Blob
>the personal blog of david n wallace
[aka Dave the Lifekludger]

I was awake at 3.30am to take part in the Second Life talk that’s part of this forum: (why do I do these things…)

Using Virtual Worlds and Emerging Technologies for People with Disabilities

This two-part, interactive event will take place in two locations online:

First, the live discussion in the virtual world of Second Life at 9am PST
The follow-up discussion will take place for the rest of the day, 10AM PST- 6PM PST, in TechSoup’s Accessible Technology & Public Computing forum at: <http://www.techsoup.org/go/accessibletechnology>
Event Schedule:

9 AM PST in the Nonprofit Commons Amphitheater in Second Life.

Simon Stevens (aka Simon Walsh in Second Life) <http://www.simonstevens.com> will be speaking about his work in Second Life. Simon Walsh is chief executive of Enable Enterprises which manages the Wheelies nightclub for people with disabilities in Second Life and the Second Ability Second Life simulator. In real life, Simon has cerebral palsy and lives in Coventry, UK. He is a disability consultant and trainer working with many organizations large and small.

Simon will give a virtual talk via text chat in the Nonprofit Commons amphitheater, in the virtual world of Second Life

10AM PST- 6PM PST –the follow-on discussion will continue in an all-day, asynchronous (not-live) forum on TechSoup. This event will occur in a question and answer format in the TechSoup Accessible Technology & Public Computing forum <http://www.techsoup.org/go/accessibletechnology>

Online Event: Using Virtual Worlds and Emerging Technologies for People with Disabilities in this forum, Feb. 29th, all-day, asynchronous (not-live). No registration is needed; just show up here and post your questions!

Accessible Technology and Public Computing message board, TechSoup

Dave

While I wait for my copy of “Everything is Miscellaneous“ to wend its way across the oceans to Australia; after ordering it via Amazon, as the local book stores tell me it’s not released here in Australia yet (cough); I while away my miscellaneous time reading about the book in Mr Weinberger’s blog.

While deeply immersed in an excellent story of registering his recently purchased boat, I nearly fell out my wheelchair when I read his recounting what was on the registration form.

‘One of the checkboxes on the registration form asks if I’m “retarded.” I thought we were done lumping the various ways our intelligences fail us into that particular bucket…’

Like him, I too assumed we were done with that use of classification (ie: labelling). I’m surprised that they just don’t be done with it and ask another question using that other archaic label that the US seems to have forgotten to leave behind (along with inches, pounds, miles and gallons) - “are you handicapped?”.

As one definition of retarded is conveyed as “to slow up especially by preventing or hindering advance or accomplishment”, I was left wondering if it was referring to the 90 horsepower motor that Mr Weinberger’s poor boat was afflicted with.

But alas, that’d be wishful thinking. I am unfortunately left with the conclusion it’s the actual people who made the registration form itself.

I mean really, if you were ‘retarded’ and wanting to register for a hunting permit or register a boat, would you answer yes to that question?

Mr Weinberger’s point is that “Requests for metadata are expressive”. Well, he’s dead right. That request certainly expresses some attitudes held by the ‘authorities’ behind the form.

I was impressed by Mr Weinberger’s awareness and the deft expression he uses. I’m looking forward to “Everything is Miscellaneous” even more now!

Dave

Just like last year, I gave my lecture about my life with disability and the things I’ve learnt along the way to a class of OT students at UNISA a couple weeks ago.

Another big group and two hours trying talk loud as I could meant I was buggered aftewards
but very fulfilled.

I changed a few slides and added some more things to the stack this year, with a renewed focus about what therapy, occupational or otherwise, should really be all about - enabling people to connect.

The revised slidestack can be seen here or from under the Lifekludger Popular page. This only serves as a guide and to give direction for me on the day - a lot more is said than appears on the preso. So if anyone wants more details please contact me.

Dave

Being the IT guy, at work I’m usually kept in the back corner office beavering away keeping the electrons zooming for the rest of the plebs sitting at the ends of the 10Base100.

Meanwhile I know we have many any varied public come off the streets and into our building to use our free public access computers.

Today the two worlds collided when I was asked to help when a user couldn’t get to a geocities site. I quickly resolved the issue as something to do with cache refreshing, but not before listening briefly to what this quiet spoken, well mannered, clean yet somewhat shabbily dressed person was using the geocities site and our public access computers for.

