Ryan Boren

Kirsten Imani Kasai, 50, a novelist in San Diego and self-described introvert, describes how she found comfort and safety in the relative quietude of the past year — and fears the return of a noisier, more-demanding world. Emily Ladau, 29, a disability rights activist in Long Island, N.Y., says she worries that the shift back to in-person interactions will force her, once again, to navigate environments that weren’t designed for the physically disabled.

Source: Opinion | Reopening Anxiety? You’re Not Alone. – The New York Times

I’m an autistic, hyper-sensory wheelchair user. Loud noises and light touch can induce agonizing cramps strong enough to tear muscle, dislocate joints, and break bones. I prefer to stay at home where I am not overwhelmed by the logistics and stimulus of an inaccessible world.

During COVID lockdown, my favorite restaurants started curb side service. My doctors offered telemedicine. The various educators and healthcare workers who help us home school our neurodivergent kids offered Zoom sessions and noticed how well they responded to learning from the safety and accessibility of home.

More places became compatible with written communicators and the phone averse. I even made some progress with getting healthcare, education, and local businesses to respect communication preferences and improve digital accessibility.

And now, much of that is falling away.

We’ve been warning that the accommodations that suddenly became possible during a pandemic would go away and we’d be back to forced intimacy and the accommodations grind.

Source: Structural Ableism Doesn’t Stop at the Firewall – Ryan Boren

I never want to give the impression that I speak on behalf of the entire disability community. But there is one thing I'm pretty confident is universal: the desire for a more inclusive, more accessible world. To reach that, we can't return to "normal." We must return to better. https://t.co/EppN4wva8z

— Emily Ladau (@emily_ladau) July 6, 2021

revoking accessibility provisions such as working from home that have been put in place for the last year just proves that disabled people are so undervalued by society and it is so disheartening

— Ru 🌸♿️ (she/they) 🎀 (@RollWithRu) June 17, 2021

we’ve proved in the last year that these things work so there really is no other excuse other than blatant ableism

— Ru 🌸♿️ (she/they) 🎀 (@RollWithRu) June 17, 2021

It’s official:
After working fully remotely for almost a year, the university is terminating my contract a year early because I requested continued remote work as a reasonable accommodation.

Last day is June 30th.

How is this real?

I will fight. But, for now, I’m heartbroken.

— Disabled Doctor (@DisabledDoctor) June 18, 2021

So thoroughly discouraging.

In the video, you will hear from some of these quieter voices. They explain that as much as they want the pandemic to end, it has also provided them with some relief from challenges, inequities and injuries that were all too common in their prepandemic lives.

Source: Opinion | Reopening Anxiety? You’re Not Alone. – The New York Times

I too felt that relief. As Kirsten Imani Kasai puts it in the video:

I felt safer. I felt safer.

“Autistic people have significant barriers to accessing safety.” Likewise physically disabled people. Lockdown bettered accessibility and neurological pluralism, and thus safety, in myriad ways that are now disappearing.

Grateful for the opportunity to advocate for an accessible post-COVID world in my 1st live news interview after NYT piece with @joefryernbc but I'll always continue to wish we lived in an already accessible world, so disabled people could simply…just be. https://t.co/dHQfGOB99b

— Emily Ladau (@emily_ladau) July 6, 2021