Monthly Archives: July 2016

Book Review: The Branch of Hazel

31 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by in Book reviews, Fiction

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Short stories are not normally my preferred reading material. Not long after my trip to New York, I discovered Grand Central, an anthology of unconnected stories taking place at New York’s Grand Central Station on one day in September 1945. I loved New York so much, and have a serious fascination with the post-War period, so of course I had to read it. Little did I know that I would find one story with a blind character that would leave me scrambling to discover the author.

“The Branch of Hazel” by Sarah McCoy was that story.

It is less about the blind man, but by how his brief interaction with a woman formerly part of the Lebensborn program changed her life.

A man and a woman meet on a train. It is not a love story; he is already married, and she’s been so used by men. But he enables her to see that where she’s been and where she’s going are both so similar and so different.

This story is hard to read, particularly as it puts to voice many of the ideas about disability that are faced by disabled people today. The woman on the train had two children in the Lebensborn program, one of whom had been taken away for being a “Mongoloid”. The businessman on the train is impeccably dressed, with perfect manners; he faces life with realism and optimism – and discrimination with firmness and grace – that is both fairly unique and yet sets him up to be the “angelic blind character” that sets my teeth on edge. He notices her perfume because his mother used to wear it, he knows what direction the wind is blowing based on other factors, and my city-slicker thinking makes me wonder if such observational skills really did exist in that time and place.

Ultimately, this man – with a mind for business, a wife and son at home, and the words of a priest – opened this woman’s eyes to a new way of life. Without spoiling other elements to this story, I’m glad it was his openness and patience that pushed her forward into a new way of thinking.

4/5 stars.

Relax! It’s Independence!

22 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by in blindness

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All the way through high school, I traveled with a white cane. I would move the cane in an arc on the floor no wider than shoulder width (as I was taught), sometimes even narrower than that. You’d think I’d brought and aimed a weapon or set someone’s hair on fire, the reaction was so intense. Students would jump over the cane, slam themselves and their buddies into lockers to get out of my way. My friends thought it was hilarious, but it was probably the first time I seriously felt that people were afraid of me for something that, to me, meant independence and freedom. Since then, I’ve been made aware of huge crowds of people parting the waters because a blind woman with a cane has started walking through a mall during the holidays or a concert venue at intermission. Sure, it makes my life easier, having a clean path, but it’s always made me feel somewhat “other” when it’s announced or otherwise apparent that a path is being cleared for me so that I don’t hit anyone.

Fast forward several years, and Jenny, a wonderful, communicative guide dog wiggled her way into my life. Her presence means that I can travel more fluidly than I ever could with the cane, can even run independently (something I never thought possible). Not everyone likes dogs – some are afraid of being bitten or licked or approached by a dog – and I understand that. If my dog gets invasive, obnoxious, causes a direct disturbance not related to her being a dog doing her job and people being fascinated by her, that’s one thing (all service dog handlers have had moments where their dog’s behaviour has made them want to melt into the floor). But in the span of a week this past spring, I experienced two instances where the mere presence of my dog has caused people to publicly overreact in ways they probably hadn’t intended.
I was sitting on a bus, minding my own business, when the doors opened and a man got on. He turned to walk to an empty seat, saw my dog, then went back to the bus driver and said that he would get on at the back of the bus so he didn’t have to “go past that dog”. I was so shocked I couldn’t say anything. If he hadn’t seen my dog, he’d never have known she was there on the bus. And before anyone raises the “allergies” argument… I’ve worked with people who have allergies, have friends who have allergies, have had strangers discretely tell me they have allergies so that I know to make 110% sure that my dog’s nose is where it belongs, that she’s out of their way, that the risk of contact is as minimal as possible. I have never felt by any of those people as disrespected as I did that day on the bus…
Later that week, I went shopping with a couple of friends and had a lovely time trying on clothes, finding some bargains, and laughing uproariously at a couple of items that fit just slightly wrong enough to be hilarious. After paying for my purchases, Jenny and I were making our way to the exit when two young women more than twenty feet away started screaming that there was a DOG in the store! I chose to redirect Jenny to go a route that didn’t intersect their path, and she handled it with professionalism and grace, but I was so shaken up that two people felt the need to publicly vocalize their fear when my dog and I were doing absolutely nothing to them. At the time, I thought that no one would react similarly to the presence of a wheelchair, but I recently discovered this article that makes me think that such instances happen more frequently than I ever considered.

