The Necessary Labor of Naming and Respecting Chronic Anger

Holly Clay-Buck and Sara N. Beam 

Part 2 of 2

As we stated in Part 1 a culture of accessibility is one that is informed about anger, fear and sadness. Emotional literacy is crucial.

Below is a list of types of anger that we’ve experienced directly or heard about from our colleagues.

1. Screaming to be heard/fighting against the expectation of invisibility
The constant drone of the inconvenience and ignorance inherent to pain and disability isn’t quantifiable, so it’s not allowed to exist among the “elite.” Holly’s physical therapy ends at 10. The faculty meeting is at 12. It’s only an hour’s drive. Logically, she thinks, I can make it. Physically, I will go. Emotionally I resent it, even if it’s a necessary evil. The minutiae of disability is easily overlooked and the constant maintenance chronic illness requires is quickly forgotten when there is no crisis occurring at the present moment.
There’s been a lot of buzz recently about chronic illness, spoons, and mental fatigue (e.g. difficulty making decisions, paying attention, understanding a process, etc.). The emotional and mental labor of chronic illness and disability are heavy and almost completely invisible. And invisible disabilities come with invisible consequences. There’s something to note about women (e.g. cis women, nonbinary people, genderfluid people, trans women and transfeminine women) being invisible in the first place. In addition, even though they are invisible, their so-called absence of input, attendance, patience, etc. is hypervisible. Essentially they are perceived as a nuisance because they aren't seen to be doing the invisible labor that is expected of them. Here we must also acknowledge Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality: oppression caused by sexism and racism compounds the oppression caused by ableism. The stigma of invisible illness is therefore higher for people from multiple marginalized groups, for example womxn and nonbinary people of color.


2. Loss of usefulness (strip mining) when usefulness = humanity


You see it in every teacher movie: the truly committed, hopeful, usually white teacher is willing to sacrifice their time, their happiness, the family, and their health to dedicate every last ounce of their energy to their classes. We read “feel good” news stories about people working three jobs to get by, who spend 80 hours a week building businesses, and work never-ending overtime for their companies. The result is that people are expected to sacrifice their physical and mental health to the workplace.
If admins and colleagues were trained to have realistic expectations about your boundaries and to take you at your word without judgment, then perhaps things would improve. Academia likes to think it’s better than other jobs, but it still relies on “human resources” (a term that makes our skin crawl). It’s still part of an extraction economy, as Instagram philosophers like Queer Appalachia point out to readers, as they connect the dots between strip mining for coal and strip mining bodies for labor until they wear out, sick with illness caused by the nature of the work. You’re never supposed to be angry. When an institution relies on exploitative labor practices, it’s just a matter of time until the system collapses. When you’re expected to happily be exploited, anything that gets in the way of not just doing your basic job but of being “strip mined” ruins everything. It’s very angering that everyone working these jobs and administering programs reliant on adjuncts can see how unsustainable it is, and yet we can’t do anything about it. Workers feel futile and impotent, like failures.


3. Frustration of not being taken seriously or being minimized


Frustration and irritability is caused by repeatedly having to “come out” as having an invisible illness. In one incident, one of Holly’s colleagues, who is familiar with her condition, cuffed her hard on the back of the neck during a flare. She was in terrible pain because of it, and reacted with a gasp, turning in physically, and shutting down emotionally. Her colleague did not notice for over an hour, then asked her husband if she was okay. So even when you take the risk of disclosing your condition, you are often still not seen.
Disclosure is in fact a risk. In at-will states, it may be illegal to fire you for being disabled but it is not illegal to fire you for too many absences, not performing the emotional labor of social niceties well enough, having the wrong color hair, or any other excuse they can think of to remove the inconvenience of accommodating you. Therefore, every disclosure is an enormous act of trust, and when you are misunderstood it’s not just annoying, it’s hurtful and frightening. As Holly asks, if my colleague doesn’t even understand how to not physically hurt me, how are they able to protect my job? Just like a careless pat on the back can destroy my night out, a careless word—or the accretion of a hundred separate careless words—has the potential to destroy my career.


4. Annoyance at microaggressions suggesting your body is an inconvenience


Room temperature, fluorescent lighting, stadium or lecture hall seating—these are all environmental factors that can affect accessibility. To be sighed at, consistently overlooked, or for someone to even “jokingly” suggest that you’re a “princess” —these microaggressions suggest that our bodies are inconvenient, our needs are mere preferences, and our difficulties are faked.


