Blog of trash

yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Y’know, sometimes a question comes along that exposes your biases. I’m really, really glad you asked me this.

My initial instinct was to say no. There are a lot of tasks as a paramedic that require very specific motions that are sensitive to pressure: drawing medications, spreading the skin to start IVs. There’s strength required–we do a LOT of lifting, and you need to be able to “feel” that lift.

So my first thought was, “not in the field”. There are admin tasks (working in an EMS pharmacy, equipment coordinator, supervisor, dispatcher) that came to mind as being a good fit for someone with the disability you describe, but field work….?

(By the way, I know a number of medics with leg prostheses; these are relatively common and very easy to work with. I’m all in favor of disabled medics. I just didn’t think the job was physically doable with this kind of disability.)

Then I asked. I went into an EMS group and asked some people from all across the country. And the answers I got surprised me.

They were mostly along the lines of “oh totally, there’s one in Pittsburgh, she kicks ass” or “my old partner had a prosthetic forearm and hand, she could medic circles around the rest of her class”. One instructor said they had a student with just such a prosthesis, and wasn’t sure how to teach; the student said “just let me figure it out”, and by the end of the night they were doing very sensitive skills better than their classmates.

Because of that group I know of at least a half-dozen medics here in the US with forearm and hand prostheses.

So yes. You can totally have a character with one forearm, who works as a paramedic for a living.

Thanks again for sending this in. It broadened my worldview.

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

disclaimer    

The Script Medic is supported bygenerous donations on Patreon. Have you considered donating?

Organization of nurses with disabilities: http://nond.org/

Association of medical professionals who are deaf or hard of hearing: https://amphl.org/

When I was growing up, I was around people who were mostly pretty good at staying positive about my range of career options as a deaf person and who encouraged me to dream big. But one of the few things I was told that I likely couldn’t do would be to be a doctor. This is because they weren’t sure how to work around the “need” to listen to certain things through a stethoscope. No, it didn’t have a real impact on my career-related decision making because I didn’t really have an interest in the medical professions anyway, my interests took me in other directions. But it was one of the few limits that some people put on my vision, and even though it didn’t have a practical impact on me I still felt the constraint a bit – just the idea that something random like a stethoscope could potentially shut me out from an entire field.

Now flash forward to when I’m in my 20s, back when I was interviewing people and writing articles for a university staff/faculty publication and alumni outreach magazine. And one day I find myself interviewing a deaf EMT for an article I was writing on deaf women working in various professions related to the various sciences. And this deaf EMT had a specialized stethoscope designed to be SO LOUD that even I, a severely to profoundly deaf person, could actually hear a beating heart or the sound of nerves working! And that was with putting the buds for the stethoscope directly into my ears, which meant that I actually took out my hearing aids in order to listen instead of having to figure out how to get headphones to directly funnel sound into the eeny tiny microphone in my hearing aid.  The kind of headphones designed with buds going directly into the ear just DO NOT WORK FOR THAT, period full stop. And most things designed for hearing people DO NOT WORK for deaf people because they only use the little bitty baby amplification that hearing people use to protect their incredibly fragile ears that start to hurt at just about the point I’m starting to be able to hear that there even IS a sound to be heard. Hearing people run in terror from the kind of BIG LOUD amplification that us deaf people need. (Unless they are the kind of rock music fans who think all good music ends with actual, noticeable hearing loss at the end of the concert.) And on top of that, most things designed for hearing people naturally don’t compensate for the fact that I hear low pitch sounds MUCH better than high pitch sounds. Meaning, I can actually hear low pitch sounds if they are amplified loud enough, but for high pitch sounds – well, the first 32 years of my life they basically didn’t exist in my life, for the past 14 or 15 years the only reason I can hear high pitch sounds is because these days, with the advent of digital (not just analog) hearing aids, it’s now possible to have hearing aids that take high pitch sounds and process them so they sound like low pitch sounds. So this is what water sounds like! When it’s processed so that it’s actually something I can hear.  But somehow this stethoscope–invented when (most? or all?) of us deaf folks were still wearing analog hearing aids–managed to be loud enough for me.

Until the deaf woman EMT loaned me her stethoscope for a minute and explained it to me, I didn’t even know that you could actually hear the nerves working, not just the heart or breath in the lungs! And never imagined actually hearing it myself

And the deaf EMT told me that, for deaf people who really can’t hear anything at all even with that LOUD stethoscope, there are other machines to pick up basically the same information that you can get through a stethoscope. And she also pointed out that’s a fairly small part of being a doctor or EMT, anyway. You don’t have to be able to use a stethoscope to join the medical professions.