He’s quietly waging a war on social inclusion. Putting the plight of the homeless and disenfranchised of Adelaide out there for public attention. Even told me there’s a homeless person who checks out the free food places and reports what they are like to him for putting up on the site - almost like a homeless restaurant review - though that’s doing these guys a disservice in merely terming it that.

So, if you want an insight into the life of the backlife in Adelaide, and a taste of the kind of wonderful people who make up life in the city, as they embody the spirit of self-empowerment - check out the Social Inclusion War site.

Just sayin.

Dave

Mohandas Gandi is quoted as saying: “First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win” when describing the stages of establishment resistence to a winning strategy of nonviolent activism.

If you’ve been reading, or better still, listening to the Extraordinary Everyday Lives podcast, you’ll know I’ve been battling with some Government bureaucratic nonsense around my work place support. Things got real stupid real quick and for no good reason except trying to ‘handle‘ people living with a disability rather than work with them. Let’s all say together ‘c o l l a b o r a t i o n’.

Anyway, I wasn’t taking it. I was sick of rolling of one more time to have them see their version of ‘help’ imposed upon me. I took up the issue on the grounds of their own policy inadequecies. Funy how “everybody likes to see justice done…on somebody else“.

Well I heard yesterday that they had decided to allow me to keep doing what I had been successfully doing for 13 years anyway.

Chalk one up for the little guy.

Keep kicking against the bricks!

Dave

I see via tech.meme and outlined over on law.com that the net community is struggling with issues of discrimination with a law suit that’s been filed against the popular online classifieds site, Craigslist. To fill you in from law.com:

Google, Amazon.com, AOL and Yahoo are helping defend online peer Craigslist against a lawsuit that would hold the Web site liable for discriminatory housing ads that appeared on its site.

The lawsuit against Craigslist was filed by Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

The committee argues that Craigslist has violated the Fair Housing Act by letting its users post ads in which they discriminate in seeking tenants, asking, for instance, for a “gay Latino” or a “clean, godly Christian male.” The lawsuit cites about 120 ads from July to October 2005.

Now I live in Australia and so don’t know about this “Fair Housing Act” spoken about, but it made me ask myself how I would feel if an ad appeared asking for a tenant that had a disability. Which, if you’ve just tuned in, I do.

I think the answer is, I’d feel bloody good.

Face it, no matter how much they protest they don’t, people discriminate. While I’m no aficionado on equal opportunity - far from it, I’m just your normal guy with a disability - here in Australia it seems the question is whether the discrimination is ‘fair’ in the circumstance (whatever that really means - ‘fair’ discrimination).

I mean, how do newspaper classifieds get on? They have personal columns; Guy seeks Guy for … Girl seeks Guy for … etc. I guess it’s to do with the ‘Act’ they operate under. Anyway, I digress.

Given my previous musings about the new spirit of openness that seems to be appearing on the net around all things web 2,0, I wonder if what’s happening on Craigslist with this lawsuit isn’t just one of those old rocks getting beaten against by a new wave in a growing ocean.

I mean isn’t openness better in that at least we know where we stand?

Rather than a negative, I see what’s happening on Craigslist as a positive indicator of society. It is an indication of acceptance of and an expressed desire for people to be included by other people. It’s saying to the people being offered tenancy ‘you’re wanted‘ in society.

The reverse also applies and is also seen, in the negative light, in access to the built environment - when I can’t get in a shop to spend my money, when transport isn’t accessible to everybody, society is saying ‘you’re not wanted‘.

Regardless of an ‘Act’ or any real or perceived discrimination, or an argument over a written law, we should be looking what it says about the spirit of the society we live in. Inclusion should be celebrated.

Notions of what society says about inclusion really stood out to me in Second Life (SL). You’ve got all sorts of weird looking people in there, but everyone I’ve met seems to get along and be accepting. I wonder if it’s because, much like Star Trek, most avatars are based around a walking human form.

When I first entered SL I went looking for a place to buy a wheelchair. In fact, the only efforts I’ve made to build anything in SL are to attempt to build a wheelchair that I can sit in. So far all I’ve managed is rubber looking hollow wheels.

Alright, so you can fly in SL, but my point is when I see in ‘First Life’, classifieds everywhere advertising a tenancy for a person with a disability I’ll really believe we are beginning to live anti-discrimination rather than just talk and make laws about it.

In the mean time, I’m backing openness.

Technorati Tags: openness, web 2.0, craigslist, google, discrimination, disability, inclusion, accecptance, society, yahoo, aol, amazon.com, second life

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Put another way, you could say things are generally the same here in Darwin as home in Adelaide - aside from the obvious one, the weather.

