Awkwardly Able
I am a researcher with disabilities.
Sometimes I am a disabled researcher.
Sometimes I am an enabled researcher.
Sometimes I am an awkwardly-abled researcher. Like when I can functionally operate my assistive tech but the experience is akin to…
I’m at a provincial park, setting off down the “wheelchair-accessible trail” on my mobility scooter. Hmm, the boardwalk appears flat and straightforward, but in reality, every oldie-worldie board is a different height. Bump, bump, bump. God, I wish I had better shock absorption, the scooter I mean. Bump, bump, ba-bump. If I slow down, I’ll jostle less.
“Hmm? No, I haven’t seen any herons yet. Did you see them up the path? I’ll keep an eye out, I’d love that. It’s been a while.” Bump, bump, bump. “Oh, yes they probably do hear me coming. This thing doesn’t exactly have a stealth mode, but sometimes I get lucky. Ha ha. Enjoy your hike.”
The bump bump boardwalk ends. I can breathe in the canyon. I scoot on a hard-packed trail, wide enough for a companion to walk with me or for hikers coming the other way to pass without fuss. That’s a nice surprise.
The water moves next to me over every possible kind of surface. The mucky, mossy sides of the riverbed. The stone and sand outcroppings that fall away and are built up almost as slowly with the silt carried by the river. The water trickles over shinier and shinier pebbles, just here. The water moves so freely. At its own pace.
“Be like water,” said a friend. I’ve been trying to be like water for 20-some years. I have my days. That’s not true. I have my moments.
I remind myself, the water both in and around me tends to find its way. Its momentum feels like magic, all the more so because it is occasionally thwarted by obstacles.
Listening up the canyon, I interpret what I hear as moving water. I hear it moving over stones small and large, and echoing off the canyon walls. I don’t hear rock. I don’t hear water. I hear water moving over and through rock, over and through life. I understand what I hear as a whole, as the sound of a canyon.
Looking up the canyon, I perceive the movement of today’s water, as gentle ripples, and frothy bubbles. I perceive the movement of yesterday’s water, as the exposed roots of trees clinging far too far up the canyon face to make any sense today. I see corrugated rock walls, with no beginning and no end.
Smelling up the canyon, I interpret what I smell as freshness. Down wind, damp moss, damp cedar. Upwind, a startling layer of cake and perfume from the invasive Scotch Broom. I breathe deeply in all directions, understanding what I breathe as fresh air.
My senses supply ample information to construct my understanding of “canyon” as an awesome, calm-inspiring, space of quiet interdependence.
I’d love to take the path further up the canyon, but that path isn’t accessible. Now that I think about it, where does the path I’m on turn into that path? I should probably turn back before I get stuck somewhere. One more big deep breath.
Lurch! “What was that?” The wide, well-worn path has an exposed a tree root that impedes my turning radius and my ability to turn back. I’m stuck on it. It’s OK, don’t panic, you know how to get out of this. This isn’t new.
“Excuse me. Hi sorry, would you mind… No! Woah! I don’t need you to lift me. Just the scooter. I can stand. No! Woah! Don’t rev it. It’s not the motor.” (And it’s not that I was too heavy, but thanks for putting that possibility out there.)
“The scooter wheels are small and the footbed is low. The front wheel went over the tree root. See. I can put it in neutral and if you lift the back just a little bit you will be able to roll it over the root. Yes, like that. There we go. Thank you. Thanks for your help. Thanks.”
In life, and in my research, my agency and momentum are often dependent variables.
When environments are accessible, I can move with ease; breathe deeply; listen to and for the spoken and unspoken discourses; see and interpret connections. The ease of movement builds my momentum to get to new places, new understandings. I am an enabled able.
When environments are digitally or physically inaccessible, my agency and momentum become extrinsically limited. Over and over, and over…
If the text-to-speech tool reads out the copyright information at the bottom of every page, interrupting my train of thought and the author’s train of thought, I’m awkwardly able.
If the book or pdf is not readable by text-to-speech. I am disabled. F*/k.
When this happens (and it happens a lot), what are my options?
Do I choose to surrender my day’s momentum? Instead of reading, search for an accessible version of the book online, or bus up to the library to use the one computer that has OCR software to make sense of this image file. This happens so often, maybe I should just pay for the Adobe licence with OCR. How much is it? Oh, right. Not this month.
Or, do I surrender my agency? I could just choose to read around this inaccessible text. I could accept that disabling publishers and disabling library licences will more or less arbitrarily delimit the bounds of my research. Do I write that in the limitations of the study section? Yeah, no. I’m not doing that.
“Hi, could you help me track down a digitally accessible version of this book?”
“Hi, could you help me turn my mobility scooter around on this wheelchair-accessible path?”
I appear to be stuck.
Further Reading
Digitally Inaccessible Readings Take Extra Time and Extra Cognitive Load
Reflection
What connections did you make between this post and your digital praxis?
What would you like to try doing differently?
Why?
Are you stuck?
What would make this work more accessible to you?
