Tagged: disablism

Blogging Against Disablism Day!


Blogging Against Disablism Day 2012
Blogging Against Disablism Day 2012

Yesterday was May 1st, a day notable for many things – but foremost in my mind for the 7th Annual Blogging Against Disablism Day. If you’d like to read my contribution to this excellent online festival, curated by the Goldfish, read my inaugural post to the King’s Learning Institutes new Technology Enhanced Learning Blog. This is a new blog at King’s College London that sits within the KLI’s Higher Education Research Network.

Regular readers will know I’ve taken part in Blogging Against Disablism Day for the last two years, blogging about Aversive Disablism and Web Design and the closure of the Disabled Student’s Bureau, SKILL. This year my writing has taken a more academic turn, responding to new contributions to Critical Disability Studies emerging from Science and Technology Studies.

To catch up on all the contributions to this great online festival, I urge you to visit the Blogging Against Disablism Day 2012 webpages . There you will find a huge (and still growing) number of thought-provoking articles from across the world. As Goldfish states:

 This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination. In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we’ve made.

Once again, Goldfish has achieved a huge event – managing a great success. Three Cheers for Diary of A Goldfish!!

A11yLDN MeetUp: Video now on Vimeo


On Thursday evening last week I made a short presentation at the a11yLDN (Accessibility London) MeetUp on Aversive Disablism and Hierarchies of Impairment, two concepts from Disability Studies that I believe have powerful applications for web accessibility practitioners and activists amongst others.  This was a great collaborative event, with diverse presentations from some excellent speakers. Despite working on a shoestring, organisers have now made videos of each presentation available on Vimeo. My talk is embedded below.

a11yLDNmeetup 01.12.2011: Disability Studies and Accessibility: Two Critical Concepts by Sarah Lewthwaite from a11yLDN on Vimeo.

Mine is a pocket size talk at 10 minutes, unfortunately the sound quality is quite low in places so if you want to know more about Avserive Disablism and Hierarchies of Impairment in an alternative format please consider at the following links:

Other presentations from the a11yLDN event are available on the A11yLDN video account. I highly recommend having a look at the presentation schedule from the day on the Accessibility London Website and browsing the videos according to your interests. In addition, you may want to subscribe to the website feeds, twitter or follow the organisers (Makayla Lewis and Graham Armfield) twitter accounts – as there are plans to repeat the event on a monthly basis, with the next meeting due in January.