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Inclusion and accessibility don’t go without saying

Real Social Skills

People don’t know that you will meet their access needs unless you tell them you will. Many people won’t, and people with disabilities can’t read your mind to figure out your intentions.

It goes a long way towards easing stress for everyone if you talk about access explicitly, rather than assuming it goes without saying that you will do the right thing.

For instance, if your store sign says “no dogs allowed” it should also say something like “except service dogs” (don’t say guide dogs specifically, because there are a lot of reasons other than blindness that some people have service animals)

  • This sends the message that you know service dogs exist
  • And that you’re not going to kick them out of the store for having a service dog
  • This does not go without saying; people with service dogs get illegally kicked out of stores all the time

Similarly, if you ban laptops/electronics, it’s important to say “except when they are needed by students with disabilities.” (and not to demand proof of diagnosis).

If you’re organizing a retreat and there is a rule against outside food, it’s important to either make an exception for people with dietary needs, or else work with people to provide them food they can eat. And to make it explicit that you will do this, because it very much does not go without saying.

If you’re advertising an event and it’s in an accessible venue (which it should be), put that information on the fliers (and make sure it’s true). That doesn’t go without saying. Many organizations whose values suggest that they should care about accessibility routinely hold events in completely inaccessible venues. No one will know that you’re doing it the right way unless you tell them.

There are any number of other examples.

Short version: Keep in mind that people with disabilities can’t read your mind, and make it explicit that you will meet access needs, especially if your statements or rules suggest that you won’t.

Sometimes things suck

Real Social Skills

Sometimes things suck.

Looking on the bright side doesn’t always help. Positive thinking doesn’t always help. Gratitude and mindfulness don’t always help. Those things help in some situations, but they’re not a universal cure that will fix everything.

Noticing that things suck isn’t what makes them suck, and pretending that things are ok will not make them better. 

Sometimes people act like it’s your fault for noticing, like if you’d just have a positive attitude, nothing would be bad. But it doesn’t work that way. Taking a positive attitude only fixes things when your attitude is the problem. Sometimes it isn’t.

Sometimes things really are that bad, and it’s ok to acknowledge that they are that bad. When things are actually bad externally, being realistic about what’s going on can make things a lot easier to manage. 

(Even if, right now, you can’t see any way to make them better.)

There are different kinds of neutrality.

Real Social Skills

Content note: this post uses examples involving people doing awful things to explain why neutrality can be bad

One kind of neutrality is fake. It pretends to be a matter of principle. People who do this aggressively object to taking sides, and push you to see all sides as equally valid. That’s a bad attitude to take because sometimes the sides to a conflict aren’t equally valid.

For instance, when someone asks a guy to stop hitting on her and he gets offended, there are not two valid sides. When a parent deprives a child of food, there are not two valid sides. When people claim that vaccines cause autism, refuse to vaccinate, and cause outbreaks of preventable diseases, there are not two valid sides. Pretending that there are two valid sides ends up making you complicit in harm done to people who are being hurt.

But that is not the only kind of neutrality. Not all kinds of neutrality are objectionable. It is often ok to stay out of things. Sometimes you’re in them and there’s no way to be neutral that isn’t effectively taking a side by default. But sometimes you can actually stay out of them.

Sometimes neutrality means recognizing that you don’t understand an issue, and choosing to stay out of it, at least for now. A lot of stuff is really complicated to understand. No one can understand every issue where there are sides.

For example:

  • If you’re not in a position to be making military decisions or foreign policy, it’s ok to decide you don’t understand a certain conflict and be neutral about it (so long as you’re not pressuring other people to think it’s wrong to take sides)
  • If you don’t understand a piece of legislation, it’s often ok to not have an opinion on it, even if it’s related to an issue that’s important to your community (unless it’s in some way your job to understand it, eg: if you run an advocacy organization.)

It’s ok to stay out of many things, if you’re not in a position in which you have a heightened obligation to take a side because you have specific responsibility for what happens. Nobody understands everything important; nobody *can* understand everything important. You don’t have to drop everything until you feel up to taking a position on every issue that someone in your life cares about.

Another kind of neutrality is offering certain kinds of help to people who meet certain criteria, or even anyone who asks, without regard to who they are, what they’ve done, and without taking a position on whether they deserve it. That can be a good thing, or a bad thing, in ways that I’m not sure how to explain.

