l’azile

I have recently been exploring signed videos of popular music. Although I had stumbled upon a few here and there, it was only after I saw this signed version of Marilyn Manson’s “This Is The New Shit” that I started to get really excited. That it really sunk in that signed versions of songs can make the results original artistic works in their own right.

Here is a story on ABC World News about a young interpreter who started signing songs for a deaf friend and who, when this news item was originally posted, had had over 15000 visitors to her youtube channel.

And here is an old post on the phenomenon with a round up of some more examples, some quite awesome, some not. This post also introduces us to Jade Films and Entertainment, a production company run by a deaf woman who has produced quite a bit of these signed videos (check out her youtube channel).

Continue reading sign of the times

This post is my contribution to Blogging Against Disablism Day 2011 (BADD 2011).

I am probably going to get hell for writing about this but anyway, here it goes…

A few weeks ago, I attended a workshop on the sexual rights of people with disabilities. This workshop was part of the Disability and Citizenship Week (Semaine Citoyenneté et Handicap) at l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), a major university in the province of Quebec. It was the first time in a long time that I had heard of an event that broached this subject in my part of the world. I had two conflicting thoughts when I heard about it:

1. Hmmm, how come we still need to talk about this in 2011? and;
2. Well, this should be a change from the usual stuff I hear about (like accessibility, HTML5, blablabla).

Continue reading a few thoughts about sex and disability

L’affaire Barlagne fait beaucoup jaser ces jours-ci, cette famille française que le Canada veut expulser puisque la plus jeune de leurs filles, Rachel 8 ans, a une paralysie cérébrale importante et est donc considérée un fardeau excessif pour la société canadienne.

D’un côté, j’estime qu’il est bon qu’on parle enfin au Canada, ou au Québec du moins, de cette pratique discriminatoire vieille comme la terre de refuser l’asile ou l’entrée au pays de personnes handicapées sur la base de leur condition physique sous prétexte que ces personnes sont un trop grand risque de prise en charge, qu’elles finiront par nous coûter une beurrée puisqu’elles sont handicapées et, généralement, considérées non autonomes.

De plus, je souhaite bonne chance à la famille Barlagne. J’espère que cette famille obtiendra gain de cause quoi que j’en doute. Il est très difficile de changer ce type de décision, qui aurait pu aussi bien être prise par un robot car la loi est la loi et elle est supposée être appliquée de manière impartiale. Reste le politique mais puisque le pouvoir appartient actuellement aux conservateurs, je doute fortement que le gouvernement Harper intervienne en faveur des Barlagne. Les conservateurs ont prouvé maintes fois que l’opinion public a peu d’influence sur leurs actions et si on se fit à leurs agissements dans le cas Jodhan, même quand ils ont tort, le sort des personnes handicapées semble très peu les émouvoir. De toute façon, les autres partis ne feraient pas, et dans certains cas n’ont pas fait, mieux.

Continue reading nous sommes tous des immigrés, il n’y a que le lieu de naissance qui change

Today, I attended a conference organized by a consumer group. It was a mainstream event, not a dedicated event on disability and, as far as I know, I was the only person with a disability there. I was tired this morning, I have been struggling with insomnia lately, so I arrived late and to be honest, I did not feel like being there. But I am glad I was because it turned out to be an interesting conference on the impacts of information technologies on consumer rights and interests. Also, I met up with some people I know from another organization and spent the day with them.

Anyway, lunch was provided by the conference organizers and it turned out to be a bit fancy, with big banquet tables and table clothes and linen napkins and fancy silverware and decent fare that reminded me of hotel food. As is often the case in these types of situations, you find a table where there is room and you end up eating with complete strangers. So my two companions and I spotted a table that still had some empty seats and therefore joined a small group.

