Rethinking Disability in Contexts

Also, another reason why I wasn't blogging was that bad stuff just kept happening.  One of the things we talked about in my Education and Technology class this Summer was whether or not we need the ability to "tune out"* all of the media and information that we are bombarded with on a constant basis.  I hardly ever watch television, but between Twitter, Facebook, my iPhone, my online classes, and my job researching online, I am pretty much attached to some stream of news and information for my entire waking experience.  The singularity approaches. 

So, one bad thing that happened that I would like to share with you is that a judge in Pennsylvania decided not to issue an injunction blocking the state's voter identification law.  Hopefully you know this by know, but voter ID laws in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and other states are being passed in an attempt to suppress voter turnout amongst the poor, students, and minorities this November.   Why should someone in special education care about this?  Well, in a word, accessibility.

Part of the definition of "disability" is that a disability necessary restricts access for a person to something.  A physical disability restricts access to certain physical environments, a reading or learning disability restricts access to texts, a behavioral disability restricts access to social environments and cultural exchanges.   Voter ID laws disable a huge amount of the population - as many as 1 in 7 in Pennsylvania and as many as 1 in 3 in Philadelphia - by restricting their access to the voting booth.  Call it a political disability.  And the connection to disability rights is very real; according to this study from USA Today, only 27% of polling places in the U.S. are unobstructed, which may prevent 3.2 million Americans with disabilities from voting in 2012.

I have read some very good literature this Summer about how we need to rethink the ways in which we consider disabilities, and how a disability is constructed through context. There is a tendency to think about "being disabled" as a permanent state, but it's not, it is a state of flux.  A person in a wheelchair may not be disabled working as the IT lady when your cable is on the fritz; a student with a reading disability may not be disabled when she's on the track team; another student with an emotional disorder may not be disabled when he's in the chemistry lab.**  The big idea here is that "disability" is not something that people are born with and always have, but it something that is created when an individual's access to something desirable - a job, an education, an ID card, leisure time, the brand of dish soap on the top shelf of the grocery store, a vote - is restricted. 

Or what about liberty?  Being a minority student may be considered a disability in New York City, where more than 95 percent of the 882 students arrested during the last school year were black or Latino.

* "Turn off, tune out, drop in"?
** Or maybe they are still disabled.  What happens when the Chem teacher decides that 50% of the grade is based on class participation and etiquette?