Service Dogs and the UK - a good combo?

My apologies for not posting for the past few days. I promise that Disabled Histories will be completed in the near future.

I've been having some fun figuring out how the heck I can bring Chase with me to the UK in February or March of next year for two to three weeks. I've found the DEFRA website, which outlines the PETS Scheme, which is what I'd be following in terms of making sure fuzzball is legal and all of that jazz.

I've already called Air Canada and British Airways, the two possibilities for me from Important-City-In-The-Middle-Of-Nowhere and I think I've kinda figured out what the heck I'm supposed to do in terms of the airlines. I'll be calling DEFRA regarding the PETS Scheme first thing Monday morning (literally! God bless time zones...) to sort out exactly what I have to do with Chase.

However, this is all terribly complicated and hurts my head. Medieval stuff doesn't hurt my head - heck, even medieval law doesn't, but it appears that modern laws and regulations do hurt my head.

In short, does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how I can try to make sense of all of this and make it as painless as possible?

Disabled histories: Part I

[NOTE: Again, another very long post, nearly 2300 words. This is the first of a series of posts on disability history, so be ready for at least two, possibly three, more long posts in the next few days. To reiterate my point in my last post, any suggestions for adding post summaries to the blog would be greatly appreciated!]

While reading two posts on an interpretation of Chaucer's The Franklin's Tale and weeping animals in Ava's version of the Fifteen Signs of the Last Judgment over at ITM, I was reminded of my original PhD project.

In the first instance, I had planned on focusing on deaf history in 18th and 19th century Europe and North America. I had been - and continue to be - particularly fascinated by a comment Catherine J. Kudlick wrote in her essay "Disability History: Why We Need Another Other": she wrote that the creation of a school for the deaf by the abbé Charles-Michel de l'Epée represented a "creation myth" for the deaf community.

This suggestion of the existence of a creation myth caught me, well, quite unawares. I had never thought of it in this fashion, but when I began to consider it, I realised that it had some very serious and interesting implications for deaf history and disability history in general. After my switch over to medieval history, I've realised that these two little words are still having an effect on my work in medieval history.

Four particular points come to mind fairly quickly when we think of the idea of a creation myth in terms of disability history in general:

• prehistory v history
  
• parallel histories
  
• a discrete (and potentially finite?) history
• the issue of memory
  

I will be using deaf history as my exemplar throughout this post, simply because it is the most-developed subgenre of disability history. (This is not to say that blind history or 'crip' history, etc. haven't been done, but deaf history has been done for a bit longer and has garnered most of the focus because of issues of language, sign language, communication, cultural identity, and so on.)

Before I continue to the meat of the post, I would like to note that this will be a series of three or four posts. This first post will deal with the first point of prehistory v history.

When I first read the creation myth comment, I suddenly conjured up an image of Epée coming along and solemnly intoning Fiat silentium!* Granted, 'silence' itself can be understood in several ways, as one of the novel things Epée did was assume that deaf-mutes were teachable, that they could indeed learn to communicate through French by reading and writing it. To this end, he determined that since he learned Latin via French, why couldn't the deaf learn to comprehend French via sign language?** The rest, to use a bad pun, was history.

Now, the establishment of a creation myth centered around Epée says something about deaf history itself. The obvious point is that deaf people today consider their identity and cultural group (in terms of the Deaf community) as having a beginning, as having begun with Epée. The general consideration is that Epée recognised them for what they could do, not for what they couldn't do, and it just snowballed from there.

However, this perspective reduces history to two distinct periods: Before Epée (BE) and After Epée (AE). The period BE, which covers everything before c. 1760, is thus reduced to "prehistory". The term "prehistory" can be understood in two different contexts here: one, it may refer to the fact that deaf people did not appear very frequently in the records or were incapable of leaving behind historical artefacts and/or reminders that they did exist BE, and it may also refer to the fact that deaf people consider (pre)history BE to be irrelevant to their identity. This second point is quite important because, as I mentioned earlier, deaf people have constructed their identity and culture around Epée and his followers, who helped educate the deaf and initiate ideas of deaf identity and thus of deaf history.