When you are a person with a disability, you spend a lot of time in your life either being ignored or receiving an unreasonable amount of unwanted and occasionally inappropriate attention. Today was the latter. All through lunch, this woman seated at our table stared at me. Or, more accurately, she spent most of the lunch staring at my hands. I could feel her stare on me and when I would look at her, as a way of letting her know that I was aware of her staring at me, she would hurriedly look away. And as soon as I looked away, she would stare at me again. I could feel her gaze bearing into me, I could see all the questions forming in her face. I almost called her on it but then that would have made things even more uncomfortable for everyone so I did my best to ignore her. But the truth is her behavior made lunch rather tedious.

Continue reading staring back in the glass

Seems like only yesterday, I was blogging about the possible end to the Community Access Program (CAP) and its Youth Initiatives, which provide affordable access to the Internet and training programs for disadvantaged populations in Canada. But actually, I first wrote about the Community Access Program way back in 2007.

And as I write these words tonight, I realize there is a reason why this feels so fresh and that is because this is the story every year, or so it seems. Every year, the federal government threatens to cut the program and every year, numerous communities in Canada mobilize and bring the program back from the brink. For example, see Michael Geist’s blog post on the subject from March 2010.

So it is the story again this year and I hope you will all do what you can to support the various initiatives working towards ensuring the survival of this crucial program. Write to the Prime Minister and Tony Clement, Industry Canada minister responsible for this program. Write to your Member of Parliament, to your mayor and to anyone else you think can help make a difference.

The good folks at Internet for Everyone, spearheaded by the awesome Communautique, have made things easy for you by even enabling you to write to all these people with a simple click of your mouse (or whatever other device you use). So you see, you really have no excuse not to take a few minutes to support this initiative.

Go! Mobilize! Save the CAP!

This is a post I wrote last April 2010 at the height of the whole #a11y vs. #AxS debate that gripped the Accessibility community on twitter at the time. The plan was to chime in, to make it clear what I thought about this whole thing and why I feel the way I do. Note that a large part of the contents of this post were taken, with some adjustments, from an email I wrote to a dear friend at the time. Indeed, I had decided to stop tweeting about it and to write an email, not because I did not want to discuss this subject publicly but because I felt that this was not a discussion that could be well served 140 characters at a time.

And then I thought I should probably commit to collective memory my perspective on the issue and write a blog post about it. But obviously, I never published the article because I kind of got tired of the whole subject and decided to just do my own thing. But, I was called out on this issue again today so I think it will just be easier to post the gawd damn thing and have it over with.

So anyway, last April on twitter, it was proposed that people start using the #AxS (as in “access”) hashtag in lieu of the #a11y (as in “accessibility”) hashtag (see John Foliot’s blog post on the story for more background). My impression is that the primary motivation here was to gain 1 character in tweets. And it seems to me that every other argument was secondary to the goal which, again, was to gain 1 character in tweets. So, lets have a look at some of these arguments[2].

Continue reading a11y cat[1]

It is funny (not in a ha ha sense but in an ironic sense) that after I got home tonight, this article from Wired.com was waiting for me in my RSS feeds. Originally titled “Why We Freak Out at Freaks” (and, after several complaints in the comments section to the post, changed to “Why We Stare, Even When We Don’t Want To”), the article explains why staring when one sees someone who looks different “actually makes sense, at least in an evolutionary sense”.

I found it funny because while I was out walking around looking for a decent restaurant with a nice atmosphere to have supper in my neighbourhood that would actually be open on a Monday night (I eventually gave up and ordered in Chinese, which ended up being pretty good), I was stopped by a young man on a street corner who asked me what was wrong with me. Needless to say I was thoroughly annoyed but I will get to that in a minute.

Continue reading de-evolution

Comme d’habitude, je suis en retard pour le party puisque je n’ai appris la nouvelle qu’hier : la Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ) oblige, depuis juillet 2008, les fabricants de fauteuils roulants motorisés à limiter la vitesse des « véhicules » à 10 km/h. Sans doute le fait que je n’utilise plus de fauteuil roulant motorisé depuis quelques années maintenant, sans compter que mon ignorance des actualités locales est légendaire, y est pour quelque chose. Mais bon, maintenant que je le sais, je dois dénoncer haut et fort cette mesure scandaleuse.

