Black Disabled Lives Matter

July is Disability Pride Month. Though the month is ending, anti-ableist and anti-racist activism shouldn't. Once again, so many people have created resources that put things into words better than we can, so we've compiled a non-exhaustive list of some of these resources. As usual, please feel free to email us at info@linghacks.tech if any of the information below is incorrect.

Educational Media

Readings

• ​Racism and Ableism
• Ableism in Natural Language Processing
• Disability, Bias, and AI
• All of the articles linked and summarized on Black, Disabled, and Proud
• A Brief History of the Disability Rights Movement
• Workplace Ableism
• How Academic Jobs Screen Out Disabled People
• The Harriet Tubman Collective

Motion Pictures

• Crip Camp (available on Netflix)
• All the documentaries listed on the Disability Visibility Project
• Lives Worth Living

Podcasts

• Black Disabled Women in the Media
• Black Mental Health
• This list of disability podcasts​

Action Items

Where to Donate (Credit to NY Mag, Nylon, and getinformed.carrd.co)

• Autistic People of Color Fund
• Disability Justice Culture Club
• Sins Invalid
• Ramp Your Voice
• This thread of GoFundMe's
• National Black Disability Coalition (site will be back up on 8/11/2021)
• Follow and turn on post notifications for Asiatu Lawoyin's Instagram account - they frequently post information about Black autistic people in need of mutual aid

Black Disabled People to Follow and Support (Partial Credit to Disability Horizons)

• ​Fats Timbo
• Devin Manning
• Lauren "Lolo" Spencer
• Garrison Redd
• Haben Girma
• Stephanie Thomas
• Keah Brown
• Andrea Dalzell
• Tatiana A. Lee
• Clara Holmes
• Imani Barbarin

How to Combat Ableism in Everyday Life

• If you create any sort of visual media (e.g. a graphical plot, a table, a web application), whether it's an educational tool for a course or part of a paper/presentation, and need to distinguish some visual elements, try to distinguish them in at least two ways if you have any color-coded components of your visual. For example, if you have a series of red, green, and blue lines representing different things, consider making them red solid, green dashed, and blue dotted lines to make your content more accessible to colorblind people. As another example, if you shade certain regions of a graph with different colors, try also shading them with different fill patterns (e.g. gradient vs. solid vs. lines). The R programming language and Google Drawings both have different line types, fill types, and shapes, so this is both a feasible and accessible step to take whenever you create visuals.
• If you make graphical posts on social media, make sure to also include image descriptions in plain text in the captions. This is because screen readers can't interpret images, but they can process text and speak it to a user who otherwise who otherwise wouldn't be able to enjoy the content (great explanation here). If you make videos, be sure to also include captions (read more here). Additionally, use #ThisFormat of capitalizing the first letter of every word when you create hashtags - screen readers can then pronounce the hashtags properly (read more here).
• If you are a recruiter and/or job description writer, please don't put any weight lifting requirements (or any physical requirements) in a job description unless those requirements are critical for the job. This is just blatantly ableist. An example is "must be able to lift 20 lbs"--it's unnecessary and discriminatory towards disabled people.
• Read and follow this thread on wheelchair etiquette.
• Use direct language to describe disabilities. Words like "disabled," "autistic," "chronically ill," "neurodivergent," "deaf," and "blind" aren't bad words (used in the proper context, of course), so don't use euphemisms to get around using these words - just be sure to include the word "person" (or equivalent humanizing term) afterwards if you're using them as adjectives. In addition, respect disabled people's choices of whether they use identity-first (e.g. "disabled people") or person-first (e.g. "people with disabilities") language.
• Avoid using common expressions that actually perpetuate ableism. Examples include the words "st*pid," "cr*zy," "d*mb," "ins*ne," and "l*me," as well as expressions such as "tone-deaf," "blind" (to something), and "did they stutter."
• Do not use disability as an insult or as a cover for other forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, or queerphobia. First, people exist at the intersection of these marginalized identities. Second, there is no disability that causes bigotry, and using disability as an excuse or explanation for bigotry only further stigmatizes disability. Credit to Asiatu Lawoyin and Imani Barbarin for these points.
• If you hold in-person events, make every effort to ensure that the venue is wheelchair-accessible. Disabled people should not be an afterthought.
• If you are creating a new product and conducting any sort of market research or user testing, include disabled people in that research and testing. See this thread for an example of a gross failure to do so.
• If you are able to get your COVID-19 vaccine and have not yet done so, please do. Here is a website to help you find vaccine locations in the United States. Additionally, keep wearing masks in public spaces. Not only are there cases of breakthrough COVID infections and rapidly mutating variants of the virus, but there are also many disabled people who are unable to get vaccinated or are immunocompromised - wearing a mask is a basic form of respect for their lives.
• If you are an educator and are able to do so, record all lectures, write extensive lecture notes that cover everything said in those lectures, and stop grading students on attendance.
  

That's all for this post. Remember to keep being intersectional into your activism, and check this site frequently for action items!