For example:

  • Operating a food bank and giving food to anyone who needs it
  • Advocating for better conditions in prisons for all prisoners, even those convicted of awful things, without investigating to see how strong the evidence is that the people you’re protecting did awful things

Short version: Neutrality means a lot of different things. Some are good, some are bad. Sometimes it’s ok to stay out of things. It’s not ok to aggressively insist that there are always two sides to everything or to refuse to ever take sides on anything as a matter of principle.

Setting the stage for disclosure of awkward or stigmatized things

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
I’m on disability for mental illness and I recently moved to a new place. (I moved because the area I lived was rather toxic for me and I have a best friend here who is great support.) This means I’m meeting a lot of new people, and a lot of them open conversations by asking about work or why I moved here. I can only get by with “non-answers” for so long, and sometimes there are people who I would like to tell more to but not yet. I don’t know how to handle these questions. Suggestions/ideas?
realsocialskills said:
I don’t know much about the specific situation you’re in, but I do know some things about setting the stage for disclosure of awkward or stigmatized things:
First of all, it’s easier to disclose later if you don’t lie now. (There are reasons that lying might still be a good idea sometimes, but it has the downside of making later disclosure more difficult.) If you’ve already told a lie, then if you want to tell the truth you also have to effectively disclose that you lied about it, which can be awkward. (This isn’t necessarily always a huge deal. Some people will absolutely understand why you lied. But it does make things a bit harder).
Second, there are intermediate areas between telling the whole truth and giving a complete non-answer. You might be better off erring on the side of giving partial answers. Partial answers send the message that, yeah, there’s probably a story there, and now isn’t the time, but maybe you’ll get there eventually.
Partial answers can be things like:
  • “I was dealing with some medical issues and moved to be closer to supportive friends.” (I don’t know if that line works well for mental health – I feel like it should, but I don’t actually *know*, and I hope that people who’ve dealt with disclosing that degree of psych disability will weigh in)
  • “Things were really hard where I was living before.”
  • “I’m out of work right now.”/“I’m not able to work right now.”
  • “I’m between things.”
  • “It’s a long story.”

Partial answers work best when you combine them with an immediate subject change. The most effective way to change the subject is by asking them an open-ended question about something they are likely to want to talk about:

  • Them: Why did you move here?
  • You: Things were really hard where I was before and I wanted a change.
  • You: Do you know any good bookstores here? I’m always excited to learn where the new ones are in a new place.

Some kinds of questions that work well for changing the subject:

Asking them about themself:

  • Most people like to talk about themselves
  • If you get people to talk about themselves and listen to them, they will usually enjoy it and not mind that you haven’t told them much about yourself yet
  • It also can be a way for you to find out more about them and get a better sense of what it might be safe or comfortable to tell them
  • This works best if you ask them something specific but open-ended, eg questions like “How long have you lived here?” “What do you do?” work better than “Can you tell me about yourself?”
  • If they ask you a question, it’s often particularly effective to ask them the same question after you give a partial answer. People generally ask questions in getting-to-know-you contexts that they are eager to answer themselves.

Asking them about the place you’ve just moved to:

  • Most people like to feel competent and like they have expert knowledge
  • So they generally like to explain things they know well to people who are eager to find out about them
  • Asking about the area and listening to their answers is likely to make them feel happy and competent
  • Which can lead to them feeling positive about the conversation and happy that they met you
  • And, again, it’s a way to find out more about them and how they think

Pay attention to what people tell you:

  • If you notice other people who seem nice and also give non-or-partial answers to common smalltalk questions, they might be good people to get to know a bit better
  • (Not that it’s guaranteed; sometimes people are evasive because they’re hiding something that is actually bad. And even if they’re hiding something that isn’t bad, that doesn’t necessarily mean you and they will be good friends. But it *is* a sign that they might get it.)
  • If people say awful things about psychiatric disability, exercise caution about trusting them. It’s likely that they mean it, even if they are otherwise nice.
  • Listen for people who share your interests, even a little, and talk to them. Connecting around interests bridges a lot of gaps.