Back to the first point about prehistory: in a related point, the determination of where we place the 'beginning' of our history (is there such a thing as a 'beginning' to history in general?) also shows our values and priorities. In terms of deaf history, there was one predecessor to Epée: Pedro Ponce de Leon. Pedro was a Benedictine monk - when he was introduced to two aristocratic brothers who were deaf-mutes, he realised that it was potentially possible to adapt the monastic signs that he employed to create a rudimentary manual language that could be used in communication with the two brothers. Pedro taught the brothers Spanish, Latin, and Greek and, interestingly enough, he also taught them to speak enough in order to be able to avail themselves of the sacrament of confession.***

Why wasn't Pedro considered the 'beginning' of deaf history, then? The answer is straightforward, I think. Pedro's work with the two brothers was a one-off occurrence, whereas Epée's methods were developed and designed for wide dissemination and were also accessible, as evidenced by the popularity of Epée's school for budding teachers of the deaf: many of the first teachers of the deaf across France and Europe (excepting Britain)**** were the disciples of Epée himself. Instead of considering the deaf as individual cases or within a meritocracy (which is implied by the fact that Pedro taught two aristocrats), Epée assumed that any deaf child or person had the ability and intelligence to learn languages. This ideology lent itself naturally, I think, to the idea that Epée should be considered the beginning of deaf history, or at least of 'proper' deaf history, as everything BE is prehistory.

Before we move on to the second of the three points above, let us consider the issue of prehistory more closely, as it's closely linked to the second point of parallel histories. The designation of deaf history before c. 1760 as being BE, or prehistory, clearly demarcates what is generally considered to be the 'modern' period as also belonging to deaf history. This suggests that the period BE is not only prehistory, but is 'ancient' or 'medieval' history, and that this prehistory is not important or worth examining because we already know what happened 'back then'. Deaf people were oppressed, were called nasty names like deaf-mutes, and weren't considered important enough to be included in historical records. There's a reason the medieval period is called the medieval period, people!

This is, obviously, an unfortunately simplistic (and pessimistic) view of deaf prehistory. One has to wonder if this indicates a feeling within the deaf community that the period BE is such a 'long' one that it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to develop an identity (or impose one?) that takes prehistory into account. The fact that the deaf identity may be said to begin in the 18th century must certainly have helped to create a clearly developed identity, one that can be linked to historical events, particularly as we have historical records and artefacts from deaf people in the 18th century onwards, which helps to make this particular historical period more tangible and meaningful to the deaf community. I can certainly understand why references to deaf-mutes being let off for murders because they're considered incapable of understanding right from wrong in medieval legal records don't have the same attraction as the writings of Ferdinand Berthier, the development of the Hartford School for the Deaf by Gallaudet and Clerc, and so on.

However, this does not mean that the medieval period is irrelevant. The fact that deaf-mutes are mentioned in legal records (and I'm certain they're mentioned elsewhere, of course!) doesn't mean that they're irrelevant to historians. One would think that these legal references would be seen in a positive light: they certainly demonstrate that medieval understandings of deafness (and disability in general) may very well have been quite sensible and practical in taking real-life considerations into account instead of painting the deaf (or disabled) with a single brush.

This understanding of medieval history as belonging to prehistory suggests that there's more than the creation myth at play here. With the period AE covering what is considered the 'modern' period, it raises questions of modernity v pre-modernity, and also suggests that there is a difficulty in understanding prehistory on its own terms, that deaf people and those who work in disability history assume that since models have been constructed that explain the disabled experience in the period AE/modern period, these models must thus be applicable to the prehistoric period as well. We have a paradox here. If modern models can be applied to the prehistoric period, then is the period BE (before Epée) really be 'prehistory'? At the same time, the clear marking of Epée as the beginning of deaf history strongly indicates that the period before Epée is marked off and cannot be understood according to the models, ideas, and theories developed by Epée and his disciples and those who have come after them up to the present day.