Last week, I went into a store to return an item. Jenny and I walked up to the counter behind another customer, who very abruptly asked the clerk to ask me to move my dog. I took several steps back out of her way, waited my turn, then walked up to the counter while the other customer walked the looooong way around to exit the store. The clerk told me that the instant she saw my dog, her face just tensed right up. For some reason, it really hurt. It was yet again one more instance proving that I am still considered “other” because I use a dog to travel independently (and if I used a cane I’d get griped at for hitting someone in the ankles).

Why are we so feared? And why is it acceptable? Why did I feel so helpless, like I couldn’t just turn around and ask some of those people if they had something to say directly to me? If someone expressed discomfort with or fear of someone’s race or gender or place of origin or religion, they’d be called out for what they are – homophobic or zenophobic or racist. But because the presence of a disabled body in public is so rare and unexpected, manners go out the window? And that’s acceptable?

So the next time you see someone using a cane for identification or mobility, a guide or service dog, a scooter or a wheelchair, unless they are directly interfering with your ability to go about your day, keep your mouth shut and your fear to yourself. If you want to know how we go about our days so bravely, imagine frequently encountering the fear of others, publicly, and think how you would feel if you had to go through that. We want to go about our days just like you. And you wouldn’t like it if we told our friends that we didn’t want to sit next to a non-white, Hindu man minding his own business on the bus, or freaked out because a woman wearing a head scarf happened to be shopping in the same store as us. You’d tell us to relax… it’s only a bus seat, only a head scarf. Guess what, when reacting to our presence? Relax! It’s a cane, a wheelchair, a dog. Relax: it’s independence.

The Empowered Series: Alberta Service Dog Community

15 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by in The Empowered Series

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Samantha Hjalmarson (Sam), my current feature for The Empowered Series is someone who hasn’t started a business or a nonprofit, but a community that empowers, encourages, and connects others. I had an opportunity to meet her a few months ago. Both of us have service dogs (though for different disabilities); at our meeting, her dog was much much better behaved than mine (due to Jenny’s cat-litter consumption). In response to her disability, Sam spearheaded and almost exclusively runs the Alberta Service Dog Community, but she’s reaching for different heights as well. And who would want to say no to cute puppies?

 

About Sam

 

Sam developed fairly severe PTSD after years of abuse by her stepfather, though she didn’t realize it for many years. After high school, she joined the military as a signals operator, and the PTSD along with Generalized Anxiety Disorder started causing problems with her ability to cope. After her three year basic engagement was up, Sam left the military primarily due to her mental health (though there were other reasons). Things were manageable until a car accident put her in the hospital for a few days, then left her bed-ridden for weeks after and then it all started going really downhill. PTSD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) have manifested themselves in agoraphobia; Sam spends most of her energy on managing stress levels, and sometimes even leaving the house is a challenge, making work outside the home impossible. One employer after another fired her; even though Sam worked productively when she was present, she couldn’t consistently be at work every day. Eventually she went to a therapist and was diagnosed with PTSD. It eventually hit the point where she was unable to work at all, had to fight to get onto AISH (“another long story by itself!”) and wound up with a Service Dog to help her out.
Sam’s hobbies include making chain mail, finding meditative benefit from baking and cooking. She’s a massive geek, “like Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying level geek”, video games, fantasy books and TV. She enjoys amateur photography and is a cat person (“Honestly if we could have service cats instead of service dogs I would be all over that.”)

 

About ASDC

 

Alberta Service Dog Community (ASDC) came out of Sam’s desire to be a productive member of society. Being on disability and taking money from the government left her feeling like she was being a drain so she really felt that urge to do something to help other people. While Sam’s search for a service dog went quite smoothly most people don’t have that same experience. She was lucky, extremely lucky, in that not only did Hope Heels give her a service dog but she also met a group of women who have turned out to be an incredible support network and some of the best friends she’s ever had. Hope Heels went on a hiatus (it’s currently up and running again) but those friendships remain.