5. Rage at consistent lack of control or ability to resolve problems


Case in point: two local colleges that rely on adjunct labor for a large majority of the teaching at the institution both had major problems recruiting adjuncts this semester, Spring 2019. They didn’t have enough teachers. They couldn’t get them. They assigned many more classes than typically allowed to several adjuncts, some of whom were verging on full-time status but did not see the benefits. People have figured out that being an adjunct isn’t an “in” at an institution. It’s jumping on a treadmill because they don’t want to “lose an adjunct.” And in no universe is it acceptable to be that dependent on adjuncts.
When you think about it in this context, these hiring practices and treatment of persons with disabilities of work are obviously unsustainable because strip-mining eventually taps all of the resource. It’s very angering that everyone working these jobs and everyone administering programs reliant on adjuncts can see how unsustainable it is, and that we can’t do anything about it. Workers feel futile and impotent, like failures. A culture of accessibility is one that is informed about anger, fear and sadness. Emotional literacy is crucial.
6. Disgust at ignorance and cruelty


Most people we work with on a daily basis aren’t outright cruel, but following every semester student evaluations arrive and we have no recourse or ability to defend ourselves against the inevitable, anonymous non-academic complaints from students. For example, a professor we know shared a not uncommon anecdote about a student evaluation comment regarding her pregnancy. Every female professor has a story about a student commenting on her appearance. Professors with disabilities inevitably receive comments calling them absent, lazy, disengaged, etc., no matter what arrangements they make to avoid disrupting the flow of the class. Countless studies have shown that student evaluations are notoriously biased and prejudiced, yet administrators insist we keep them because appeasing students as ‘customers’ takes precedence over faculty mental health.
7. Fight, flight, or freeze: physical responses to anger — biology is undeniable


Even if you are uncomfortable or unsure in naming emotions, you can at the very least pay attention to what is happening inside your body, physically, in difficult situations. Let’s say your requests for accommodations have been repeatedly ignored or denied, and it’s happened again. Which of the following do you turn to?
• Fight: use valuable spoons to tell off the ignorer/denier, to argue once more in your defense, to research research ADA law AGAIN to make a case AGAIN. Protest from within and without the institution. Build that network, gird your loins, once more into the fray.
• Flight: leave the room, leave the building, leave the conversation, leave the profession. Anything is better than doing this again. Escape the moment.
• Freeze: shield up, mask on, don’t move, play dead, shoot out your intestines like a sea cucumber so the predator will be satiated and move on. Brainlock.

You will probably recognize your own patterns in these descriptions. For me (Sara), option C, freeze, has often been my go-to in times of conflict. I feel anger, and I feel my negative reaction to being angry, and I don’t move. From the outside, a viewer might assume I’m peaceful. In fact I’m frequently praised by coworkers, family, and friends for being “even-tempered” and preternaturally calm. In truth, I’m sometimes dissociating from the moment because I’m stuck in a loop in my head and must write down what is happening to stay in the present (“The Devil’s Race Track,” as Samuel Clemens called it). In a culture that demands women be accommodating, I have developed a defense mechanism of shutting down: it goes something like this—this can’t be happening, this is happening, I hate this, I have no voice, I have no choice, there’s nowhere to run, think of something clever, this can’t be happening, this is happening. In response to this habit, I have learned to turn to my love of and habit of writing, and, when I can’t respond, I record. This strategy helps me comprehend what I’m hearing and feeling, creates a record of the interaction, and gives others in the room a sense of accountability because their words and actions are being documented. Writing gives me power.

While this list of seven kinds of anger makes no pretense of being all-inclusive, we do hope that it can provide at least a form of vocabulary for beginning the process of naming—and therefore normalizing—the anger we feel (and battle, and ignore, and beat ourselves up over). Heavy should be the head that wears the crown. Crowns imply power and therefore responsibility to others. By naming our unpleasant and inconvenient needs, we can shift at least some of the burden to those who can shoulder it.

About the Author

A portrait photo of Holly
Clay-Buck

Holly Clay-Buck Grew up in small town Oklahoma. She graduated from Northeastern State University with a BA in English and the University of Tulsa with an MA in English. She is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Developmental Studies at Rogers State University. Her academic interests include intersectional disability advocacy, pedagogy, queer issues, and development of popular language. She is the author of How We Write: An Essentials-Only Guide to Composition and multiple articles and presentations focused on disability, collaboration, and developmental studies. Holly is involved in the LGBTQIA+ community, participates in local activism, and takes care of her friends and family.