And … somehow, even though I had never personally actually wanted to be a doctor anyway, and still don’t want to, and still don’t miss having tried it, it was still so awesome realizing that this one last barrier that had been put on my old childhood imagination could just fade away.

People need to know.

PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW.

That people with disabilities can do all kinds of things

THAT people with disabilities ARE ALREADY DOING all kinds of things.

Because … on one hand, yes, there are a FEW things that people with certain disabilities actually can’t do. They do not yet have driverless cars on the open market for everyone to buy, so until that’s ready, blind people still can’t do jobs that by definition have to involve driving (like taxi cab driver, bus or truck driver, etc). And deaf people can’t be phone operators. And although deaf people could translate between written languages, and although there are certified deaf interpreters who translate between signed languages (yeah that’s an actual thing), people who are really deaf (and not just a little hard of hearing) can’t interpret between spoken languages on the phone. 

But most of the things that people THINK are impossible for people with disabilities to do?  Can be worked around with the right technologies, devices, software, adaptations, and a little resourcefulness and creativity. 

More people need to be like @scriptmedic, meaning they need to do the work to actually research the options and find out what is already being done. And they need to talk with people who have the actual disability to see what ideas they have. Because we often have a lot of these ideas, and we often see some of our supposedly more “innovative” ideas as being actually rather boring and ordinary because we’ve been doing them since before our memories even start. Just by example – As far as I can tell, from the bits I know (I’ve only known a few adults without hands at all well), many babies born without arms seem to just naturally do all kinds of things with their feet instead, because that’s what they have to explore the world with. It seems like a “gee whiz” creative answer for people who haven’t needed to adapt to life without arms, but isn’t so innovative from the perspective of an adult who has been doing all kinds of stuff with their feet literally since infancy. As a deaf person who has been using writing as a tool of communication since, like, age 7 or something, it baffles me when I still occasionally meet hearing adults who seem to find the idea remarkable. And all that is before you even get to the stuff where we have to actually work to come up with a solution, by drawing upon more sophisticated adult experience, knowledge of available technologies, and opportunity to talk with other adults with similar disabilities who are working to solve things too. We usually have a lot, a lot of practice working to come up with solutions for things we haven’t tried before, so we are often likely to see solutions that everyone else misses–and not just for disability related accommodations.

Are you looking at creating a disabled character? Then you need to think not about what they can or can’t do, but about how they might approach the same task with different tools at their disposal.

Don’t say “X can’t do Y or Z”. First, ask, “what is actually NEEDED to do Y? What’s the process? How could I adapt it?”

I’ll be the first to say that medicine is an ableist community. We are. We almost have to be, because the whole point of medicine is to reduce disability and disease. We assume total health is the baseline, that other states are “abnormal” and to be corrected.

And sometimes that leads to misunderstandings. Misconceptions. False assertions.

And I’m going to tell you this, because I think @andreashettle would like to know this: I am, functionally speaking, a person with “normal” hearing. (I have a very slight amount of loss from working under sirens for a decade, but functionally I do just fine).

But you know what? I’ve never heard the sound of nerves. Never. I didn’t even realize that that is a sound you can hear.

So you, with your deaf ears, just taught me something about a tool I use every. single. day. of. my. life. About a sound I’ve never heard, with my “normal” ears and my “normal” stethoscope. (Okay, it’s a pretty kick-ass stethoscope, lezzbehonest rightnow.)

And for the love of all that is holy, I want to see these characters in fiction. Deaf doctors, one-handed medics, bilateral amputees running circles around other characters just to prove that they can.

I apologize for my misconception, for assuming that disability meant “can’t”. It’s a cultural part of medicine that I dislike. But now that I know it’s a thing I want to see it everywhere.

But if you’re going to do it… do the godsdamned research. Have respect for those who live with disabilities. Write better. Write real.

And above all? Write respectfully.

If you’ve got a task that you don’t think you’d be able to do one armed, think about it like this: do you think you could do it one armed if you had 10 years to figure it out?

Most adults who were born disabled have 20+ years of experience figuring out how to do shit while disabled.

[large text: Writing Intellectually Disabled Characters]

Something that very rarely comes up in disability media representation are intellectually disabled characters. There is very little positive representation in media in general (and basically none in media meant specifically for adults or in YA). I hope this post can maybe help someone interested in writing disabled characters understand the topic better and create something nice. This is just a collection of thoughts of only one person with mild ID (me) and I don’t claim to speak for the whole community as it’s just my view. This post is meant to explain how some parts of ID work and make people aware of what ID is.

This post is absolutely not meant for self diagnosis (I promise you would realize before seeing a Tumblr post about it. it’s a major disorder that gets most people thrown into special education).

Before: What is (and isn’t) intellectual disability?

