Journalist – Historian – Speaker
The differences between different disabilities are so great that grouping all disabled individuals into a ‘disabled community’ is stupid. Physically disabled individuals are very different from mentally disabled individuals. People born disabled are very different from people who became disabled in their old age. The differences are too great for there to be any real …
Yesterday, the official AP Stylebook Twitter Account responded to a query about describing wheelchair users. Here’s the exchange: @APStylebook Phrase “wheelchair user” is in 2015 handbook, but I still see “confined to”/”disabled” used. How does this change? #RaganChat — Alison Carville (@AlisonCarville) June 21, 2016 We suggest not describing an individual as disabled or handicapped …
Over the past few years, Kansas has empowered a collection of radical right-wing politicians to put into practice every (Constitutionally-possible) idea that they could come up with. The idea was that they could cut taxes far enough to stimulate massive economic growth. The result has been a dramatic slashing of all mechanisms of funding the …
Nine and a half years ago, my son was born and immediately diagnosed with Down syndrome.I’ve written about his birth here, but I’ve also written about the four friends who did the most to help us adapt to our new reality. At a moment of grief (we were so ignorant), they arrived at the hospital, …
I want Finding Dory to be good on disability so badly that I can’t even stand to go see it yet. I want a kids’ movie that, without being badly written, sappy, too on point (like Zootopia on racism), or otherwise laden with all the sins of bad writing for children, fully embraces disability as culture …
I was recently contacted by two writers and advocates working on pushing digital media to provide audio descriptions for the show Switched at Birth. You can read about their efforts here. Audio descriptions are always necessary to make TV and movies fully accessible, but this show, with its frequent use of ASL, makes them especially …
In my recent piece on the anti-Trump ad “Grace,” I quoted filmmaker (and founder of the vital #FilmDis Twitter chat) Dominick Evans saying: Dominick Evans, a filmmaker and disability advocate, argued that people in the disability community are the only marginalized group routinely not allowed to speak for themselves. “If this was a story about …
My latest for Crux is on a special mass that Pope Francis held on Sunday, focusing on disability issues. It sounds like a good event – much more active in participation than usual. Please read and share. I was especially pleased to receive this quote from a former student: I spoke to David Gayes, a …
Yesterday, The Atlantic published my essay on “Grace,” the new anti-Trump ad put out by Priorities USA, a pro-left Super PAC. On another Sunday, I would have spent a lot of the day publicizing it, but given the massacre in Orlando, it felt inappropriate. Still, I think there are important themes here. “Grace” uses the moment …
The Star Tribune has a must-read feature on people killed by police use of force, finding that 45% of all people killed by officers involved mental health crisis. It includes a collection of all stories of those killed since 2000. Take a look, read the stories, and ask this – how many more had undiagnosed disabilities, …