I’d planned to rant about the inaccessibility of the Democratic presidential candidates’ websites, but I’m too exhausted to do justice to my indignation. KosAbility admins do the best we can to present interesting news and manage meetings, but as CathyM said, “We're volunteers, all of us disabled and working hard to live full lives as well as do KosAbility.”
I’m respecting my full life. Instead of writing something original, I’ve pasted in disability news that is especially egregious this week, along with action items addressing the news. The lack of accessible websites is old news, but I’m still pissed off about it because depreciating disabled voters is habitual. So that’s also included, along with Crip the Vote’s plan to crowdsource disability-relevant sections on candidate websites
Our August 25th meeting will be held jointly with Climate Change Anxiety Support Group.
The meeting’s diary by occupystephanie centers on helping children deal with climate change.
As always, our meetings are open threads so come to share your news, answer and ask questions.
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Scapegoating people with mental illness
The first story this week concerns stigmatizing mental illness as the cause of gun violence with a call for building more institutions and creating a registry of mentally ill citizens. Over 46 million Americans have a mental illness diagnosis, and many of them also have other disabilities and intersectional traits that are demeaned (e.g., skin color, religion, gender, sexuality, income level). Psychiatric institutions have a long history of providing a cover for abusive treatment and have been used to disappear inconvenient people.
Disability Rights California: Response to Recent National Events Involving Gun Violence
Associating mass shootings with mental health disabilities perpetuates misconceptions and stigma about mental health, and marginalizes all individuals living with those disabilities.
The Arc Rejects President Trump’s Comments on Bringing Back Institutions
The Arc and our constituents are all too familiar with calls to reopen the institutions of the past, where people with all different disabilities were imprisoned against their wills and subject to horrific torture and abuse. For nearly 70 years, The Arc has focused on advocating for deinstitutionalization to ensure that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and other disabilities, can live meaningful, independent lives in the communities of their choice among their families and peers, with accompanying supports and services.
“We have spent decades building the community services we need and we still have so far to go to ensure that people with all disabilities, but especially those with dual diagnoses of I/DD and mental illness, have access to the critical services they require to support community living.
“People with I/DD and mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators of it. The misguided idea that mental illness causes violence is inaccurate, harmful, and discriminatory to the disability community.
“Re-institutionalization would bring people with disabilities back into the dark ages of isolation and segregation. Nearly 30 years after the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act and its ‘integration mandate’, we have come so far. Yet 37 states still have institutions, and these comments impede our progress. Clearly, we have more work to do, and encourage people to join our efforts to build a world where people with disabilities do not face this harmful stereotyping,” said Peter Berns, CEO, The Arc.
Take Action Against Scapegoating and Registries
We must act to demand our leaders not aid the NRA's cowardly attempts to scapegoat 46.6 million Americans who have a mental illness label.
Step 1: Contact your senators & house rep by calling the capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 or using Resistbot
Example script: "As a constituent from [zipcode], I urge [elected] to oppose any attempt to create a registry of the 46.6 million Americans who have a mental illness. We need real gun control - not more of the NRA's scapegoating of the disability community."
Step 2: Reach out to your favorite 2020 Presidential campaigns
Ask them to come out in public opposition to any registry or database of the 46.6 million Americans who have a mental illness label. Because we need real gun control – not more of the NRA's scapegoating of the disability community.
Step 3: Share your results on social media with #NoGoatsNoRegistries
The growing list of presidential candidates has something in common beyond their Oval Office aspirations: None of them think disabled people should be able to access their websites.
On Tuesday, a day before the first Democratic debates, every presidential candidate (including the Republican one) was called out by the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired for having an inaccessible campaign site, just months after Politico put the candidates on blast for shoddy Spanish translation sites. Blind and low-vision users, along with disabled people who have certain other impairments like seizure disorders and cognitive disabilities — as well as those who are deaf and hard of hearing — can’t actually use the candidates’ websites. It’s just the first in a series of obstacles disabled communities face when trying to make informed voting decisions, even though these groups have an especially vested interest in politics.
Thirty-five million eligible voters are disabled, and disability turnout lags behind that of nondisabled voters by 6 percentage points; if disabled people voted at the same rate as their nondisabled counterparts, there would be 2.2 million more voters. One of the reasons is that voting is extra difficult for disabled people. Inaccessibility of polling places and election materials is a factor, as are voter suppression tactics — disabled people are less likely to have state identifications, for example, and get caught in voter ID laws.
(my bold added)
Take Action on Website Accessibility and Candidates’ Disability Policies
Crip the Vote — Crowdsourcing Disability Policy on 2020 Presidential Candidate Websites
In our ongoing effort to make the 2020 Presidential Election campaign a little easier for disabled voters to follow, we are asking #CripTheVote participants for help. We want to present and maintain an easily referenced collection of links directly to disability-relevant sections on candidate websites.
@4WheelWorkOut has complied an extensive list already and offered it to get us started. We have added the remaining candidates with links to their website home pages, and will add more disability-specific links from their websites as we identify them.
If you want to help, pick a candidate, visit their website, and send links to disability-related pages to: cripthevote@gmail.com.
Sorry, no action item for this issue, yet.
NBC News reports:
“In 2017, the government fired 2,626 full-time employees with disabilities, according to documents from the EEOC obtained by NBC News. That marks a 24 percent increase from 2016.
The EEOC data indicates that workers with disabilities were fired at almost two times the rate of those without disabilities.
Some essential criteria here are “as long as doctors can diagnose accurately and offer effective treatment.” What about false positives and negatives? “Data suggests 5 to 10 percent of all drug tests may result in false positives and 10 to 15 percent may yield false negatives.” For example, proton pump inhibitors can give a false positive for THC, poppy seeds and quinine can result in false positives for opiates.
A draft report issued Tuesday by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that all U.S. adults be screened for illicit drug use as long as their doctors can do so accurately and, when abuse is detected, offer their patients effective treatment or refer them to someone who can.
Questions about drug use should not only cover the possibility that a patient is taking illegal street drugs like cocaine or heroin, the task force said. They should also explore whether a patient might be sneaking pills from a family member’s pain medication or getting a boost from stimulants prescribed for a child with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. [...]
...a growing stack of research studies has shown that treatments for drug-use disorder and addiction — including behavioral interventions and pharmacological therapies — are effective in helping patients quit or cut back.
That evidence of effectiveness is a key change from earlier years, said
Dr. Carol Mangione , a UCLA internal medicine specialist who co-chaired the task force committee that drafted the new recommendation.
“We don’t want to screen for something unless we know there’s an effective treatment,” she said. “If you don’t have a treatment that’s effective for people who screen positive, you haven’t really helped.”
Speak up about the proposal to drug test all adults.
”The draft recommendation statement is posted on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force website, along with a review of the research on which the recommendation is based. The public is invited to submit comments until Sept. 9; after those are considered, the advice may be modified and finalized.”
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- PEOPLE LIVING WITH DISABILITIEs;
- WHO LOVE SOMEONE WITH A DISABILITY; OR
- WHO WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE ISSUES.
OUR DISCUSSIONS ARE OPEN THREADS IN THE CONTEXT OF THIS COMMUNITY.
FEEL FREE TO
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OUR ONLY RULE IS TO BE KIND.
bullies WILL BE ignored and/or obliterated.
for more elaboration on our group rule please read this story.
At KosAbility we amicably discuss any and all matters pertaining to health. Our discussions are not medical advice. Medical advice can only be provided by a qualified physician who has examined the patient. If you have worrisome symptoms please see your doctor!
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Remember — next Sunday 4pm PT — children and climate change.