ID is a single, lifelong neurodevelopmental condition that affects IQ and causes problems with reasoning, problem‑solving, remembering and planning things, abstract thinking and learning. There is often delay or absence of development milestones like walking (and other kinds of movement), language and self care skills (eating, going to the bathroom, washing, getting dressed etc). Different people will struggle with different things to different degrees. I am, for example, still fully unable to do certain movements and had a lot of delay in self-care, but I had significantly less language-related delay than most of people with ID I know. Usually the more severe a person’s ID is the more delay they will have.

Intellectual disability is one single condition and it doesn’t make sense to call it “intellectual disabilities” (plural) or “an intellectual disability”. It would be like saying “they have a Down Syndrome” or “he has autisms”. The correct way would be “she has intellectual disability” or “he is intellectually disabled”.

Around 1-3% of people in the world have intellectual disability and most have mild ID (as opposed to moderate, severe, or profound). It can exist on its own without any identifiable condition or it can be a part of syndrome. There is over a thousand (ranging from very common to extremely rare) conditions that can cause ID but some of the most common are;

Down Syndrome,

Fragile X Syndrome,

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome,

autism,

Edwards Syndrome,

DiGeorge Syndrome,

microcephaly.

Not every condition always causes ID and you can have one of the above conditions without having ID as long as it’s not necessary diagnostic criteria to be met. For example, around 30% of autistic people have ID, meaning that the remaining 70% doesn’t. It just means that it’s comorbid often enough to be counted as a major cause but still, autistic ≠ intellectually disabled most of the time.

A lot of things that cause intellectual disability also come with facial differences, epilepsy, mobility-related disabilities, sensory disabilities, and limb differences. A lot of, but not all, intellectually disabled people go to special education schools.

Intellectual disability isn’t the same as brain damage. Brain damage can occur at any point of a person’s life while ID always starts in or before childhood.

“Can My Character Be [Blank]?”

[large text: “Can my character be [blank]?”]

The difficulty with writing characters with intellectual disability is that unlike some other things you can give your character, ID will very directly impacts how your character thinks and behaves—you can’t make the whole character and then just slap the ID label on them.

Intellectually disabled people are extremely diverse in terms of personality, ability, verbality, mobility… And you need to consider those things early because deciding that your character is nonverbal and unable to use AAC might be an issue if you’re already in the middle of writing a dialogue scene.

For broader context, a person with ID might be fully verbal—though they could still struggle with grammar, what some words mean, or with general understanding of spoken/written language to some degree. Or they could also be non-verbal. While some non-verbal ID people use AAC, it’s not something that works for everyone and some people rely on completely language-less communication only. There is also the middle ground of people who are able to speak, but only in short sentences, or in a way that’s not fully understandable to people who don’t know them. Some might speak in second or third person (although that’s rare).

Depending on the severity of your character’s disability they will need help with different tasks. For example, I’m mildly affected and only need help with “complex” tasks like shopping or taxes or appointments, but someone who is profoundly affected will probably need 24/7 care.

It’s not infantilization to have your character receive the help that they need. Disabled people who get help with bathing or eating aren’t “being treated like children”, they just have higher support needs than me or you. In the same vein, your character isn’t “mentally two years old” or “essentially a toddler”, they are a twenty-, or sixteen-, or fourty five-year old who has intellectual disability. Mental age isn’t real. Intellectually disabled people can drink, have sex, smoke, swear, and a bunch of other things. A thirty year old person is an adult, regardless of disability.

An important thing is that a person with ID has generally bad understanding of cause-and-effect and might not make connections between things that people without ID just instinctively understand. For example, someone could see that their coat is in a different place than they left it, but wouldn’t be able to deduce that then it means that someone else moved it or it wouldn’t even occur to them as a thing that was caused by something. I think every (or at least most) ID person struggles with this to some extent. The more severe someone’s disability is the less they will be able to connect usually (for example someone with profound ID might not be able to understand the connection between the light switch and the light turning off and on).

People with mild intellectual disability have the least severe problems in functioning and a lot are able to live independently, have a job, have kids, stuff like that.

What Tropes Should You Avoid?

[large text: What Tropes Should You Avoid?]

The comic relief/punching bag;

The predator/stalker;

The “you could change this character into a sick dog and there wouldn’t be much difference”;

…and a lot more, but these are the most prevalent in my experience.

Most ID characters are either grossly villainized (more often if they have also physical disabilities or facial differences) or extremely dehumanized or ridiculed, or all of the above. It’s rarely actually mentioned for a character to be intellectually disabled, but negative “representation” usually is very clear that this who they’re attempting to portray. The portrayal of a whole group of people as primarily either violent predators, pitiful tragedies, or nothing more than a joke is damaging and you probably shouldn’t do that. It’s been done before and it hasn’t been good once.