Disabilities like Sam’s in particular, but others as well, can be isolating and lonely. Sam wanted to create a support network like she had, so she started ASDC to bring members of the community together. People who get service dogs from schools and programs often have that built in but owner trainers don’t. ASDC isn’t specifically FOR owner trainers, anyone is welcome, but Sam thinks they benefit the most from it, removing the isolation and creating a support system for each other. Much of the discussion and support is virtual (through facebook), but occasional training dates, coffee meetups and other activities are coordinated to get the group together.

 

More than a Support Group

 

The ASDC mandate is education and advocacy. People who want to get a service dog are educated on some of the ways they can go about that and about the laws that would protect their rights (there are two in Alberta, the SD Act and the Human Rights Act). The public is also educated about those laws, what service dogs are and the rights of Service Dog Teams.

Advocacy is another big piece of what ASDC does. Not everyone who faces an access challenge with their service dog has the ability to stand up for themselves and their rights so ASDC offers to do that for them. ASDC can provide advice on self-advocacy, or will contact a business or other entity on behalf of someone if they cannot advocate for themselves. “People with disabilities need less obstacles in their lives, not more.”

 

So what does Sam… Do?

 

Sam is currently the jill-of-all-trades at ASDC, receiving phone calls, answering any questions that come to the main page, posting the majority of articles, and stepping in to resolve an occasional conflict. Currently, her biggest role at the moment is representing ASDC on the technical committee to develop a National Standard for Service Dogs in Canada. The hope is that this will be adopted across the country and will make it so much easier for owner trainers to be legally recognized and protected, in addition to making service dog standards and access rights clear and consistent across Canada.

 

What’s Next?

 

In the future, Sam hopes to incorporate ASDC as a charitable foundation, but at this point “it’s a lot of work!” She also hopes to build a website to house resources, educational pieces, a list of trainers who can help people train their own service dogs, a list of schools that service the area. Eventually once the National Standards are completed and implemented, she hopes to do a series of videos explaining how to train for the points required to meet those standards. About the future Web site and access challenges: “Pretty much anything you can imagine someone wanting to know about Service Dogs or what to do with one I want up on that website, including a link for businesses telling them when they are allowed to ask a handler to remove the dog. I think that if a business feels secure in their ability to protect themselves then there will be far fewer access challenges.”

 

Conclusion

 

There is more than one way to contribute to society. For many of us, it’s holding down a job and contributing to the economy. If that’s not possible, it’s important to find another way. Sam has created a lively community of service dog handlers from across the province while simultaneously providing support to those who need a place to turn or a question answered. Thanks, Sam, for being “chatty” (you made this post SO easy to write!)

Special Snowflakes: Do you Want Equality or special Treatment?

08 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by in blindness

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I’ve lived in a body whose eyes don’t function “normally” for over three decades now. My life is generally happy, productive, full of friends and hobbies and new trails to blaze, with unique fringe benefits of having eyes that don’t function quite the same way as anyone else’s. That being said, I will never ever say that being blind is easy: from the minor inconvenience of not being able to visually locate things when I drop them, to the more serious potentially life-altering perceptions of hiring managers, academic professionals, or complete strangers on what my abilities are supposed to be… Sometimes being blind can be really really hard. You can’t have one side of this equation without the other, and to be honest, I wouldn’t really want to.
But I also can’t deny that people with disabilities are treated differently than those without. Encounters on the street focus on how sorry someone is, we occasionally get asked if someone can pray for us, and we are presumed incompetent (if we say “no thank you” to an offer of assistance, it gets offered over and over again). That is a problem… but sometimes we perpetuate our own special treatment while demanding equality.

 

Over the past week, two news stories have blown up my social media accounts for completely different reasons:
1) A resolution from a blindness organization that basically lambastes Apple, a company who arguably has put accessibility at the forefront of their testing and release processes, telling them they haven’t done enough for blind consumers;
2) The fact that the CNE (an annual fair and exhibition in Toronto) is no longer offering free admission to people with disabilities. This decision has proved anecdotally unpopular among the disability community.

Both instances deal with the issues of equality and preferential treatment, and they are mutually exclusive; you can’t have one while demanding the other.

 

Accommodation is Not Special Treatment

 

Not long ago I had someone tell me that bringing my guide dog on a plane was a special privilege. In an unrelated note, I was once told that it would never be an employer’s job to provide assistive technology or other accommodations in the workplace because that would give the person with a disability “special treatment”.