In dealing with this paradox presented to us by prehistory, does this mean that I, as a scholar working in medieval disability history, am actually working in 'disability history', or is this a misnomer, a glossing-over of this paradox? Of course, the phrase itself implies that there was an understanding that disability meant more than just a physical or mental impairment in the medieval period, that it could constitute metaphorical and epistemological ideas and concepts such as 'disablity history'. For them, the period they lived in constituted the 'modern' period, thus it was not 'prehistory', yet the demarcation established by the 'creation myth' discussed earlier relegates medieval people to a lower rung on the totem pole below modernity. Granted, this is not a novel concept, as our understanding of history presumes that it is linear to a degree, that events follow one another and that the further we go back into the past, the higher the probability of finding less historical evidence. This argument conveniently leaves out the issues of interpretation. For instance, I can't very well call deaf people 'deaf' - they were, more often than not, referred to as 'deaf-mutes' or 'deaf and dumb', to name two terms. This difference in terminology does not necessarily mean that the medieval understanding of deafness is 'inferior' to the modern one: it simply indicates that the medieval period had different priorities and that in order to glean out the references to deaf people (and disabled people in general), we must learn to accept the medieval understanding of disability for what it is instead of attempting to subsume it within a modern framework.

This is a roundabout way of saying that the only way to resolve the paradox, or at least set it aside for the moment, is to understand the medieval worldview on its own terms instead of attempting to link it to a modern one in order to 'better' facilitate interpretation.

Now the question is: Are we dealing with history or prehistory? On one level, I would argue that we are dealing with prehistory in terms of medieval disability history in the sense that this period has not been considered a fruitful or even relevant one for the purposes of disability history in general until quite recently. It has also been argued that this period is distinctly different from the modern period, given the different models, interpretations and understandings of disability in the medieval and modern periods, so any attempt to 'link' up the two periods or demonstrate that the medieval period has any relevance to the modern period in terms of disability is useless. This argument has been used largely because there is, again, very little actual work done in this period: the assumption is that since there's little work done already, it must be pointless, ergo why bother attempting to disprove the point?

And, of course, what's the point in developing a parallel history when the 'main' history has already been done? We know that the medieval period was a nasty time for the disabled - what more needs to be done in terms of the medieval period? This will form the basis for the next post in this series, which will be coming in the next few days, so be sure to check back!

*For you non-Latinists, 'Let there be silence!' It's a play on the famous command by God in Genesis in the Latin Vulgate: Fiat lux! or 'Let there be light!'

**To simplify matters, Epée did not invent sign language. That was invented independently of him by the deaf who formed a community in Paris. We know this sign language existed before Epée, as Pierre Desloges describes some of the signs in this system in his book, published in 1794. What Epée did was he created 'methodical signs'. In effect, these signs conveyed French on the hands: methodical signs were thus used as a teaching tool to teach the deaf in Epée's classes the alphabet, French grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. Again, this is a very simplified explanation and is in no way meant to be authoritative.

***Inheritance laws, to be quite simplistic about it, generally presumed that the heir was capable of speech, as he or she had to be able to understand contracts and be capable of managing his or her estate(s), which required the ability to speak and comprehend speech; the ability to comprehend written vernaculars or Latin was not necessarily as relevant. Why this should be applicable to confession as well, I'm not certain, but I know that Eaquae Legit has found references to deafness in terms of confession in her research already.

****The Braidwoods developed their own system for educating the deaf. This is why British Sign Language (BSL) is quite different from French Sign Language (FSL) and its descendants, which includes American Sign Language (ASL). It appears that the Anglo-French rivalry extended to the education of the deaf as well.

Disability and begging

[NOTE: This is an extremely long post, in excess of 1800 words. If anyone knows how to get the post summary feature (i.e. where you can have a Read More link to the rest of the post) on to this blog, let me know - many thanks in advance! Greg]

Christian Cripple here, folks.

It took a while, but I finally managed to get Joe and Tom to stop drinking long enough for Joe to sober up and cart me over to the nearest keyboard to write out this post, which comes hot on the heels of my first post a while ago.

The Internets is a fascinating place. In fact, I just came across something called the 'BBC' which apparently has lots of 'news articles' on things to do with the 'UK', whatever the heck that is. Still trying to figure out where the heck they put jolly olde England on the map. Apparently there's a really big 'continent' or two in the way or something.

At any rate, I ran across two articles discussing a disabled beggar in India, here and here. First of all, what the heck is a 'bank' and how do I get into one? Secondly, how the heck did this woman amass 200 pounds of coins?! I'd kill for 200 pounds! Edit: Turns out they're referring to the unit of weight not the monetary 'pound'. Crap. Thank you, Tom. Guess your 'scholasticism' is good for a thing or two, after all.

