Conversation

Accessibility should only refer to one thing, access for disabled people. Why? So that everyone knows that accessibility is not if you (normal) person can get to something, as if it were a security risk if it's turned on, or if you (normal) person can get to it, it's fine, thus sidestepping even the thought of disabled people.

And yes, I think we've definitely come a long way. Accessibility is in the first screen of the iPhone settings. Stuff like that. But for the general public, it doesn't register like that. It's nothing to them. But we still have so far to go, by a huge margin. Until the situation with Uber, the police, and a blind person of color is unthinkable in a society, we have work to do. And for that, we need to be able to firmly stand upon language that is understood by all parties involved. And yes, while this issue is profoundly more than just the words we use, (honestly I just thought of it later while writing and really do need to share it with followers anyway), the way a ton of the general public view accessibility, disability, blindness, and such, is just plain narrow, or shallow. And since their understanding of us is so shallow, if they aren't already friendly towards us, they pretty much see us as foreign. And while that may be shocking, I don't feel that it's far from accurate. Especially if we have a guide dog, and they don't like dogs, or can't possibly see a reason for dogs existing other than as pets or wild animals. And I can say hash tag education all I want, but it's going to take this story going viral for things to change. Seriously. Otherwise, people are not going to care one bit, especially the people who really need to. People in power. As I've said before, we need our own language. Blind. Disabled. Accessibility. We really shouldn't, I think, have people saying things like "I'm playing The Legend of Zelda blind today," unless they literally put on a blindfold and played it with sound alone. And even then, it wouldn't help a blind person who's been blind all their life because the sighted person can remember seeing. We don't have that privalidge. I don't know. Maybe I'm taking that too far. But at this point, I think language matters a lot. It's about how others see us. And perhaps it may give us more confidence, so that one day, people won't just casually disrespect us, or indeed, nearly get us killed, sometimes without even realizing it.

https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm24/bm2409/bm240904.htm

#accessibility #blind #language