A portrait photo of Sara N. Beam

Sara N. Beam’s formative years were split between several small towns, first in southeastern Oklahoma and then in Fort Smith, Arkansas. She graduated from Hendrix College in 2002 with a B.A. degree in English. After moving to Tulsa, she completed the University of Tulsa (TU) English Master’s and Doctoral Degree programs in 2010. She is Applied Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Writing Program at TU. Her academic interests include teaching, written composition, disability studies, women’s and gender studies, visual rhetoric, and childhood studies. Her scholarly work includes co-editing and writing sections of the 2015 book Children’s and Young Adult Books in the College Classroom: Essays on Instructional Methods and the 2019 anthology of Oklahoma women’s personal stories, Voices from the Heartland, Volume II. In the Tulsa community, Sara is a volunteer with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and is a board member on the Little Blue House at TU, an interfaith voice for peace and social justice.

Disability in the Graduate Assistant's Contract

Written by Alyssa Hillary

We have kindly been given permission to repost this from:

http://yesthattoo.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/disability-in-graduate-assistants.html

Two years ago, I suggested to my graduate assistants union that disability and accommodations should be covered in our contracts.

I could understand why it hadn't been there before: 

1. It's not the sort of thing most people automatically think of unless they are themselves D/disabled or have a disability. 
2. The accommodations/access side is theoretically covered by laws like the Americans With Disabilities Act anyways.

But for a few reasons, I thought it needed to be there:

1. Enforcing the ADA is really hard for most people, because it involves filing a lawsuit with the department of justice. Yes, even the threat of a lawsuit can be effective at times, but it generally needs to be at least a semi-credible threat.
2. If it's in the contract, then violations can also be handled by having the union go to bat, such as by filing a grievance. That's got more force than showing up in an office and complaining alone, but is generally easier to accomplish than filing a lawsuit. This is important because many professors do refuse to ensure access for students, and many departments do actively exclude disabled faculty members.
3. Attitudes: If following relevant disability laws is explicitly stated in the contract, even if it is a bit redundant (and as an engineer, I like certain kinds of redundancy, including this particular kind) tells people that there's a group on campus that cares about the disability side of things, beyond just disability services (who don't negotiate the graduate assistant contracts). There being such a group is a whole lot more welcoming for folks who find disability issues relevant than there not being any groups like that is!

And one more reason that occurs to me now but I didn't think of at the time:

• Graduate assistants are both students and staff. Students handle accommodations through Disability Services for Students. Faculty and staff handle accommodations through Human Resources. Where do graduate assistants go, since we're both? That being unclear would be a barrier for anyone who has issues with bureaucracy. So would an answer of "Do both, haha," because that means dealing with two different offices for one issue.

Well. The executive board for the union agreed, and none of the union members objected. They pushed to get disability language into the contract, beyond the list of thing they're not supposed to discriminate against us for. (And disability definitely belongs on that list.)

Contract negotiations happened. While the university negotiators tend not to like adding information that's already in other places to the contract or even referencing those other places in the contract, they did add a line about disability accommodations.

4.5 Disability Accommodations– The Administration and GAU shall adhere to Federal and State laws and regulations as they apply to treatment and accommodation of persons with disabilities. Requests for accommodations shall be submitted to the Office of Disabilities for Students.

Am I totally satisfied with that? Not completely. I think it's progress, since there wasn't any information about accommodations before. I know that contracts are all about basic compliance and legal language. I've still got the same issue with "will follow Federal and State law" here that I do with it on syllabus statements and generally everywhere.

About the Author

Alyssa is a PhD student in neuroscience, an Autistic activist, and a disability studies scholar. They're interested in assistive technology that's not about imitating the standard ways of doing/being, and which addresses the mismatch between a person's abilities and environment rather than considering the problem to lie entirely within the person. Their art features on the covers of Typed Words, Loud Voices and The Real Experts: Readings for Parents of Autistic Children.

Disability Accommodations

Written by Jennifer Mankoff 

We have kindly been given permission to repost this from 

https://pghlyme.org/2012/12/03/disability-accommodations/

I have spent the past two weeks exploring what it means to work with Lyme disease from a new perspective. I’ve blogged before about why I think it’s valuable to view Lyme disease through the lense of disability. I’ve also blogged extensively about work and Lyme disease. However, I’ve never really put the two together. An important question, for those of us who work with Lyme disease is what accommodations, if any, are appropriate to ask for, and how one might go about doing that.