Now, isn't it interesting that the writers only mention Ms Das' disability as a result of an attack of polio in the second article, at the beginning, and not at all in the first? Her need for begging appears to have been caused as a result of this polio attack, so why shouldn't this information have been considered relevant for the purposes of the first article as well? It's possible that Ms Das' polio may not have been severe enough to be obvious to people, yet one must wonder to what extent she may or may not have relied upon her disability to solicit donations or alms.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not arguing that disabled people who are forced to beg should rely solely upon their disability in soliciting alms. However, this does raise a question of what society considers people with disabilities to be.

Are they drains on society because they're not 'normal', require 'extra' services, and don't contribute to society at large? Are they considered in a more positive light, in that their experiences as disabled people can be used to their advantage - for instance, it's eminently possible that disabled people are creative and adaptable, as they have to recognise that they are part of a minority in that society is designed for what it considers normal, average people. The very definition of 'disabled' presumes that one is not part of this 'normal average', if you will.

At the same time, where exactly does this idea that the disabled can or should be lumped in with the poor come from? I know that in my experience, I can't exactly do much, being a cripple and all - just look at my picture on the left, people! - but I can beg. However, I can rationalise this by the argument that I represent a tangible means for Christians to demonstrate charity: by giving me alms, they show that they are good Christians and follow the teachings of Jesus in caring for those who are sick and destitute. ... Hm. I suppose I just answered my own question to a degree.

I say 'to a degree' because the answer I gave is religious in nature - there certainly have to be other answers to the idea that the disabled are part of the poor in society. Or is it possible that modern conceptions of the 'disabled poor' stem from my time, from the idea that the 'disabled poor' should be interpreted in terms of a religious framework? Granted, a religious framework is in and of itself attractive, because it also provides room for incorporating arguments of morality within itself, but this is to conflate religion and morality. Is it the same thing if a donor says that he is giving me alms out of religious duty or obligation, or because he is doing so out of a sense of morality?

To the first, one may argue that this is not the most honest of answers, because we are following an obligation. However, this would be simplifying the issue of religion. While it can be said that we are born into a religion - I was born to Catholic parents, after all - it is still a choice to follow the tenets of said religion. No kidding! Cripple's a huge fan of Innocent III and his smiting of the Albigenesian heresy a few decades back! Sorry about that. Stupid Tom went and re-introduced himself to some mead. I did NOT! Shaddup, Tom.

Anyways, as I was saying, it is still our choice to follow the tenets of our religion. In that sense, giving to the poor, disabled or not, is not necessarily an obligation, but more of an agreement. By following Christianity, or whichever religion one follows, one agrees to the tenets of the religion itself, so it is not necessarily a one-sided conversation here.

However, this does not quite resolve the issue of morality, particularly separate of religion. This point is especially important, as there is no mention of religion in the two articles I mentioned earlier in this post. (Thank God for this 'keyboard' - I couldn't imagine dictating this to a scribe - after all, it's the fourteenth century, not the tenth!)

Let us examine the question of morality from the perspective of Ms Das first. She states that she "knew one day that [she] would grow old and have diseases, so [she] was prudent and saved for [her] pension." When we think of beggars with alms, we tend to assume that they live a hand-to-mouth existence; that they beg because they have an immediate need for money. Here, Ms Das has taken a long-term view of her situation and understood her disability as one that would exclude her from being able to hold down a steady job that would pay her well and, hopefully, provide benefits of some sort as well.

Perhaps this story is not extraordinary for the fact that Ms Das is disabled, but rather for the fact that she persevered at her 'job', if you will, because she took a long-term view of it and understood it as a job in the fullest sense of the word. She went to work, worked, came home, and did it again the next day. She lived off her earnings and saved what she didn't spend. Is this so different from 'proper' jobs in society today? I'm not saying we should all go out and start begging - that'd severely cut down on my clientele, for one thing!

It does, however, bring up the point that the disabled are perceived as being individuals with short-term goals: their goal is to get from one day to the next, to manage to survive another day with their disability (or disabilities). This is a negative and pessimistic view, one that fails to take into account the disabled person's understanding of and feelings about his or her situation in life: the articles about Ms Das seem to suggest that she was at least content with her job - it was something for her to do every day. She had a clear goal in mind: one must certainly wonder what ran through the minds of those who donated some alms her way. Did they think that she was a nuisance, a drain upon society, someone who didn't deserve their charity? Or did they give her alms just to make her go away and stop 'bothering' or 'pestering' them? Did any of them consider that this was potentially her job, that she was a person who was capable of - and had - concrete goals and purposes in life? After all, do we not all work to secure our future? Ms Das simply did it in a way that society considers 'inappropriate'.

