Applying for GRE accommodations
I realized rather late that I would need accommodations for the GRE. I hadn’t thought about it much, because I hadn’t needed accommodations for high school exams or during normal college exams. But 4 hours of testing with only a single 10-minute break really wasn’t going to work for my arthritis or my bladder. On bad arthritis days, my joints start to ache and even burn within a half hour of sitting down. And on bad bladder days, I have to use the bathroom every half hour. Since I didn’t have a urologist at the time that I was applying, though, I went through the process of getting extra breaks…
Disney with arthritis
We had an extended-family vacation to Disney World last week, and accessibility was a big point in our planning with three people with arthritis and one person with a cast. It turns out, Disney makes it super easy to figure everything out through their Disability Access Service! Disney’s Disability Access Service (DAS) makes rides more accessible for those who can’t wait in the line for the full time. It allows guests to wait the length of the line, but not in the queue, so that they can have access to shade, seating, restrooms, or other necessary accommodations. In a nutshell, you go to a ride, receive a return time equivalent…
Person-first and identity-first language: Is there a right answer?
I was on Facebook the other day when I came across an infographic shared by an acquaintance of mine. It purported to list the correct language to use when referring to people with various kinds of disabilities: “person with a disability” instead of “disabled person,” “person with autism” instead of “autistic person,” and so on. If you clicked on the picture, though, you would see that some of the top comments were informing the makers of the infographic that many disabled people actually prefer the opposite. So what’s behind this divide? And what’s “right”? This is the person-first versus identity-first language debate, and unfortunately, it’s not a simple issue to…
Alfred the Great was disabled
Too often, it’s assumed that disability has no place in the lives of heroes and pioneers. At times, it’s even been actively removed from their stories. Alfred the Great had a chronic illness for much of his life, and by any modern standard, he was disabled. “Great” and “disabled” aren’t antithetical, and “weak” and “disabled” aren’t synonyms. But for many years and to many people that was believed to be the case, and disability has been erased from some versions of Alfred’s story. Alfred the Great was king of Wessex, in England, in the late 9th century. He is credited with the creation of modern England. He unified the English…
“Disabled” doesn’t mean “unable”
I’ve been through “disability education” a few times now as part of employment. The most recent time was for my job working at the tutoring center of my university. Someone from The Center for Disability resources came to talk to us about how to work with people with disabilities: what to expect, how to adapt, what not to do. It was very short, so it couldn’t avoid being lacking. Surprisingly, it covered both visible and invisible disabilities, although not many of them. Those kinds of limitations aside, there was one main problem with the training: The entire time, the presenter talked as though people with disabilities were an alien species…
