disabilityhistory-blog

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“She was outgoing, silly, always joking. She just wasn’t doing very well that day.”

Cops Slam Unarmed Woman On The Pavement, Killing Her In Front of Family

Tanesha Anderson was killed by the police in front of her family. Her family had called the police hoping they would help get her into a psychiatric facility for an evaluation (she had bipolar disorder). Instead, they killed her right there. 

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During World War II, several thousand conscientious objectors who refused to go to war were instead assigned to work in state mental hospitals. Many of the institutions were filthy, run-down and staffed with abusive workers. Charlie Lord worked at one in Philadelphia and secretly photographed the horrific conditions.

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For instance, Philip Wolfe escaped a domestic dispute and had a friend call the police. Although the dispatcher was informed that Wolfe was deaf and required an interpreter, the police showed up without one and completely misunderstood the issue. The domestic abuse charge was never filed. Wolfe's partner returned that night and abused him again. In Oklahoma, 64-year-old Pearl Pearson was pulled out of his car and beaten by police as he attempted to show them a card that said "I am deaf." The officers were not charged for the attack; but Pearson was charged with resisting arrest.

How the Criminal Justice System Fails the Deaf Community

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The Federal Emergency Management Agency wants at least a dozen of those disabled, elderly and mostly poor residents to return thousands of dollars in disaster aid.

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“Traditional fonts are designed solely from an aesthetic point of view,” Boer writes on his website, “which means they often have characteristics that make characters difficult to recognize for people with dyslexia. Oftentimes, the letters of a word are confused, turned around or jumbled up because they look too similar.” Designed to make reading clearer and more enjoyable for dyslexics, Dyslexie uses heavy base lines, alternating stick and tail lengths, larger openings, and semicursive slants to ensure that each character has a unique and more easily recognizable form.

A Typeface Designed to Help Dyslexics Read

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Getting prenatal care can be a struggle, transgender men report in what may be the first study of its kind. And their feelings on once again appearing more female varied greatly.

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Some facilities have begun to install floor lighting, much like that on airplanes, that automatically turns on when a resident gets out of bed, illuminating a pathway to the bathroom, said Dr. Lewis A. Lipsitz, a professor of medicine at Harvard who is also vice president of academic medicine at Hebrew SeniorLife, a retirement community in Roslindale, Mass. Others are installing energy-absorbing flooring in bathrooms, to reduce the impact of a fall.

Bracing for the Falls of an Aging Nation

I love the idea of designing independent living facilities for better, safer access. Why wouldn't you have better lighting and lower-impact floors? This should be done everywhere, not just in facilities for elders. Lots of folks have low vision, poor balance, etc.

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And then we came to a house with no steps! Jackpot! I rolled up feeling super confident in my princess costume, crown on my head, and just as I held out my pumpkin I heard: “Oh, I get it! You’re in a wheelchair! You’re right out of the hospital! Cool costume!” REALLY, mister?, I thought. Did you not get that I’m a princess? I mean, I know I’m in a winter coat, but there’s a bright pink crown on my head! I can pretend to be a princess, but I sure as hell wouldn’t dress up as a girl in a wheelchair. Don’t get me wrong; it’d be nice to attach my crown to my head and my wheelchair to my butt once a year. It’d be nice to take it all off at midnight on October 31st and put it on the shelf ‘til next Halloween. But my wheelchair is not a costume. I can’t put it on and take it off like fairy wings or a princess crown. And that’s fine with me. So accept me as I am. Accept me as a fairy or a princess. And please, don’t patronize me. Just share your candy.

"My Wheelchair is Not My Halloween Costume"

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When alcohol is currency, non-alcoholic drinks are considered valueless, and the interests and needs of people who don’t drink alcohol are easily forgotten. In a community so focused on alcohol, those who don’t partake are excluded. They may choose not to attend drinking events, missing key career and business opportunities. They may keep their choices to themselves, at risk of ridicule. They might drink a quick cup of water and say, sorry, I have to go home, something came up.

Alcohol and Inclusivity: Planning Tech Events with Non-Alcoholic Options

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Abled people are clearly suffering. I don't think it's moral to keep them alive. :/

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Trailer for the film Invitation to Dance. Here's the trailer with audio description of the visual elements.

"A wheelchair-riding social activist takes us out dancing with the avant-garde of disabled artists and radical thinkers - unstoppable in their quest for “equality, justice, and a place on the dance floor!”"

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So if my NT daughter had pneumonia and was denied treatment, that would be gross negligence, and responsible persons could be tried for manslaughter, but if my autistic son had pneumonia and was denied treatment that would be a mercy (?) maybe people would support me enough I could appear on talk shows, write a book, maybe have a movie made about me.