When those tropes aren’t used the ID character is still usually at the very most a side character to the main (usually abled) character. They don’t have hobbies, favorite foods, movies or music they like, love interests, friends or pets of their own, and are very lucky if the author bothered to give them a last name. Of course it’s not a requirement to have all of these but when there is no characterization in majority of disabled characters, it shows. They also usually die in some tragic way, often sacrificing themselves for the main character or just disappear in some off-the-screen circumstances. Either way, they aren’t really characters, they’re more like cardboard cutouts of what a character should be—the audience has no way to care for them because the author has put no care into making the character interesting or likable at all. Usually their whole and only personality and character trait is that they have intellectual disability and it’s often based on what the author thinks ID is without actually doing any research.

What Terms to Use and Not Use

[large text: What Terms to Use and Not Use]

Words like: “intellectually disabled” or “with/have intellectual disability” are terms used by people with ID and are generally OK to use. I believe more people use the latter (person first language) for themselves, but i know people who use both. I use the first more often but I don’t mind the second. Some people have strong preference with one over the other and that needs to be respected.

Terms like:

“cursed with intellectual disability”,

“mentally [r-slur]”,

“moron”,

“idiot”,

“feeble-minded”,

“imbecile”,

“cretin”,

are considered at least derogatory by most people and I don’t recommend using it in your writing. The last 6 terms directly come from outdated medical terminology specifically regarding ID and aren’t just “rude”, they’re ableist and historically connected to eugenics in the most direct way they could be. To me personally they’re highly offensive and I wouldn’t want to read something that referred to its character with ID with those terms, period-accurate historical fiction aside.

(Note: there are, in real life, people with ID that refer to themselves with the above… but this is still just a writing guide. Unless you belong to the group i just mentioned I would advise against writing that, especially if this post is your entire research so far.)

Things I Want to See More of in Characters with Intellectual Disability

[large text: Things I Want to See More of in Characters with Intellectual Disability]

[format borrowed from WWC]

I want to see more characters with intellectual disability that…

aren’t white,

aren’t men,

are adults (and not just 18-25 either, middle-aged people and seniors with ID exist),

get to have a different role in the story than just “annoying little brother”,

are allowed to be angry without being demonized, and sad without being infantilized,

are not described as “mentally X years old” as a fact/objective metric,

are respected by others,

aren’t “secretly smart” or “emotionally smart”,

are able to live independently with some help,

aren’t able to live independently at all, and aren’t mocked for that,

are in romantic relationships, have crushes, or are someone else’s crush (interabled… or not),

are non-verbal or semi-verbal,

use mobility aids and/or AAC,

have hobbies they enjoy,

have friends and family who actually like and support them,

go on cool adventures,

are in different genres: fantasy, romComs, action, slice of life… all of them,

have their own storylines,

aren’t treated as disposable,

aren’t there just to be a mascot/motivation for an able-bodied character,

don’t die or disappear at the first possible opportunity...

…and I want to see stories that have multiple intellectually disabled characters.

I hope that this list will give someone inspiration to go and make their first OC with intellectual disability. This is just a basic overview to motivate writers to do their own research rather than an “all-knowing post explaining everything regarding ID”. I definitely don’t know everything especially about the parts of ID that I just don’t experience (or not as much as others). This is only meant to be an introduction for people who don’t really know what ID is, or where to even start.

Talk to people with intellectual disability (you can send ask here but there are also a lot of other people on Tumblr who have ID and I know at least some have previously answered asks as well if you want someone else’s opinion), watch/read interviews with people who have ID (to start—link1, link2, both have captions) and try to rethink what you think about intellectual disability. Because it’s really not that rare like a lot of people seem to think. Please listen to us when we speak.

Good luck writing and thank you for reading,

The beginning of February was selected because of its proximity to Valentine’s Day, because we love our feeding tubes. This is my first year as a tubie and I’m looking forward to learning more about feeding tubes and the conditions that necessitate them! I do love my tube, it saved my life!

I am an adult with a feeding tube, and a lot of the awareness and attention surrounding these medical devices is child focused. A lot of children depend on tube feeding to thrive, but there are plenty of disabled adults that depend on tube feeding as well! In 2017 there were approximately 438,000 people with feeding tubes in the US, and 60% of them are adults.

I have gastroparesis, which directly translates to paralysis of the stomach. My stomach doesn’t grind food the way it’s supposed to, and my pylorus sphincter at the bottom of my stomach doesn’t open well to pass food and liquids through. While gastroparesis has a range of impact and severity, I have a very severe case, and I am no longer able to eat or drink by mouth for nutrition. I am 100% tube fed. I went into starvation ketoacidosis prior to my placement.

