Okay, this totally drove me NUTS. Some guy wrote an article lamenting the misery of people that choose not to embrace the tech world, how hard it will become for them to get along in the future, and outright states that society should work really hard to make sure that their lives don't become "unbearable."
I went to the discussion forum that accompanied the article, and sure enough, while a majority of people were rolling their eyes, a few were whining about what horrible elitists we are. Considering the 'net has made my life (along with those of uncountable other disabled folk) so much better, you can be sure that it got my hackles up and I posted a comment of my own in response... (I'm also leaving it in the extended version of this entry in case the site takes it down.)
"We need to figure out how we will avoid making life unbearable for them."
Why, exactly?
The Internet, and computers in general, level the playing field between those with disabilities and those without. With system access being present in public libraries, community computer centers, cheap newbie training courses, and systems themselves available for virtually nothing in secondhand classified ads, there really is nothing holding average-bodied people of average neurology back from being with the rest of us online. The only thing, as far as I can tell, that prevents them is a lack of interest, and that's *their* choice.
I've never seen anybody fret about ensuring that living in society isn't "unbearable" for those with physical, neurologial, mental, or cognitive impairments. To the contrary, there is a vicious drive to "cure" my kind by forcing us from early ages onto drugs and in traumatic "therapy" that teaches us to repress reactions to painful physical stressors. We don't come out cured, we come out repressed, like any homosexual person that has gone through similar therapies. It would take minimum effort to bring understanding to the community and adapt things to include my kind naturally without excluding the less sensitive average folk, so that we could (for example) grocery shop or eat in a restaurant without exhausting ourselves blocking out the sensory pain or restricting every physical sign that we're miserable. It wouldn't take much, as has been done in California, to ban smoking in buildings so the huge number of asthmatics wouldn't be harmed by it, but instead we're told to just take extra meds.
Having the 'net has been a godsend for us, because now we can remain in our disability-friendly environments rather than harming ourselves by going out into the world. I've *met* the sort of people that have "no interest" in going online, the people the author is so worried about protecting. They're also the exact same sort that tormented disabled/geeky kids in school, that sneer at asthmatics affected by their smoke, and that believe everyone with a neurological difference should repress/drug their natural reactions to painful stimuli, that vote to keep financial disability support (which is needed primarily because of prejudice and lack of accomodations for non-mobility impairments) for independent adults thousands below the national poverty line. They have made no effort to include the disabled in their communities so *our* lives wouldn't be unbearable, they're too lazy to empower themselves now that we have something resembling a level playing field, so I see no reason why we should devote resources truly *needed* by some to those that are simply too unmotivated to catch themselves up.
Posted by moggy at August 10, 2003 05:42 PM | TrackBack