Now, the same question - that of morality - from the perspective of the donors themselves. This is not discussed at all in the articles: the closest we get is a discussion of how Ms Das can be used as an example that one "can save even if [they] earn a pittance." This is an interesting comment, because it implies that this remarkable woman is remarkable precisely because of her talents both in amassing this sizeable fortune and in managing it shrewdly. The comment itself suggests an almost too-late appreciation for this woman's talents, and a recognition that her talents could perhaps have been put to better use, if only someone had recognised them earlier.

More than anything, the absence of morality in these articles on the part of the donors seems to suggest that donating alms is seen as a rote action, something that we do because it's socially 'proper', whether that's contributing to charities or giving directly to beggars or panhandlers, however we want to describe them.

Also, the mentions of the ability to "send in account payee cheques in [Ms Das'] name" to her bank and the outpouring of people "offering financial help to Ms Das after her story first appeared earlier this week" are interesting. Does society feel this moral need to help the poor and the disabled only when it can put a tangible face to the idea of 'the poor' and 'the disabled'? I'm certainly a person, and so is Joe AND ME!...sigh. And, yes, even Tom. I have goals. I have expectations. I have dreams. Now, maybe they're not as grand as yours are, but they're goals, expectations, and dreams nonetheless - they're mine. They're grand to me.

However, the idea of 'financial help' is interesting. Is it only possible to offer Ms Das, and people like me, Christian Cripple, financial help? Society is composed of networks, networks in which financial help is given and shared, certainly, but other kinds of 'help' are offered as well that are not necessarily financial. It may be moral, religious, collective or personal, to condense non-financial sorts of 'help' into four admittedly very broad terms. The offering of financial help carries with it the implication that society's responsibility to the poor and the disabled ends there: it is up to the person in question to determine his or her future. This is quite ironic, as it comes up against the idea that since the poor and disabled live a hand-to-mouth existence, they must be incapable, one way or another, of long-term goals, which suggests that it is society's responsibility to provide guidance. Which is it?

More than anything, these two articles demonstrate the conflicting attitude society has towards the disabled, especially if and when they're lumped in with the poor. Should the disabled be lumped in with the poor, however one defines that particular term - the poor? Or should they be considered on their own terms, or is it acceptable to lump them in with the poor - or any other socially-defined group - when appropriate?

Is this conflicting attitude perhaps a legacy of the medieval period, or does it go deeper than that?

Does this mean I'm running in the presidential election now?

(Courtesy of Jeremy Young via In The Middle)

I'm famous - I was quoted by John McCain in a presidential debate!

Okay, not really. Technically it's an, um, "presidential debate" over at Progressive Historians.

McCain: I'm an old codger. I don't like this new Internets stuff. I prefer things from a long, long time ago, like Greg Carrier's article at In The Middle on Medieval Disability. Greg gives an excellent overview of that emerging field of historical inquiry.

As JJC writes at ITM: "So ... McCain gets the medieval vote?"

Many thanks, Jeremy!

WAY before Columbus....

Only a medievalist would get the humour present in the final frame of this strip. =)

*For you non-medievalists, St Brendan, if the chronicles are to be believed, sailed from Ireland to Canada in the sixth century.

A question of life or death?

I just came across a survey conducted by Disaboom, the "first interactive online community dedicated to improving the way people with disabilities live their lives."

The survey, which polled 1000 Americans, proclaims that 52% of Americans would rather be dead than live with a severe disability, namely one "that forever alters your ability to live an independent life."

This survey irritates the heck out of me for two reasons, and not because 52% of Americans would rather be dead than be severely disabled.

First of all, even though the press release states that various demographic factors were taken into account, I find it incredibly difficult to believe that based on 1000 responses, 52% of Americans would prefer to be dead.

Secondly, the survey question only allowed for two choices: living with a severe disability or death. The nature of the 'severe' disability was not defined or explained beyond the implied statement that it would negatively affect the respondent's quality of life, nor did it take into account the fact that it is certainly possible to live a full life with a disability, a point that the founder of Disaboom (quite ironically) makes a few paragraphs down in the press release. I wonder how he would have felt if he had been called up and asked to select between only these two options: life with a severe disability or death.