Another response to this anonymous ask and the follow-up.

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@previous anon. I practically live at the hospital. I am disabled and have required multiple surgeries to live. You should realize that we are numerous and we want to live. Our lives are not invalid or any less in quality just because you think they are. Nancy's death was absolutely MURDER. I hope the disabled people in your life know they are not safe around you.

This is a response to the other anon who does not think that intentionally killing disabled people is homocide.

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But the fact Nancy was disabled DOES affect the situation. If she wasn't non disabled she wouldn't have been in so much pain and suffering (crying out in agony etc). Forcing her to die by starvation was the most disgusting inhumane thing though

Listen to disabled people when we tell you that our lives are worth living, even with pain, even with feeding tubes, even with vents, even being nonverbal, even being unable to walk. You cannot decide whether our lives are worth living. Doctors cannot decide whether our lives are worth living. Parents and partners cannot decide whether are lives are worth living. WE decide whether our lives are worth living.

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I don't agree labelling Nancy's euthanasia as murder. Her parents were clearly suffering as a result for her condition. Do her parents feel guilty? Probably but they would have felt more guilty if they let her live until she was old enough to make that decision, but, being a teenager with that disability is very difficult. How could have she led a pain free life without weekly hospital visits and tubes as her meal? I agree on the basis of life quality. No human being should live to suffer.

You don’t get to kill someone because you think you’re “suffering” due to their existence. You think you’re playing devil’s advocate or something by trying to understand this child’s parents, but that’s the standard position. Everyone identifies with the parents. That’s why this particular form of murder - of a disabled child, by her parents - is rarely prosecuted or viewed as murder.

Why can’t the public FOR ONCE identify with the disabled person who was murdered? If a parent killed a nondisabled child by withholding food and water from her, everyone would be outraged. Being disabled does not make Nancy less of a person. The fact that you, and so many others, can’t seem to identify with her suggests an incredible, society-wide failure of empathy.

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The Autistic Self Advocacy Network issued the following statement on Tuesday, October 28th, regarding the killing of Nancy Fitzmaurice. 

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network is profoundly concerned by the recent decision from the United Kingdom allowing Great Ormond Street Hospital in London to kill Nancy Fitzmaurice, a disabled 12-year old, through the withholding of fluids at the request of her mother. The decision constitutes an extremely troubling legal precedent, representing the first time the British legal system has allowed a child breathing on her own, not on life support and not diagnosed with any terminal illness, to be killed by the medical system.

Euthanasia of people with disabilities is an extremely dangerous and wholly inappropriate solution to inadequate pain management. In cases where painkillers are insufficient, a number of alternatives for pain management exist. A policy of euthanasia targets vulnerable people, particularly when it is applied to children. People with disabilities who experience chronic pain should have same access as others to life-sustaining medical treatment.

When parents and physicians have the ability to authorize the killing of disabled children, we see serious abuses. Recently, ASAN and twelve other disability rights groups filed an amicus brief in a case challenging the University of Wisconsin Hospital’s practice of counseling parents to withhold care from children with disabilities for treatable but life-threatening medical conditions. In one such instance, a child with developmental disabilities died after a hospital doctor advised his parents that they could withdraw his feeding tube – which provided fluids and nutrition – based on his supposedly low “quality of life.” The medical condition supposedly justifying this measure was treatable pneumonia. The child died the next day, after administration of morphine. Such actions demonstrate the results of a policy that allows families and clinicians to discriminate on the basis of disability in the application of life-sustaining treatment.

The media coverage surrounding this case has been extraordinarily irresponsible, implying that the child’s disability should justify a decision that her life was unworthy of living. ASAN is concerned that the voices of people with disabilities with similar support needs were not heard in this discussion. Many people with disabilities who utilize feeding tubes or experience other conditions similar to those Nancy Fitzmaurice face live in the community and do not feel that their lives are not worth living. The absence of the voices of people with disabilities who could shed light on the lived experiences of children like Nancy is troubling in the extreme.

We urge advocates and policymakers to stand against legal and legislative decisions enabling the killing or withholding of life-sustaining care from disabled children and adults. As ASAN’s previous work has indicated, people with disabilities continue to face systemic and ongoing discrimination in accessing the medical system. Inaccurate and dangerous assumptions that our lives are not worth living have claimed too many lives. People with disabilities deserve better.

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New Delhi, Oct 26 (IANS) This national capital of over 16 million has 2.5 million disabled people for whom there are a mere 100 public toilets, supposedly designed for people with physical disabilities. But most of them are either non-functional or serve as makeshift storehouses, a survey has revealed.

Who cares for the disabled? Public toilets are nonexistent or non-functional