completed.

Nowhere is the need for action more acute than in the disability community where reporting is low, and penalties for murder lighter than for murder of non-disabled people. I know of at least once case of suicide caused by bullying, and more attempts.

Domestic violence has a different meaning in the disability context. The nuances include the usual domestic and family violence which includes murder. It includes bullying in the workplace and in schools at all levels which is nonetheless violence if not domestic violence. All forms, including domestic violence, are experienced by disabled women and men.

Violence also occurs in institutions large and small. This is complicated as the perpetrators are sometimes in paid employment with service providers. If violence comes from other residents there are often few choices or alternatives for either party in their living arrangements or who they live with. But in either case it is the victim’s home. They have nowhere else to live or to escape to. Violence prevention services are beginning to take notice but their focus is quite limited and inadequate in the disability context.

As White Ribbon Day approaches I am struggling with this as I reflect on the unnecessary suffering many disabled people experience at the hands of others in a variety of situations. We have all got stories to tell, but to tell them is a frightening prospect. Many have been deeply buried for a long time and bringing them into the light of public scrutiny may seem like opening old wounds, It can also feel like inviting more pain from those who already think they have he right to intrude in disabled people’s lives in ways they would never consider appropriate for non-disabled people.
Victims who experience this include children and the most physically and psychologically vulnerable and fragile people in our communities.

This “ownership” of disabled people and their issues by others results in a fundamental and significant difference between violence experienced by disabled and non disabled people. It must be acknowledged and understood by anyone who wants to work in this area.

The Disability Clothesline therefore is a project whose time has come. It provides a medium for disabled people to safely tell their stories and perhaps find some healing by decorating tee shirts with their stories in whatever way they want. Supporters and those fortunate enough not to have a story to tell can sign a supporters’ sheet. The tee shirts and the sheet are hung on the clothesline for all to see, to provide education and promote action.

The project wants everyone to know that:

  • Violence and abuse against disabled people is not OK
  • It is OK to talk about it and share stories
  • Violence towards and abuse of disabled people is a serious problem
  • Action can be taken to prevent and detect it
  • Everyone can do something about it
  • As an issue it is just as important as other forms of violence
  • Disability violence and abuse is part of the white ribbon campaign

We are hanging out our dirty washing in public. You can too. Nothing about us without us!

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Filed under Disability Issues, Disability Rights, Media, The Arts, Women

by | November 12, 2009 · 11:21 am

Gas Grumbles

I have been so busy tweeting, Facebooking, watching videos on Youtube and whatnot that I am forgetting about my poor old blog! All this social media stuff is quite time consuming. It does allow you let off steam though. I posted to Facebook immediately over a very annoying incident when Steve tried to take a taxi to get our empty cook top gas bottle filled. The driver refused on the grounds of ‘dangerous goods’! Fortunately he found one that would take him and the bottle. Gas bottles are heavy when full and the filling station is some distance away. So much for carbon footprint – It’s just another way to discriminate against those of us without cars.

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Filed under Disability Issues, Media, Miscellaneous