There are differences obviously - but the weather really seems to be the only big difference.

There’s still the same stupid hiccups caused by miscommunications between different layers of staff. Qantas staff on phone are great and promise the earth assuring everything will be rosy and yet the people on the ‘ground’ obviously don’t get that message. What it seems like is a big company with lotsa little ‘groups’, all having their own internal ‘customer education’sessions on how to put the ‘company line’ yet not having enough interaction overlap to give a cohesive ‘customer experience’.

The best analogy I could give is it’s like a big game of ‘chinese whispers’.

The people do their best and are very congenial but there’s gaps in the system that generally you wouldn’t see, but travel with a disability and they become instantly obvious.

Besides which people either just don’t use common sense or have no real world idea of who they’re trying to serve - or maybe both.

And it’s not just in the air transport. The Hotel gave me the same type of experience. The needs were clearly outlined ahead of time to someone on the phone and somehow got missed, overlooked or just muddled up. Nothing was `life-threating’ or more than an inconvenience, but again it was clear that systems to ensure continuity of experience just weren’t either up to it, or the people just don’t care about details - even though they appear to.

‘It’s the little foxes that spoil the hedge‘ is how the saying goes. And, likewise, ‘The devil is in the detail‘. And that’s the upshot of it - the detail, the ‘little’ things.

In a world of ’same-ness’ it’s the details that are going to make the difference.

And I’m not talking about details and little things in terms of mints on pillows, or smiles on faces, inflight treats or glib company catch phrases. I’m talking about every person in a company or organisation saying what they mean, meaning what they say and making sure it happens consistently down the line - paying attention to the details in the conversation.

Oh, I arrived fine, pretty much unstressed - even though I had to wait over an hour and half for a taxi at the airport, but really, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at that - it’s the same story in Adelaide. Luckily I was going on holiday and the time didn’t really matter. But if I had been on a schedule I would’ve been utterly stuffed and the rub is it would not have been due to a lack of detail planning with the information I had, but a lack of attention given to my detailed planning.

And so it goes. The saying ‘He who fails to plan, plans to fail‘ is holding less sway in my estimation of valuable things to remember….especially when it seems you’re dealing with systems whose value is on appearance rather than substance.

Dave

Technorati Tags: darwin, disability, travel, qantas, service

Okay, caught a glimpse of a link (of the web ‘hyper’ kind) that got my mind linking (of the cerebral kind) all these things together.

I’m gonna try and get them down before the latter (cerebral) ones give out on me. Follow the links (web) and try to keep up with my thoughts.

I wrote in my previous post about how the problem getting people with disabilities involved in a conversation in the CRC was generally an empowerment issue to partake (consume) in the opportunity:
Empowering a conversation based on Focused Intention

That post pointed to Lloyd’s blog about the CRC. Lloyd previously blogged about strategic commercial advantages in developing technology after chatting with Mark Bagshaw:
Strategic thinking in Technology Development

Mark Bagshaw, Director Accessibility for IBM Australia & New Zealand, has been on about the commercial untapped market that exists in people with a disability for ages:
Smart Thinking And Money

So, the Tourism people are getting wise:
Tourism for the disabled regarded as a new niche tourism market

Okay. Tourism issues from the proprietors’ angle is largely about access to a built environment and transport. These businesses recognise that their premises are their business - using it is the thing they sell - access to and in and around their premises by people, even if they have a disability, is a value proposition.

Now we just need the ‘wiseness’ to spread. Last week I drove past 3 different places that weren’t accessible to go to a place that was to buy a particular electrical item. I was having lunch too at that time, so neighbouring businesses serving food also missed out on my moola. More and more, I just bypass places who don’t want my money because they don’t bother to see me as a consumer, and I spend it somewhere that does.

I think the key reason why the Tourist people are starting to get it and others aren’t is that for those others they don’t see their premises as part of their business. They see their business as selling food, or selling car parts, or selling gadgets…not selling building space (which is basically what accomodation owners do, albeit on ashort term basis). To them, the building is just a thing in which to put the stuff they want to sell.

All businesses need to start seeing that their business isn’t about selling ‘stuff‘ at all, it’s about people. Then the people will be their focus and doing things to remove barriers to getting the people to their ’stuff’ will be seen as a value proposition.

Markets are conversations? If I can’t access the seller to talk about what their selling we can’t have the conversation and I can’t ‘consume’. Market-gone…..to someone who will have the conversation with me!

See, it’s not just a virtual market we’re talking about.