Tube feeding, or enteral nutrition, has several different forms. There are nasal tubes and there are surgical tubes. Nasal tubes can go into your stomach (NG), duodenum (ND), or your jejunum (NJ) and are typically for short-term use. They can be used for acute illness and malnutrition, or to trial tolerance of enteral feeding. Surgical tubes go into your stomach (gastrostomy/G) jejunum (jejunostomy/J) or both (gastrojejunostomy/GJ) and they’re for chronic conditions and/or long-term use. I have a GJ tube and it looks like this:

I have a GJ tube so that I can bypass my paralyzed stomach and feed directly into my intestine. I can also drain stomach contents from the gastric port, which allows me to drink liquids and drain them out before they make me sick. Different people will have different tubes depending on their diagnosis and prognosis! Some people have one form of tube, and others have separate G and J tubes.

There are over 400 conditions that can require tube feeding. Some of those include

Gastroparesis

Intestinal dysmotility

Cancer

Intestinal failure

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Crohn’s disease and Ulcerative Colitis)

Cerebral Palsy

Congenital/chromosomal conditions

Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome

Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome

Several trisomy conditions

Prematurity

Other conditions not mentioned in the link above include

Hyperemesis gravadarium, severe nausea/vomiting during pregnancy to the point of significant weight loss and electrolyte imbalance

Acute trauma requiring bowel rest

Eating disorders

I’ve seen a lot of fanfic writers ask for tips to write Deaf characters so I thought I would write some out to help make authentic.  Also feel free to send ask for any questions! 

Deaf characters exist on a spectrum- it’s rare to have no residual hearing.

Deaf characters can’t magically hear perfect with assistive devices. Hearing aids are in the name- an aid.  They make it easier to pick up some sounds.  They are also expensive and a lot of insurance won’t cover.  

ASL- American Sign Language.  Deaf characters raised by hearing family might not have access to ASL until later in life.  Percentage of Deaf kids educated in fluent ASL is low.

ASL has own grammar and syntax totally different from English,  But! It is okay to write ASL in spoken English grammar, especially if you don’t know ASL.  We know what you mean!

Avoid Deaf and hearing characters signing and speaking long sentences at the same time. It’s called Sim-Com and ASL users who can do it are rare because sentence structures are totally different.  It would be like trying to write a sentence in English at the exact same time (word for word) as someone speaks it in French.   Sim-com usually used with SEE and still hard for fluent ASL Deaf to follow.

Deaf characters can be dizzy!  Many many Deaf have tinnitus and vertigo.  Comes with many hearing loss conditions.  Vertigo can also be triggered by flashing lights, heavy bass sounds.  (very annoying in the car when driving and someone has loud, shake your car bass)

Deaf characters can also can have balance problems from inner ear issues.

Deaf characters can enjoy music!  Many ways to enjoy music besides hearing all of it.

Lip reading is hard.  You need to start at the beginning of the conversation, need constant context, and when you lose the thread it’s hard to get back.  Many many words look the same on lips that sound totally different.  Avoid magic lipreading in characters.

Character doesn’t need to have a Deaf accent.

Deaf character doesn’t need to talk loud.  Many Deaf talk very soft because they feel vibrations before the vibrations make audible noise.

Deaf characters can be very fluent in written English and great writers but still have very poor sentence skills when being casual in texting or conversation (like me!)  Hard to go from ASL to English brain, and makes you tired.

Deaf characters can use ASL Slang!  ASL has colloquial signs that have no direct English translation but we use all the time (peh peh, train go sorry, champ, etc etc)   Here are some examples!

This is just for fun. I put some prompts in Google related to blindness, so I thought I might try to answer some on here.

1. How do blind people read?

Braille books or Braille displays, screen-readers, audiobooks, and large print and/or zoom technology. Many people use combinations of these.

2. How do blind people dream?

This one depends. If you can see a little or remember seeing, you may remember dreaming in pictures when you wake up. If not, you just dream in sounds, smells, special awareness, narrative, etc. You don’t need all senses to dream. You can still imagine things happening.

3. How do blind people see?

Not very well, thank you.

Really, though, while some people are totally blind (sources say roughly 10-20% depending on the source and time the information was collected), not all blind people are. Some blind people can only see light, some can see things only up close, some can only see in one eye, etc. The range can be anywhere from totally blind to low vision. Some people can lose more vision throughout their lives. Some people’s vision changes based on light, health, amount of sleep, eye strain, migraines, time of day, light sensitivity, etc. There are all kinds of eye conditions that I can’t get into them here. But this is the general range that is helpful to keep in mind.

