Journalist – Historian – Speaker
#CripTheVote has become an important hashtag, founded by Alice Wong, Andrew Pulrang, and Gregg Beratan, intended to bring disability into the conversation around the 2016 presidential campaign. Like most forms of online activism, its primary function (to my mind) is to thicken networks. We tweet, we use the hashtag, we encounter each other and find …
Many of my friends on Facebook and elsewhere kindly sent me a cool picture of a ramp that zig-zags through a set of stairs. As the picture permeated Facebook, though, I noted an important phenomenon – every single one of my wheelchair-using friends reacted negatively. Description: A set of stairs with a ramp moving diagonally …
Until last week, neither Sanders nor Clinton used the word “disability” at most rarely. Then, in her close to the final debate in New Hampshire, Clinton concluded her remarks as follows: You know, we didn’t get to talk about the continuing struggles that Americans face with racism, with sexism, with discrimination against the LGBT community, …
Mount St. Mary’s University gave a survey to its incoming class that allegedly was used as a tool to identify the most at-risk members in order to try to drive them from the school. I will have a piece on this with The Establishment soon. Here’s the survey via Scribd. Given its alleged purpose, I find the …
I’ve been caught up in my disability journalism lately, but don’t want to neglect some of my other passions – medieval history and helping academics share their expertise with wider audiences. Over the past few weeks, a number of outlets have passed around research – just a working paper really – that argues women rulers …
Two weeks ago I saw a tweet that alerted me to a job ad for the CEO of The Arc of Texas, along with other ads on their site, that basically said no disabled person need apply. I posted about the ad, with screenshots, and started a mini social media storm in the disability community. …
It’s primary day in New Hampshire and later I’ll be observing a new tablet-based system for disabled voters. In the meantime, I now know who the best candidate is for disabled Americans. No-one has done more for people with disabilities than me. I have spent many millions of dollars to help out-and am happy to …
See here for primer on these posts. Daily word count: 2371 Chapter word count: 2371Chapter goal: 8000Total word count: 18962Total goal: 70000 Wrote the intro to part III, a large chunk of chapter three, took part of that chunk and moved it to chapter four, then wrote more of chapter three. Tomorrow I travel around …
Yesterday I had a piece published at Al Jazeera that I’m pretty proud of. I found dozens of academic job ads that discriminate against people with disabilities, in many cases illegally, and published on it. It’s as close to straight revealing reporting as I come, taking something boring (boilerplate HR clauses) and demonstrating their social impact. …
This is a small sample of the 60 or so higher education job ads I found that contain clauses at least potentially excluding disabled applicants. Look for words like “occasionally,” “may,” or “frequently” as ways to avoid violating the ADA. However, disabled applicants, like all marginalized peoples, are less likely to apply for jobs when …