Header image by Tyler Feder.
Hello and welcome to the weekly thread for Disabled Avocados! If you are not disabled, we ask that you just lurk & upvote.
Sorry for the late post this week, friends!
The other rules:
–If you consider yourself disabled, you are welcome. Temporarily disabled as well as permanently. Diagnosed or not, visible or invisible disability, mental or intellectual or physical disability, this thread is for you.
–No ableist language, including “crazy” or “stupid.” Unless you are talking about your internal thoughts about yourself, in which case we ask that you warn and use spoiler text for this language.
–Do not police other peoples’ disability/ies or tell them they are not “really” disabled.
–Remember that the disability community is intersectional – there are disabled people who belong to other minorities as well, such as black, LGBTQ+, etc. As such, please do not say things about how disabled people have it “harder” than some other disability.
–If you are going to talk about thoughts of self-harm or suicide, please warn & spoiler.
–Do not talk about Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) in positive terms. Autistic people do not consider it beneficial, and in fact many consider it abusive.
Topic Of The Moment: (You can comment on this, or not.) Happy Disability Pride Month!
Today, I’m remembering Ed Roberts (1939 – 1995), who is considered to be the father of the Independent Living movement. He had polio as a teen and became paralyzed, sleeping in an iron lung. He had to fight to be allowed to graduate high school and to attend UC Berkeley. At Berkeley, he developed a support program for students with physical disabilities. He was one of the first directors of the Center For Independent Living, an advocacy group that fought for disabled people’s access to the community in Berkeley. He was also part of the 504 Sit-In, where disabled people advocated for the enforcement of section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, “which stated that people with disabilities should not be excluded from activities, denied the right to receive benefits, or be discriminated against, from any program that uses federal financial assistance, solely because of their disability” (per Wikipedia).
Comment away!