Ask your friend for help:

  • If your best friend has been in the area for a while, they might have a sense of who they trust to treat you well if you disclose things to them
  • Especially if they can introduce you to nice people
  • It’s a lot less stressful to deal with this situation if you can identify some people who are likely to be nice to you once you’re ready to tell them things

All of that said: you may actually be better off just being open about things in a matter-of-fact way. That has a lot of downsides, but it also has a considerable upside:

  • If you are open about something stigmatized, then you find out fairly quickly who is going to be a jerk about it and who isn’t
  • This means that you get a lot more people being directly awful to you, but it can be a more bearable kind of awful
  • Because if people you don’t particularly care about say horrible things to you, it can only penetrate so far.
  • It hurts a lot more if it’s someone you’ve really been trying to build a friendship with for a long time.
  • It is in many ways far less stressful knowing how people are going to react than worrying about how people are going to react
  • And it also makes it *far* easier to identify people who get it and won’t be jerks
  • In particular, if you are open about things, then people who *aren’t* open about things will be able to identify you as a trustworthy person, which means you’ll be able to find each other.
  • Also, people often take cues from how you talk about a stigmatized aspect of yourself
  • If you can talk about something stigmatized in a matter-of-fact way (possibly combined with an immediate subject change), people tend to react better than if you talk about in in a more cringing way
  • This approach has a major downside too, but it’s worth considering

Short version: There are a lot of approaches to disclosing stigmatized things about yourself. You might be better off being really open about it. You might be better off disclosing more cautiously. It helps to give partial answers to questions people ask, and to change the subject. It also helps to ask people questions that they’ll want to answer, and to listen carefully to what they say.

Free speech includes the right to set editorial policy

Real Social Skills

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are about having the right to choose what you say. Part of this means being able to say what you want to say; an equally important part of free speech means the right to refrain from saying things you *don’t* want to say.

And, in a broader sense, this includes editorial policy. If you publish a magazine, you make choices about which articles to include and which articles to reject. That’s an essential part of what a magazine is. A magazine has a certain topic and point of view, expressed as much in what it does not publish as what it does.

For example:

  • Socialist journals do not publish articles in defense of capitalism
  • Medical journals do not publish articles that have not passed peer review
  • Jewish community newsletters do not publish arguments for conversion to Christianity

The fact that these types of publications only publish things that support their mission and policy is not a violation of free speech; it is an *expression* of free speech.

This is as true on the internet as it is in print media.

Deciding what to put on your website, and what *not* to put on your website, is part of how you exercise your free speech. That includes things like:

  • Posting about things you want to post about
  • Not posting about things you don’t want to post about
  • Responding to responses to your writing that you want to engage with
  • Not engaging with responses you prefer not to respond to
  • Making decision about whether you want to have comments, and if so, which kind of comments to allow

No matter what choices you make about these things on the internet, someone will accuse you of censorship and insist that their right to free speech means that you have an obligation to publish their opinions. It doesn’t. Their right to freedom of speech is about what *they* say; it does not give them the right to make *you* say anything, or to publish them, or to pay attention to them.

Free speech means you have the right to say what you want to say, and to refrain from saying things that you do not want to say.

You don’t have to like being disabled

Real Social Skills

This is what I think disability acceptance means:

  • Facing what your abilities are and aren’t
  • Accepting yourself as already having value
  • Living your life now and doing things you care about.
  • Not putting your life on hold waiting for a cure

But, some kinds of acceptance talk end up putting destructive kinds of pressure on people. And I think:

  • It’s ok to like or dislike being disabled. It’s ok to like some aspects of your condition but not others
  • It’s ok to want treatment and to be frustrated that it isn’t available
  • It’s ok to pursue treatment that *is* available
  • It’s ok to work hard to gain or keep certain physical or cognitive abilities, and to be happy or proud that you have them
  • It’s ok to decide that some abilities aren’t worth keeping, and to be happy or proud about moving on from them
  • All of those things are very personal choices, and no one’s business but your own
  • None of them are betrayals of acceptance or other disabled people

The point of acceptance is to get past magical thinking.

It means seeing yourself as you actually are, without being consumed by either tragedy or the need to focus on overcoming disability. It means accepting where you are, and living now, without putting your life on hold waiting for a cure.

Acceptance creates abilities. Acceptance makes it easier to be happy and to make good decisions. But acceptance does not solve everything, and it does not come with an obligation to love absolutely every aspect of being disabled.