First, it is important to know about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which protects people with disabilities from discrimination. The ADA specifically prohibits discrimination by employers with 15 or more employees, public entities, public accommodations, telecommunications, and so on. It was passed in 1990 and progressively narrowed by the courts in terms of the situations to which it applied. Thanks to an amendment in 2008 it was broadened again to ensure that it focused on discrimination across a wide range of disabilities. Because of that change, Lyme disease is now covered by the ADA.

An important implication of the ADA is that employers need to make “reasonable accommodations” for their disabled employees. This specifically means (from the official ADA website): “Reasonable accommodation is any modification or adjustment to a job or the work environment that will enable a qualified applicant or employee with a disability to participate in the application process or to perform essential job functions. Reasonable accommodation also includes adjustments to assure that a qualified individual with a disability has rights and privileges in employment equal to those of employees without disabilities.” The key factor here is to define essential job functions and the accommodations needed to achieve them without causing undue burden to the employer.

But what does this mean for Lyme disease? To answer that question, I turned to the Job Accommodation Network (JAN), a nonprofit site that provides “free, expert, and confidential guidance on workplace accommodations and disability employment issues.” JAN has a Lyme disease information page, where they provide specific recommendations for accommodations such as a flexible work schedule, work at home options, periodic rest breaks, and reduced stress. There is also a great deal of useful ADA information on Anapsid’s site including a very practical list of ADA-related government organizations, what sort of help they might provide, and where to contact them.

I also turned to resources for other fatigue-related, often invisible illnesses. For example, there is a wonderful article on how several people successfully managed Lupus accommodations at www.lupus.org and JAN has a Chronic Fatigue article that includes several specific examples of situations and accommodations.

The question remains, then — what accommodations, if any are reasonable for me. However, in my job, the question is only partly what accommodations one should ask for. It seems to be equally about who pays for the accommodation. Within the university hierarchy, that could be the university, the department, or the faculty member him or herself — all three have “work” funds that they raise in various ways. The fund raising burden is highest for the smallest unit (the faculty member), but a faculty member has a great deal of freedom in deciding what accommodations to pay for if paying him or herself. In any case, it’s not clear that payment responsibility is specifically covered by the ADA, and I have been able to find nothing written about the topic so far.

That aside, the job I’m in is luckily very flexible. The thing that is least flexible is teaching, and the question of what support is appropriate or necessary for teaching is something I’ve been thinking a lot about. The other thing that is true of my job is that there are sometimes large spikes in work load (for a few weeks due to a conference deadline, for a whole semester given a very difficult teaching assignment, etc.). It seems to me that managing (or limiting) spikes in my workload load is something that would make things much easier. Another aspect of my illness that can be difficult is managing low energy points. If I limit my work to my normal capacity when feeling unwell, then I can provide steady but lower effort to my university. If I work to my normal capacity when feeling well, then I accomplish more but the weeks when I am feeling unwell become very difficult. The accommodations needed in either case shift as well — an overall lower workload vs a support structure that can fill in the gaps in the difficult weeks.

A last observation about this process: It may seem clean cut when I describe this in terms of the moral/legal world (human rights), but in reality the process is complex and messy just as any interpersonal negotiation may be, especially in an organization the size of my department. My university is large, but any changes I request in my job will most directly affect myself and the people around me. And the person-to-person side of this is complicated by the invisible and uneven nature of my illness.

About the Author

Photo of the author

Dr. Jennifer Mankoff is a Professor in the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. She earned her B.A. at Oberlin College and her Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research embodies a human-centered perspective on data-driven applications. Her goal is to combine empirical methods with technological innovation to construct middleware (tools and processes) that can enable the creation of impactful data-driven applications. Example application areas include sensing and influencing energy saving behavior, web interfaces for individuals with chronic illness, and assistive technologies for people with disabilities. She helped found the sustainable-chi group (sustainable-chi@googlegroups.com). Her research has been supported by Google Inc., the Intel Corporation, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft Corporation, and the National Science Foundation. She was awarded the Sloan Fellowship and the IBM Faculty Fellowship.

Uncovering the Interpretation Process: Emphasizing Flexible Communicative Practises in Academia

Written by Rachel Kolb

“Let’s turn to talking about Derrida’s ideas about psychoanalytic temporality, and how this affects the construct of the signifier and the signified.”

This kind of sentence comes up on a regular basis in my graduate seminars, and immediately I see my American Sign Language interpreters’ faces contort and go, huh?