4. How do blind people use phones?

This is usually favored by people who fancy themselves Internet sleuths. For example, “If you’re blind, how do you use your phone?” etc. Sometimes people are just curious. I’m glad people are searching for this answer, though.

People often ask if “Braille comes up from the phone screen” and this is not entirely accurate. What these people are thinking of is a Braille display, which you can read about here.

Screen readers can also read the text on the screen out loud.

I prefer to specify when talking about Braille displays rather than putting them in with screen-readers because people don’t often know about Braille displays either.

Some people also use screenshots to zoom in on text. Not all apps support large print text. On some apps, I can zoom in text and in others I cannot.

Blind people use phones in many ways. Whatever works for them.

5. How do blind people drive?

Usually, we don’t even if we have some residual vision. Some people who are losing vision might still be able to drive, but I don’t know the limitations on that.

6. How do blind people watch movies?

Blind people watch movies with audio descriptions in theaters or on streaming platforms. Or they may ask a friend to give descriptions (I usually provide descriptions for my friends). Movies and shows you can buy usually don’t come with descriptions.

7. How do blind people write?

I have a short introductory post about writing here. Some people with low vision can also write in print. Some totally blind folks can write things like their names in print even if they have been totally blind all their lives. It depends on the person, their vision, what tools and skills they have, etc.

8. Do blind people see black?

No. For totally blind people, it isn’t really a blackness so much as simply nothing. Edit: Not all blind people are totally blind, just to add clarity to this question. Some blind people can see. But I know this question was originally referring to totally blind people and so I focused on that in my answer.

9. Do blind people blink?

Yes.

10. Do blind people cry?

Yes.

11. Do blind people have white eyes?

This is the result of cataracts which you can read about here and here. This sites describes it as frosty glass or cloudiness. Not all blind people have these and in fact most people do not. Many people have eyes that are not distinguishable from non-blind eyes in color.

Another cause of whiteish eyes is corneal dystrophy. Here is another link about corneal opacity, which is caused by “injury, corneal abrasion, or swelling of the eye.” The website also states: “Corneal opacity occurs when the cornea becomes scarred. This stops light from passing through the cornea to the retina and may cause the cornea to appear white or clouded over.”

12. Do blind people have better hearing?

No, a blind person’s hearing does not increase. They just rely on hearing more and so may perceive sounds more easily and may notice more sounds because they pay more attention.

13. Can blind people see light?

Blind Characters Falling in Love + Prompts

The post you are referring to is actually by @mimzy-writing-online and you can find it here.

A few prompt ideas I have include:

-consider the trust and automatic habits that might build up between the blind character and the wife. For example, describing things the blind person would be interested in without always needing to be asked, automatically offering to guide, automatically orienting the character to their environment, and knowing when to offer help. These are things that build up over time and with trust.

-Also, consider how wonderful a consistent lack of discomfort with blindness would be. In the beginning of a relationship, the person who isn’t blind may feel uncertain or unsure how to fit into their partner’s life when it comes to their blindness. An example of this would be questioning whether or not a description of a bench to their left would be welcome. A wife who has been with her husband for years may simply verbalize where the bench is, being familiar with the husband’s habit of stopping to enjoy the sounds of birds.

-Specific situational prompts ideas include: the wife describing TV shows that don’t come with audio descriptions as they watch them, the couple learning Braille together and leaving Braille notes for each other, the couple cooking together and using accessible tools, the wife placing markers on the shampoo and conditioner, the couple knowing not to move each other’s items, inside blind jokes, and knowing how best to give directions in reference to that restaurant they like or using left and right because the blind character never understood cardinal directions.

-Alerting the blind character to steps or curbs or changes in environment.

-A big one is an accessible house. If the couple got a home together, they would consider accessibility. This might include high contrast, extra lighting, textures, and no touch screen appliances as these can be harder for blind people to use. There is a comfort in having someone else consider your accessibility needs.

-Other ideas include accessible and comfortable dates. While this might depend on the specific person and where they live, a few ideas include:

-getting audio descriptions at cinemas or even for plays if offered

-reading the menu out to him and knowing what foods to mention or skip over because she knows his taste

-getting Braille menus

-making tactile art together using dot paint or puffy paint

-depending on vision and comfort level, they might avoid dimly lit or overly loud areas, but not all blind people will do this. Conversely, he might also only be comfortable going to such places with her.

-playing accessible games together

Hello,

I actually work with visual arts and draw a lot of characters with facial differences (FD) on the daily! I hope I'll be able to help.