Acceptance is the opposite of giving up

Real Social Skills

I’ve seen a disconnect between parents and self-advocates when we talk about disability acceptance:

  • Advocate: Disability acceptance is really important. Disability is part of who I am.
  • Parent: You mean I should just accept that my kid is suffering and can’t do anything and not even try to help them?!
  • Or, even worse: Yes, it is. My kid is my special little pillow angel and I love her just the way she is. It’s great having a kid who will never grow up.

By acceptance, we do not mean either of those things. What we mean is more like this:

  • Kids whose development is atypical get treated like they’re failing before they’re even old enough for kindergarten. (See all those checklists that say “by the time your child is 2, he or she should be…”, and think about what it’s like for a child’s earliest memories to involve adults thinking they were failing)
  • Being disabled isn’t a failure, and it shouldn’t be seen as one. There is no should in development, and there is no should in bodies.
  • Childhood isn’t something you can flunk
  • Magical thinking will not help, and neither will centering your life around searching for a cure
  • Children with disabilities who live to adulthood usually become adults with disabilities
  • They need to be prepared for disabled adulthood, not encouraged to think that if they work hard enough they will be normal
  • It is ok to be a disabled child, to develop atypically, and to become an adult with a disability
  • You can have a good life and be ok with your actual brain and body
  • Imagining that you will have a fundamentally different body one day makes everything harder
  • Life gets better when you accept yourself and work with your body and brain rather than against it
  • Shame is not a cure
  • Disability is not an emergency, and panicked intense early intervention will not make disability go away
  • Early education can be important, and kids with disabilities need appropriate support and care, and in many cases medical treatment
  • But their life needs to contain things other than treatment; people with disabilities need to do things besides be disabled and get therapy
  • Their life is already worth living and they don’t need to be cured to be ok
  • Don’t panic

Short version: Acceptance isn’t about denying that some aspects of disability can be awful, and it’s not about categorically rejecting medical treatment. It’s about working with yourself rather than against yourself, and pursing life now rather than waiting for a cure.

Document communication

Real Social Skills

This post may not apply to all of you, but I know a lot of you work with people whose communication is impaired, so:

I’ve come to believe that if others are reporting that someone has no communication, it is important for others responsible for their care to do everything in their power to counteract this.

Being perceived as noncommunicating is dangerous. It can prevent someone from ever being listened to. It can also lead ableists to withhold medically necessary care because they believe that person’s life is not worth living. 

You can’t reliably assess someone’s receptive communication unless they have expressive communication that you can understand (and even then, it’s difficult). Being unable to respond is not the same as having no understanding, and it’s wrong to assume that people don’t understand. So, really, no living person should ever be described as having no communication. That may not be in your power to fix, but keeping it in mind will help you to treat people better.

Beyond that, most people who are described as having no expressive communication actually do. Don’t be led astray by someone else saying that someone is “noncommunicative” or “nonverbal”. Unless the person they’re talking about is in a coma, they’re probably wrong. If you look for communication, you will be able to listen to them better, and also better able to protect them by documenting their communication. So look for it, and document it, and tell other people who care for them. Their life may depend on it, and the way they’re treated almost certainly does.

Some specific things you can look for:

  • Do they turn their head when you come in?
  • Flap their hands when they’re angry or happy?
  • Vocalize?
  • Say words that may or may not be communicative? 
  • Try to get out of their chair?
  • Sing?
  • Become more calm or agitated when you speak to them?
  • Make eye contact?
  • Say numbers?
  • (There are any number of other things)

Everyone with voluntary control over any part of their body communicates. If you’re working with someone, learn their communication and do what you can to make it known that their communication exists and matters.

Liking things is never age-inappropriate

Real Social Skills

People get to like things. It’s ok to like whatever you like.

Even if it’s a show for little kids

Or toys. Or kids’ art supplies. Or picture books. Or YA novels.

When people like things, they’re being people who like things, not being age-inappropriate.

It’s wrong to invade spaces that are intended for young children, or to attempt to get children to accept you as a peer. That’s a boundary violation. Age matters when you’re interacting with others, and some things are genuinely wrong for adults to do.

But liking the thing is never the problem. It’s always ok to like things. Adulthood happens when you reach the age of adulthood. It is not something you have to earn by turning away from awesome things you like.