I'm quite happy where I am, thank you very much. I probably don't qualify as having a 'severe' disability according to the criteria set out by the survey organisers, but still...what a depressing survey to come across.

Captioning bloopers: Edward I of England a sot?

Courtesy of Monarchy with David Starkey, namely in reference to memorialising Edward I's wars against Scotland:

"The following inscription was placed upon Edward [I]'s tomb: malius sotorum."

I'm pretty sure that should have been malleus Scotorum. Unless, you know, Edward was really a girly king or something, which really makes you wonder what Edward II was perceived as during his reign. Or Edward III....

Deaf-mutism: the experience

[Image credit: Jesus Curing a Deaf-Mute, courtesy of ARTStor]

I recently watched the French film Ridicule.

The film focuses on a baron, Gregoire Ponceludon de Malavoy, who travels to Versailles in 1783 to get funding to drain swamps on his estates. He quickly learns that wit opens doors at Versailles, and he has it in spades.

What is remarkable about this film, though, is the presence of a minor character, Paul, who is a deaf-mute. In fact, he is described in the film as an idiot and half-wit far more than he is called a deaf-mute.

At one point in the film, he is sent off to Paris to be taught by the abbé Charles-Michel de l'Epée. Later in the film, he reappears at Versailles with Epée and several of Epée's other students. The party are openly ridiculed by the aristocrats who have gathered for the demonstration that Epée is putting on to prove that deaf-mutes are intelligent and are indeed capable of learning language and of communicating with society. Epée has them demonstrate their intelligence by answering questions posed to them by the audience, with him as the intepreter.

The scene is quite short: only three questions are asked. One aristocrat asks what the purpose of a violin is; another asks if the deaf-mutes can tell time. They answer these questions ably, then a woman asks if they are content with their lot in life. Epée puts the question to the group, and they suddenly engage in a conversation amongst themselves. After a few moments, one deaf-mute responds to Epée, who chuckles. The aristocrats are dumbfounded: they have no idea what's going on. Epée turns to the audience and tells them that he cannot give them an answer: what they have signed is untranslatable, as it's a play on signs.

The aristocrats take this at face value, and one final question is posed: "How do you say bravo?" Malavoy quips, "Like this!" and rises to applaud the deaf-mutes and their teacher.

The fact that Epée couldn't translate the answer to spoken French is intriguing. It reminds us that there is still a difference between the hearing and deaf experiences; this distinction is perhaps more pronounced in the medieval and early modern periods than it is today. Many deaf-mutes in Epée's time spent years without education of any sort until they were put under his charge and tutelage: how could they express the deaf experience to a hearing audience? Perhaps more importantly, how could they explain and describe their experience as deaf-mutes to themselves after they had learned French Sign Language?

How did people imagine what it was like to be disabled in earlier epochs? Even though deaf-mutes aren't frequently found in the legal records I'm using as the basis of my MA thesis, they're still there. The fact that they're being let off without prejudice for murder because they're incapable of malicious thoughts demonstrates that there is some degree of imagination here. What does a deaf-mute think and feel? Of course, medieval jurists couldn't go up to a deaf-mute and ask him or her what he or she thought and knew: this was impossible. They had to imagine what it may have been like to be a deaf-mute. Even I have to imagine what it must have been like to be a deaf-mute in the medieval (or early modern) period.

I had a very good discussion with Rei about this not too long ago, namely about going from hearing nothing to hearing something, and I found that I couldn't explain the experience itself, even though I experience it twice a day, once when I put my implants on and again when I take them off before bed. I had to resort to a comparison of sorts - I asked him to imagine what it was like to come out of a quite dark room and be assaulted with light. I have had this particular experience myself, and I find that it's the only way I can explain what it is like for me to go from hearing nothing without my implants to suddenly hearing things when I put them on, and vice-versa for when I take them off.

Perhaps Plato was on to something here with his cave allegory?....

Captioning bloopers: Euro 2008

When Spain won the Euro 2008 final this past Sunday, during the medal presentation, the commentators were listing the teams Spain had defeated in the competition.