Granted, my interpreters are usually good at working through this, good at parsing through rapid-fire auditory information spoken in academese (truly more exotic of a language than ASL!) by a group of humanities scholars who do not need to access our institution, as I do, through real-time transliteration. Even while my professors and peers see me sitting beside them in class each week, as I attempt to be present and participate like they do, my guess is that only a few consider what this can be like. I don’t fault them this omission, not entirely. My experiences of being deaf in academia can be quite different than theirs as hearing people – although I would argue that these experiences are still adjacent, still interwoven with lessons about communication that resonate with us all.

So, Derrida. And something about signifiers. As I watch my interpreters listen to a sentence like this, then pause, then sign, the thought flashes across my mind; here we go again.

I have no choice but to jump in. I try to figure out, with interpreters, what my graduate seminar is currently discussing and how I can engage. We constantly deliberate (both on the fly in class and on a lengthier basis afterwards) how to sign certain words; are our signs nuanced and conceptually accurate? What if ASL has not developed a way to express that idea yet? How does one sign “signifier” and “signified”? We debate, come up with a new sign, try again the next time the word comes up in class. Throughout the process, remember that my interpreters, several of whom have been working as professionals for decades, are listening to our classroom discussion about Derrida without anything near a specialist background in the field. The concepts covered in my theory courses are difficult enough for specialist graduate students to listen to and understand; now imagine listening to and translating them on the fly for someone else, all without much (if any) conceptual exposure to what you are interpreting. Then, on top of that, imagine listening to the typically messy dynamics of human conversation: people speaking quickly, mumbling, sometimes interrupting each other, garbling their words, not considering how clear (or not) all this might sound to someone else. My interpreters flip through my class readings and try to prepare to interpret, but there are times when their ears and their brains can only do so much. There are times when, in the flurry of the moment, they show my hearing colleagues profound reservoirs of patience.

I admit, I sometimes like it when their patience fractures (or when mine does) and we need to stop and ask someone to repeat their words, but more clearly this time. These moments, even if they sometimes feel disruptive, can show how hard we both are working to occupy this space. These misunderstandings, these bits of missed information, can expose the bare bones of the interpreting process. For I am working hard, too: watching, thinking, correcting any mistakes, calculating what that utterance might really have meant, willing my retinal muscles to focus, converting sign language back into English in my head. I do this while sometimes feeling, I admit, envious of my hearing peers who can sit in class and just listen. The process of watching interpreters feels cognitively demanding, on top of the demands of the classroom material. Seeing ASL transliteration all day can consume all of my attention and all of my focus – something I used to shrug off as normal but something I now feel more pressed to acknowledge as unique. I often walk out of a challenging class and feel spent. I want to plop my brain into an ice bath.

The academic setting does not often acknowledge these kinds of hidden labors and hidden challenges for the deaf people in its midst. Even when access is presumably provided through a sign language interpreter, this does not mean the deaf person automatically will access the class, discussion, or conference setting the same way as a hearing person. Even if the deaf person chooses to use an alternative set of accommodations, such as Communication Access Real-time Translation (CART) or C-print captioning, many of the barriers I have described may still exist.

At the same time, I accept what I have decided to do in pursuing a PhD. I accept that, while working in academia, I will need to find a core group of skilled interpreters who will put effort into learning the specialist vocabulary for my field. I accept that I am among a generation of signing deaf individuals who now work and study in colleges and universities after living with the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and who are now helping develop the ASL lexicon to suit the academic work we do. I accept that watching ASL interpreters exposes me to a different kind of real-time cognitive load than my hearing colleagues may experience on a daily basis. All of these realities reemphasize the importance of developing new ways to pursue the same kind of excellence all my colleagues and mentors do, while acknowledging that my path might be a different one than theirs – as it has been all along. That path involves continuous advocacy and also attention to self-care, but it still can feel exciting. Along with other deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, I am helping push forward a new frontier of language use and professional development. A few decades ago, aspiring deaf academics did not have these opportunities.

What I’d like to do is communicate the barriers that still are there, in situations where accessibility in name does not become full accessibility in practice. A sign language interpreter can become just a warm body in a room without adequate preparation or awareness. Using an interpreter can be an experience of making oneself extremely communication-savvy, of mastering good communication strategies that might not occur to some hearing colleagues but that can still help in expressing ideas more clearly. Among other pieces of savvy, I have learned these:

I recognize that information can be expressed visually and physically, not only auditorily – and that inclusion and comprehension will improve with more of these sensory channels, not fewer. I recognize that anyone can only take in so much information at a time, and that one cannot assume the knowledge base or background of one’s audience, even within a specialist field. I recognize the importance of being flexible, of repeating or rephrasing when needed, of altering my patterns of self-expression to connect with my audience. I have learned that I need to express my needs and recognize my limits in order to participate most fully in a conversation, and that other people do, too. Finally, I know that misunderstandings and needing to ask for clarifications are just part of life – and also good opportunities to deepen my knowledge, besides. Communication strategies that enable good sign-language interpretation are often good communication strategies, period.

