Bloggers Unite for People with Disabilities: Attitude

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It’s funny, I don’t consider myself disabled– that is, on most days.  Then every now and then, life will knock me upside the head and remind me that I can’t access the world sometimes.

I was born with hearing in the so-called “normal” range.  I know I started losing some hearing when I was in kindergarten, because I remember climbing into bed and asking Dad to repeat the story of Scamp, the scraggly little dog that went on adventures all over town.  All of a sudden, I was missing bits and pieces of the story.  I was outfitted with a single hearing aid at the age of nine, but the contraption often ended up on a shelf after school and disappeared during the summer.  I got by with lipreading and some impressive social bluffing skills.    When I was nineteen, I went from hard of hearing to deaf in an instant– I fell while barefooting and climbed into the boat deaf.

Sometimes it’s hard for people to believe me when I say that becoming deaf was the best thing that ever happened to me.  The bluffing skills went to the wayside and I picked up American Sign Language.  I worked at a Center for Independent Living and met people with disabilities from all over.  The very best thing that I learned was this:  Attitude is everything.

When we have an attitude of acceptance, equality and access, then we see the whole person, instead of just a disability.   Jo Waldron says it best when she says, “Attitude is the worst barrier of all.”

I generally find that most people have an open attitude when they meet me and we have to do a communication dance– I have to figure out how to lipread them and they have to figure out how to slow down and face me.  Once we get that dance coordinated, access usually follows.  The same thing happens with websites– sometimes I will ask for a transcript for a video or captions and folks are usually willing to follow up with some kind of access.  Eventually… someday… I hope for full internet access.  The passage of H.R. 3101 and S. 3304 would enable a step toward this access.

Today, bloggers from all over are uniting for people with disabilities.  Take a look at the posts and join the conversation.  Then take a look at your website and determine if it’s accessible for folks with disabilities.  If you need an accessiblity guru, connect with Glenda Watson Hyatt, she works miracles with her left thumb.

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Tags: Advocacy efforts by DeafMom
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Advocating for Captions on the Web

I recently discovered that NBC now has some old episodes of  the Emergency series posted on their website.  As a kid, I loved that show, even though I had to lipread my way through it.  This was before the days of captioning on TV.  And today, I feel like I’m right back in the 70s– because there’s no captioning on the TV episodes that are displayed on the web.

Representative Ed Markey introduced the Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009 on June 26, 2009.  Quite simply, the bill has this as the goal:  “To ensure that individuals with disabilities have access to emerging Internet Protocol-based communication and video programming technologies in the 21st century.”

In other words, it means that if I want to see old episodes of The Tonight Show or waste time watching Deal or No Deal– that I would have access to those episodes just like everyone else.

Isn’t 30 years a long time to wait for captions on the web?

Keep in mind, this doesn’t apply to user-generated content.  So if you toss a video on YouTube, no one is going to make you caption it.  But I sure would appreciate the access if you decided to make your content accessible. And something else to think about: someday your own hearing might go south and you’d appreciate a captioned web.

The Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology has a petition to sign. Jamie Berke has a blog with tons of info:  Caption Action 2. Over on Facebook, a group has gathered to push the grassroots effort and get this bill passed.  Won’t you come and join us?

Of course, just clicking on a Facebook group isn’t going to get a bill passed, but there is strength in numbers.  Facebook helped to save a deaf school from closing.

I know you’re probably rolling your eyes and thinking, “Not another bill, Karen.”  But here’s the deal–if you contact your Senators and ask them to start a similar bill and contact your Representatives to support H.R. 3101 and help me get this passed and into the law books, I promise I won’t bother you again for a while.

I’ll be too busy catching up on those Emergency episodes.

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Waterskiing Memories


A few nights ago, the hubby was flipping through channels and he came across Stunt Junkies, a program on the Discovery channel. The episode featured Scott Ellis, who was attempting to break a waterskiing jump record by jumping over more than fourteen boats.

As I watched Scott break the record by jumping over a total of nineteen boats, I started thinking back to my own waterskiing days on Christie Lake. I had always dreamed of skiing in shows such as the ones held at Tommy Barlett’s or Cypress Gardens but I didn’t have the guts to follow the dreams.

The summer that I turned sixteen, I decided that I would learn how to barefoot–to waterski on my own bare feet. At first, I tried using a waterski and kicking off the ski, but I found myself hitting the water face first. After too many face slams, I decided there had to be a better way. So thumbed through the pages of a barefooting book and learned about the “kneeboard start.” I dragged my mom to a local boat shop and we purchased a kneeboard.

After a couple of days of trying, I finally planted my feet in the water and stood up. The kneeboard fell away and I suddenly found myself barefooting. I didn’t get very far, perhaps a few hundred feet. As I climbed into the boat, I learned that my friend Michele had the throttle wide open and the boat was moving at 39 mph instead of the 33 mph that we were aiming for. No wonder my feet were burning on such a short run.

For the next three years after that, I waterskied and barefooted every chance that I could. I often barefooted with the other guys on the lake, competing to see who could make it all the way around the lake. One of the guys taught me to do a deepwater start which involved wrapping my feet around the rope, gliding on my back and then getting up on my bare feet.

I have to thank my parents for all the gas they bought– some days we skied up to eight times a day.


I’m now in my early forties and I haven’t barefooted in several years. My only consolation is that no other girl/woman on Christie Lake has successfully barefooted, so I still hold the title of the sole woman barefooter. My goal is to get back into barefooting– especially after seeing Scott Ellis jump a couple of boats. He’s got the same amount of gray hair that I do.

But for some real inspiration, check out Banana George–he’s 91 years old and still footin!

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Tags: Advocacy efforts, It's All About Me by admin
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