I'm not aware of any resources for visual mediums specifically (especially if you mean something like a "how to draw [specific facial difference]" type thing. Despite comic book authors drawing facial differences for ages for their villains there really aren't any good tutorials that I know of) so I tried to combine a few points that maybe will be helpful to you;

Reference photos of real people with the condition your character has. Try to research the symptoms of it as well (especially if it's a syndrome) - maybe it will turn out that the symptoms your character has require a trach tube or a nasal cannula, or something completely different.

Don't overexaggerate their facial difference for the shock value...

...or downplay it for the cuteness/attractiveness factor.

What I mean is - whether your character is the adorable love interest or the morally gray criminal, their facial difference shouldn't reflect that. Don't make some kind of moral connection of "major craniofacial condition = bad person, teeny tiny scar = good person".

Don't draw your character with FD constantly covered in blood and running around with an axe. The portrayal of people with FD as violent/murderous is not only offensive and not helping the public perception of facial differences, but is also just incredibly boring and overdone. 99% of "representation" looks like this and has been looking like this since horror movies have been invented. I'm 100% serious when I say that drawing a person with a facial difference just having friends is a thousand times more groundbreaking than all these horror tropes combined.

Don't use the ancient "facial difference = joke" design trope. Authors love using strabismus, drooling, lacking teeth or skull conditions as shortcuts for "humor". These conditions are all real and real people have them (including me, hi). They don't exist as some kind of signifier that a character is "stupid" or "crazy". It is extremely prevalent and hard to unsee once you start noticing.

A lot of people in the FD community just want characters with FD that are normal, everyday people doing normal everyday things - having a family, hanging out with a friend, petting their cat... Not murderers hunting ablebodied teenagers through the woods. Maybe one of your character's family members has a burn scar without having it be A Big Deal, maybe one of their classmates has Goldenhar Syndrome that everyone just accepts, maybe the background character at the local supermarket has neurofibromas on their face... lots of options that don't involve tired villain tropes. With the advantage of a visual medium, you don't even need to explicitly mention that they have a facial difference - just draw it and let it be there. No dramatic reveal necessary.

Have a range of facial differences represented, even if it's just the side characters. Most people only ever draw scars, usually small and not affecting anything other than the skin, which isn't bad - a lot of people do have scars like that, and they deserve to be represented. However, there are literal thousands of different things that also count as a facial differences. Some of them like strabismus, Down Syndrome, tumors, or nerve palsies (most notably Bell's palsy, but there's 12 of them in total) are quite common, while conditions like Treacher Collins Syndrome, Pfeiffer Syndrome or Anophthalmia are usually considered rare - but a lot of people still have them. Having two or more characters with some kind of facial difference definitely isn't out of place.

This is more of a technical thing, but don't ever tag a visual medium as "gore" or "body horror" because someone has a facial difference. It's ableist and incredibly dehumanizing.

This page regarding facial differences in media (not only visual) is also worth giving a read. I hope any of this was useful. If you have more specific questions, feel free to send another ask

(Written by a cane user)

A few months ago, I wrote a small guide on good disabled characters and why they were good that gathered quite the attention, and I thought that doing another more specific guide this time would be interesting for writers or just people that are curious ! This guide will include general informations, some things to do, some things to avoid and some ideas that might revolve cane users's lives.

Things to know about cane users

Cane users are pretty diverse, and putting us in little boxes usually isn't the best idea if you want to make a character that has substance and isn't just "the disabled one". Here some infos about cane users that might be helpful knowledge !

Canes don't have ages. Most cane users in media are portrayed to be old, but truly, anyone can have the need to wield a cane ! I've been using mine ever since I was 17.

Can users can have a large variety of problems for their canes. Some canes are used to avoid pain from effort. Some canes are used for balance purposes. Some canes are to make walking less exhausting (works the same as walking sticks !) And sometimes, it's multiple problems at once.

Not everyone needs their cane 24/7. Some always need it, some can make small efforts without it but overall often need it, and some people, like me, can spend quite a lot of time without it. I almost never use my cane in my house, and mostly take it outside !

People with canes can run. We're not necessarily slow, I'm even faster than a lot of my friends.

Not using a cane can come with consequences, but not always. Some people might be able to walk without a cane but then suffer horrible consequences, but for others, canes are just a commodity for specific occasions.

Canes don't have to be looked down upon. Look at some characters with canes that look cool as hell ! Arsène Lupin, Roguefort Cookie, Brook ... Their canes serve their style !

We can be pretty healthy. Some people can have canes just because they were born with a bent leg and that's it. Our cane doesn't define our health status.

