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A Whole New Shade of Weird

I'm no stranger to weirdness but last week I conversed with a woman whose ideas were ... out there.

She asked what I did and I explained that I founded Art of Possibility to represent physically disabled artists. She then launched into something she calls "people first language" where I'm supposed to say "artists with disabilities" to make her more comfortable, or "people who work as artists that have disabilities" or something. The "people" comes "first."

When I told her that I'm okay being a blind lady instead of a "lady with blindness" (which sounds utterly stupid to me) she insisted that she was Right.

Seeing as how I'm often fallible, I let her notion roll around my consciousness a couple days and, y'know, it just doesn't hold up. If she wants to say "person with disabilities" instead of "disabled" when personhood is understood, more power to her. But to try to shame me into speaking in a way that doesn't disturb her delicate sensibilities, when no matter what we call it, I still can't see, is just diverting attention from true, meaningful change.

To extrapolate, everyone knows if I say my husband is an engineer that he's a person who works in the field of engineering. No one thinks he's an artichoke or an iguana. Do we have to now describe all physical characteristics that way? "The red-haired boy" becomes "the boy with red hair" or is it only characteristics that make others uncomfortable because of their own biases?

Any sentient listener understands that physical limits of the physical world impair our opportunity as physically disabled, not other causes. It's physics. So for Art of Possibility, we'll go with brevity and sanity in our parlance.

To the "people first language" people, I'd recommend getting past your own shame and stop projecting your prejudices onto others who don't share them. Those of us doing the actual work of inclusion have enough to do without pandering to word games that don't improve our daily lives.

Whoever Said "Less is More" Wasn't Online

First I had to have an Idea. Then I had to have an idea and a website. Then I needed an idea, a web site and a blog. Then I needed an idea, a web site, a blog, and a myspace. Next I learned I absolutely had to have an idea, a web site, a blog, a myspace, and a facebook. Of course that wasn't enough; I really needed an idea, a web site, a blog, myspace, facebook, and twitter. And of course I've had linkedin all along. So what more could any entrepreneur need? Facebook fan page. That's right. Here and now, people. Livin' the dream.

AOPS in CHA

A quick pic from the CHA show in Anaheim Jan. 25-28:



Photo by Jen Norton.

Beauty vs. Barriers

With so little functional vision left the web has its limits for me. All the backgrounds, graphic buttons, Flash and fixed font sizes that make your design experience lovely render sites unusable for me. As a business decision when we set up aopstudios I commanded my web developer make the entire site accessible to screen readers and the outcome is black text on white background, a very retro, 1990s look.

Friends would gently ask, nudge and encourage "improvements," but I want the site to work for as many physical disabilities as possible. Access isn't an easy feat. A ramp to the door means nothing to a deaf person and a sign with an arrow doesn't offer guidance to a blind person. So although I understand that optimizing access gets really elemental, I also wanted a site that everyone could use.

Then I got the final, fateful nudge. In an email exchange with an artist who's a quad (and uses a silver dot on his forehead combined with an IR sensor to track his head movement so he can use a computer) he asked, "Hey, are you going to do something about that web site or is it supposed to look like that?"

Now Jen and Dean have been working to beautify and improve aopstudios. Maintaining a link to the screen reader accessible content and with its new consumer look and eComm component we'll be able to quell that haunting question, "... is it supposed to look like that?"