Recommended article

[sasha_feather]

I was interviewed for this great article by s.e. smith at xojane.com:

Where are all the disabled scientists?

Comments

[kalmn]

Me too! (I'm Elizabeth.)

[sasha_feather]

Cool!! *high fives*

[trouble]

It was an awesome article! I recommend avoiding the comments!

[green]

I second this.

[sasha_feather]

Yeah what is UP with those commenters!?!

[trouble]

It's so hard being able-bodied in America these days. :(

[meloukhia]

Oh my stars, those comments. I...yeah. I'm contractually obligated to read them and I informed my editor that I was in flagrant breach of contract after about the first 15.

[trouble]

That must be so frustrating. *sigh*

One thing I would have talked about had the comments not been so awful: The archives here in Ontario do on-site preservation work. (Important stuff!) Because it's a new building, they were able to have the workbenches all made to the heights of the archivists at the time... who were all on the shorter side. When they hired new ones, many of them were tall, so they invested in these new adjustable workbenches that can be easily raised or lowered to work best with someone's height needs, and are thus also really great to adjust for people who use wheelchairs. They bring them down to the main reading room on request (and have signs that say that they can do so).

Accessibility! Not just for cripples!

[sasha_feather]

You can just say that for health-related reasons you outsourced reading the comments to me. :)

[meloukhia]

That mess on the lab bench is totally my fault.

[jesse_the_k]

The article is awesome, and I also totaly love that my colleagues in gimpdom cheerfully warn me away from the comments. I started to read them out of habit but the two exclamation marks above did their business and stopped me before I got stuck in the swamp.

Thanks for speaking out on your experience!

[sasha_feather]

I waded into the comments and there is a) a lot of privileged defensiveness and b) a lot of concern about getting sued by "assuming" people might have a disability in a university setting. Ugh.

[meloukhia]

Ugh, SERIOUSLY. Those comments make no sense to me. Have these people not heard of universal access?!

[trouble]

It really pained me because access is for EVERYONE.

[sasha_feather]

I think part of it is the culture of scientists treating their bodies like robotic machines.

[toft]

Thanks for the link! It WAS a great article and your quote was smart.

[sasha_feather]

Thank you!

[eggcrack]

Great indeed. Thank you for sharing this.