Both of these examples are untrue. Guide and service dogs (provided they are well-behaved) enhance the independence of their handlers and can sometimes mean the difference between traveling independently and confidently… or not leaving the house. If a disabled person requires the assistance of an aid to guide or administer medication or otherwise assist them with daily living tasks, it’s far more preferable than being forced to stay in their homes. And assistive technology can be the difference between being employed and living on assistance… so is it still “preferential treatment” when it levels the playing field? Um… no…

If assistive technology, mobility aids, or other accommodations make it possible for a person with a disability to live, work, study, or access information just like the general public, on what planet is it special treatment? And if people with disabilities are viewed as equals (like the lip service I hear about everyone being equal), then no one should deny us the ability to work, study, or travel using the tools that provide us the autonomy that makes us “equal” to everyone else. If you do deny this, you prove that we are not as equal as everyone else, and should keep your mouth shut and think about your stance on “selective equality.”

 

NFB Resolution: We Want our Cake and to Eat it Too

 

Disclaimer: I do not use Apple products, and it’s my choice to do so. I am not affiliated with the NFB or any other blindness organizations. This to say… I have no horse in this race.

If you get through all the big words, what you need to know is this:

  1. Apple has continuously made huge strides in the accessibility marketplace. It’s one of the first, if not the first, to make built-in accessibility options such as the Voiceover screen reader part of all devices straight out of the box. Traditionally, accessible options had to be purchased separately and loaded on to any device, resulting in extra costs and less independent setup options.
  2. Because of this, Apple has been praised by many in the disability community for making people with disabilities a priority, making products instantly usable right off the shelf.
  3. The NFB resolution appears to be saying that Apple simply hasn’t done enough, because they are not prioritizing accessibility bugs and blind beta testers above others. This is a double-edged sword, however, because Google and Microsoft have their own accessibility issues that were not addressed at all in this resolution…
  4. Many have pointed out that this resolution has basically betrayed Apple for releasing software with bugs, telling them that they haven’t done enough for (exclusively) their blind consumers. Others have stated that accessibility bugs are now prioritized on the same level as other bugs in the software… isn’t that what the NFB claim they wanted in the first place?

Ultimately, I agree with those who state that there’s a HUGE double standard here. I use other software that was not lambasted so publicly, and like it or not, it has bugs too. The blind are not the only disability community in the world, and sighted users had problems with some of Apple’s software rollouts; that’s the nature of having software. If Apple were willfully ignoring the community that praised their accessibility efforts in the first place, that’s one thing; but they are creating software that, like it or not, isn’t perfect… for some blind users, but not all; for some sighted users, not all.

A brief note to those who voted for this resolution and publicly stabbed Apple in the back… it’s not always about you!

 

The CNE: Take me to the Fair!

 

The CNE is a well-known exhibition in Toronto; most major, and even some smaller, cities have their own annual fairs. Many provide discounted rates to guides or aids accompanying people with disabilities (see “accommodations” above?). This year, the CNE has decided to stop providing free admission to people with disabilities, but will continue not to charge for people who are guiding or otherwise assisting them. In the above referenced article, it’s made clear that this new policy might not be popular…

I’m all for it. As a fellow disability activist stated: if I can’t afford to go, I don’t go. I read a comment that people with disabilities are statistically living with higher poverty rates and should be given this “perk” because of it. But what about people without disabilities who don’t always have the money… who’s giving them a break? And what about the disabled person who’s fortunate enough to have disposable income… are they not taking advantage of resources designed to assist those who don’t?

If you can afford it, go to the fair; if you can’t, don’t. Nobody owes us extra perks; we face enough “other” treatment as it is.

 

Conclusion: Special does NOT Mean Equal

 

We have a long way to go before we are viewed as equals to those without disabilities. No one can deny that. We face access refusals because of our service dogs, are presumed incompetent for job duties unless we prove otherwise, and seem to be public sources of inspiration for getting out of bed in the morning. We need to decry true discriminatory practices for what they are, but also to live with the full responsibilities that go along with desiring equality. We should not be charged more to attend a fair because we require a guide or an aide, but we should not be charged less. If a company makes a valiant effort to make their system accessible, we need to praise them for their good work while kindly and gently encouraging them to improve things for everyone (not just us). When it comes right down to it, we’re not special snowflakes, and we will never reach true equality while taking advantage of special treatment.