Instead of 'Greece', the captioning read 'Grease'.

Somehow I don't think the Euro 2008 championships will ever make it big on Broadway....

Support services at conferences

A question for you readers.

The conference's been splendid so far (I'm assuming - I did write this post before leaving for Vancouver, after all.). All events so far have been captioned (this I knew in advance), and all the workshops and plenary events on the schedule for the remainder of the conference will be captioned as well (ditto). There are also sound loops for those who employ them, as well as sign language interpreters (ditto yet again). This conference is a wonderful model of accessibility.

In fact, it's gotten me thinking about academic conferences that I've attended, and will attend in the future. To what extent should academic conferences be required to provide support services? Now, I'm not talking about just myself, but in general, whether it be a deaf academic, a blind one, a hard of hearing one, or one with mobility issues, and so on.

For instance, would having real-time captioning for plenary lectures be beneficial for everyone, especially if the lecture is given in a large hall or ballroom (a la Kalamazoo)? What about speakers who are visually impaired or in wheelchairs? (I have seen some congress attendees in wheelchairs the past two years, I should note.)

The reason I'm interested in these questions is because we're told that academics are seeking knowledge, to expand knowledge. That should apply to academics who are disabled as well. Now, I should note that I've had a wonderful experience with the organisers of the Kalamazoo conference in terms of ensuring that I have accommodations, but I do wonder how many disabled academics decline to attend conferences because they're either not sure how to go about securing accommodations for these events, or because they're worried that they'll be seen as a burden or as people demanding special treatment. I'm not saying that all academics feel this way, but I do wonder how many disabled academics feel excluded from conferences and the like because they don't necessarily actively consider accessibility issues in terms of disabled academics who may be interested in attending.

I realise that support services cost money - what doesn't? But that argument makes out disabled academics to be second-class citizens in a sense, because conferences themselves cost money to organise and run for 'normal', abled academics just as much as they would for disabled academics.

To what extent should academic conferences be expected to go in terms of providing support services for disabled academics, and to what extent should disabled academics themselves be required to go to in terms of helping set up support services at conferences they're interested in attending?

What do you think, readers?

Chase here, folks!

Woo!

Greg's gone to Vancouver!

I get the rest of the week off!

I can be a dog!

No more getting up early to go to work! Mind you, I still have to get up early to have breakfast - must keep a regular schedule in respects to food, of course! But after I eat, I can go back to bed! Either that, or I can go pester Dad, see if he'll get off the computer long enough to take me out to go play fetch or go for a walk, or, even better, both!

Don't get me wrong, of course. I love working, especially when people compliment me about how cute and smart I am. Why they direct the comments at Greg instead of me, I have no idea, though. After all, I need to put all of my training to use!

Just not this week - woo!

Now excuse me while I go see if someone's around here whom I can pester about taking me out to play fetch or a walk, or both.

Vancouver bound!

I'm off to Vancouver for the IFHOH Congress* this week: the posts for this week have been written up in advance and will be going up on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th.

This congress is a bit of a big deal, as it's only held once every four years (like the Olympics, World Cup, and Euros, although it's not nearly as famous as said events, sadly). It's also the first time this congress is being held outside of Europe, and you can't get much better than Vancouver, although I suspect people from the Centre of the Universe** might disagree.

This conference is extra-special because it's really two conferences in one. It's the annual national conference for the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association as well, so it's really the CHHA-IFHOH Congress.

And the best thing about it? Rei was kind enough to direct me to the Granville Island Brewery, a microbrewery on Granville Island, one of the best and popular areas in the Lower Mainland.***

I am so there.

*International Federation of Hard of Hearing Persons.

**Canadians will get this reference to Toronto, Ontario. And if you're not a Canadian, but you got the reference anyways, props to you!

***Another reference for you Canadians!

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day, everyone!

In honour of Canada's 141st birthday, here's an obscure historical fact that you may find interesting.

Technically speaking, Canada is still a dominion.

The Constitution Act of 1982, which repatriated the British North America Act* never discussed Canada's status as a dominion. A constitutional amendment would be required to modify or abolish Canada's status as a dominion.

*Technically, there are twenty British North America Acts dating from 1867 to 1975. The most famous of them is the 1867 version, which was (and still is) the basis for the Canadian constitution and saw the creation of the Dominion of Canada.