Déjà qu’on qualifie un fauteuil roulant de « véhicule » pose problème. Un moyen de locomotion, certes, mais pas du tout dans la même veine que des autos, motos, vélos, etc. Certains compareront un fauteuil roulant à des jambes ce qui se rapproche un peu plus de la réalité mais encore là, je trouve que l’analogie est pauvre. Simplement, cela représente un moyen pour certaines personnes handicapées de se déplacer, de bénéficier de plus d’autonomie et il n’y a vraiment rien qui puisse s’y comparer.

Certains groupes de personnes handicapées ont dénoncé cette mesure; il paraît qu’il y en a qui seraient même prêts à interpeller la Commission des droits de la personne s’il le faut et je leur souhaite merde. Mais la réalité est que la communauté est partagée. Sans doute le fait que la plupart des gens qui travaille dans le milieu et qui représente les intérêts des personnes handicapées n’est pas handicapé y est pour quelque chose…

Je ne me lancerai pas dans des longs argumentaires parce que, de toute manière, les chialeurs à l’origine de cette mesure discriminatoire s’en foutent et j’ai d’autre chose à faire que de perdre mon temps à essayer de convaincre des gens qui ne pigent pas. Mais je me permettrai de dire « tassez-vous calice au lieu de rester plantés là à nous dévisager ou à vous imaginer que vous êtes tout seul sur la planète ». Déjà ça, ça règlerait bien des problèmes.

Mais bon, si on se permet de limiter la vitesse à laquelle on peut se déplacer en fauteuil roulant, eh bien moi j’exige qu’on oblige les fabricants de vélos, skates, patin à roulettes et compagnie de limiter leur vitesse à 10 km/h. Car après tout, tout compte fait, ces « véhicules » sont beaucoup plus nuisibles à la santé de tous ces pauvres bipèdes.

Comme on dit en anglais, « fair is fair ».

PS. traduction googlienne de « tassez-vous calice »  : « pack your chalice ». Trop mourant.

PS2. Un article sur la question sur le blogue de Parole Citoyenne signé par Pierrot Péladeau qui explique infiniment mieux que moi la sournoise gravité de ce geste.

Some guy called Jonathan Keller from Motor City has been photographing his face every day for the last eight years and posting the photos on line. It is a strangely fascinating experiment if you are into that sort of thing and yet it is actually very ordinary somehow but for some reason I find his follow-through quite admirable.

He claims in the oft entertaining FAQ that the project will continue until the day he dies and that “only then will it be complete, and worth its true value”, though “unfortunately, [he] won’t ever see it finished”.

He has created a timelapse animation of the series called “Living my life faster” and it really is quite something to see though I must admit it almost triggered an odd epileptic seizure.

Aside from the hair (facial and otherwise), he has not changed much in the last eight years but I imagine that, if he can keep going (and, barring any unfortunate circumstances, I imagine he will), it will be kind of interesting to see the changes in the long term. Which I guess, or at least hope, is ultimately the point.

Thursday night, I attended a euh, I guess you could call it a gathering, organised by University of the Streets at the Santropol Roulant. The theme of the evening was “Beyond a handicap: Are you and I really that different?“. Michael alerted me to this event and I was curious so despite being dead tired after a very long day and just really looking forward to ripping off my prosthesis as soon as I could, I made my way to St-Urbain street and participated in my first “conversation” (that is what all the cool kids are calling it these days).

About a dozen people participated in the evening: from what I could tell, four or five persons with disabilities, including myself and the two guest speakers, and about eight individuals without disabilities who had for the most part some kind of relationship with people with disabilities, whether professionally or personally.

It was all very pleasant and polite, which I guess is a good thing for these types of things. And I appreciated my evening and left with the sentiment that it had been worthwhile to go. Plus it was really nice seeing Michael again. But… I also felt frustrated by a few things and hopefully I can explain why without coming off as arrogant or insensitive or just odd.

Continue reading same difference