It is not new to say that creating a culture of effective communication can benefit everyone, and not only a deaf academic and her interpreters, but it still bears repeating. Striving for a more open communicative culture requires advocacy and participation from everyone, not just anyone who is deaf. I have seen this before in academia: I have been in seminars where professors tactfully modulate the conversation for its rapidity and volume, write unfamiliar terms on the board or request that other students spell them out as they arise, include extensive written handouts to supplement oral discussion, or use a visual outline or live notes on a projected computer screen to help students follow what is being said. I have attended conferences and talks where the speaker regulates his or her own pace, includes a print-out of the presentation both on the spot and in advance, and provides a list of key terms (and their definitions) for interpreters and anyone else. Practices like these recognize that accessibility is not solely an institutional responsibility, in which formal accommodations are made, dispensed, used, end of story. Rather, they recognize that accessibility is also a collective, communal responsibility, in which all individuals can contribute toward a clear and inclusive communication environment.

Academia is not always the best at promoting clarity and accessibility, beyond formal accommodations. Discussions can be rapid-fire, solipsistic, full of jargon and assumptions that everyone receives information the same way. Creating better communication practices, both in the classroom and outside of it, will involve this kind of behavior shift. It will involve expressing individual needs and concerns, and also encouraging collective accountability – with the emphasis that good communicative practices can benefit everyone, not only those who identify as deaf or disabled.

About the Author

Photo of the author

Rachel Kolb is a Ph.D. student in the Department of English at Emory University, where she is also pursuing a graduate certificate in bioethics. She has prior master's degrees in literature and higher education from Stanford University and the University of Oxford, which she attended as a Rhodes scholar. Her research interests include 20th century American literature, disability and Deaf studies, science and literature, the health humanities, and how cultural ideas form about communication and embodiment. She is also committed to advancing public conversations about communication and accessibility, and her other written work includes publications in the New York Times and the Atlantic.

Developing Disability Cultural Competence

Written by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson 

Here’s my advice for people with disabilities so they can come out and flourish in the professional environment. Our ultimate goal is to develop disability cultural proficiency. This begins with disability cultural competence, which is learning how to live effectively as a person with disabilities, not just living as a disabled person trying to become non-disabled. Competence moves toward proficiency as one carries out living with a disability over time and working toward achieving a high quality of life while living with a disability.

Developing disability cultural competence begins with identifying openly as a person with disabilities. Cultivate dignity and authority as a person with disabilities. Enter into organizations and communities that offer support, resources, groups, and gathering opportunities for people with disabilities. Find like-minded colleagues and friends who have disabilities.

As a person who identifies as disabled, know your rights, protections, opportunities, information, culture, history, and communities that can support your flourishing as a disabled person. Learn about requesting accommodations in your workplace, accessing resources and information, and getting physical access. Go to the disability resource center or office of disability services and register as a disabled person so you can request accommodations and know what services and technologies are available to you in the workplace. It should be that office, not your supervisor with whom you discuss your access and accommodation needs. You should not disclose to your supervisors your medical diagnosis, but rather focus on the accommodations you require to carry out workplace expectations. And especially, your supervisors should not be deciding whether or not to grant you accommodations for your disabilities.

Learn to use public resources and supportive structures for people with disabilities. Consider accessible reduced entrance fees for people with disabilities, transportation options, and research how to get proper documentation and procedures for other benefits for disabled people in public space venues.

Most important is to know and use the rights, benefits, and protections provided in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or your national and local codes and policies for assuring disability equity and nondiscrimination. Go to the ADA website. Read the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD) if your country has adopted the treaty. Find out about its implementation in your employment and public environment.

In short: know your communities; know your rights; know your access needs; know your accessible technology.

 About the Author

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is Professor of English and bioethics at Emory University, where her fields of study are disability studies, American literature and culture, bioethics, and feminist theory. Her work develops the field of critical disability studies in the health humanities, broadly understood, to bring forward disability access, inclusion, and identity to communities inside and outside of the academy. She is the author of Staring: How We Look and several other books. Her current book project is Habitable Worlds: Toward a Disability Bioethics.