Canes aren't a curse. Think of them as something positive. It's a tool to make our lives better. You don't see someone sitting on a chair and think "awh, it's sad that they need a chair". It's more something like "hey it's cool that this chair is here so they can sit down"

Things to do

Make them use their cane. And when I mean use, I mean that canes are just funky long sticks usually made out of metal. Have fun with it ! Let them use it as a weapon ! Trust me, one hit in the knees with a cane and you're DOWN. Use it to reach stuff that's too high for everyone ! Have fun. Be creative.

Let them decorate their cane. It's an extension of their body ! You usually put on clothes that you like, don't you ? It's the same for a cane. If they like cutesy stuff, let them paint in it pastel colors ! If they like a more flashy style, add some stickers on it ! If they're a fancy person, give them a beautiful crafted cane with jewels on it !

You can make them a little shy or uneasy about their cane. Some people don't feel worthy of confident enough to wield one. It's not rare to see people think they're "not disabled enough to do so"

But on the other hand, you can do the complete opposite !! Make them proud of that cane ! Make them act like they're feeling pretty and more confident with it ! One thing i like to think about with my own cane is that I look like a cool gentleman. That boosted my confidence immensely.

Things to avoid

Don't make it their whole world. And by that, I do not mean that their cane shouldn't be a defining trait of their personality. Think of Toph from ATLA. She is blind, and you usually can't think of her character without describing her as blind. However, that isn't her entire personality trait. Make cane users have a goal in life, friends who enjoy them for who they are and not just pity them, have fun ... Don't just make them the disabled one.

Don't try to make the character's life just a plain disaster unless it's the focus of your story and you really know what you're talking about. Having a character who's always in pain, who feels bad about relying on their cane and/or who's angry at the entire world for being disabled is a REALLY tricky subject to use if you don't want them to be either a mass of unhappiness and angst for no good reason or some inspirational porn of the character who inside is deeply tortured but outside keeps up a facade because they shouldn't cry to avoid making others uneasy.

Do not, and I repeat, do NOT try to heal them, especially in a magical way. Bad idea. A lot of disabled people's goal isn't to be healed. It's to live a normal life. Making it so the ultimate goal for them is to be healed makes it as if they were worthless as long as they were disabled. Making their situation better physically or mentally is one thing. Curing them completely is really bad. "But some disabled folks want to be cured !" True, true. But if you are able bodied, I'm not sure if you can have the right mind to understand all of the complex details about this situation that leads to someone's life choices and the end result may look like you think the only thing that can make disabled people happy is being freed from their condition. I think it's best to just avoid it altogether. If you need a more nuanced idea, try to give them a solution that still has a few downs ! For exemple, a prosthetic that feels like a real arm, acts like a real arm and basically replaces it perfectly is a full cure. But a prosthetic that takes time to adjust to, needs repairs sometimes and doesn't look 100% like an arm can be a better narrative choice

Smaller thing, but don't make the handle uneasy to wield if you draw the character design. You can decorate most of the cane, but if you have chunky spiky decorations on the place you're supposed to clench your hand over, you're gonna hurt yourself. I've seen quite a lot of jewel handles or sculpted metal handles and usually their not good. If it's detailed metal, your hand will end up cramped in little parts and it can hurt. If it's a jewel, it's so easy for it to slip out of your hand it's unpractical.

List of tropes/ideas of scenes/details about canes to help you write new situations !

If you walk with a cane during winter, you can't put your hand in your jacket to get warm and there's a high chance your hand will get freezing. So after a long walk, you get an excuse for another character to hold their hand and warm them up.

If the handle is metallic, you get the opposite problem during summer. You can burn yourself so easy ! Easy accident if you want someone to help and get closer to the disabled person without it necessarily involving their disability.

Canes are SUPER useful when you're walking upon heights. They make things really easy, just like hiking poles on mountains ! I live on volcanoes and whenever we clim on a harsh slope, I'm always the first to get up there. Good moment for your character to get a boost of confidence if they get all the way up somewhere before their friends !

The first time using your cane feels magical. If you have chronic pains, it makes you feel like your pain disapear. If you can't walk right, it feels like everything is suddenly alright. The moment where a character chooses to wield a cane can be huge for character development. It's a moment of fear because of the impact a cane has on their appearance, but also a moment of confidence and relief.

Canes fall. All the time. And after a while, it becomes fucking comical. Trust me, putting a cane against the wall, seeing it fall and doing it three times again in a row while it doesn't want to stay up makes you embarrassed but also makes you want to laugh because of how stupid it looks.

When you get a cane, you stop being invisible. When you walk outside, generally speaking, people don't look at you. They don't care about you. But when you get a cane, people start to stare at you for no other reasons that you have a cane. Half of them are just curious, especially if you're young. The other half has a very specific look. The "oh, you poor thing" look. Which is, trust me, particularly awful to get, especially when you're just existing and doing nothing special. How does your character react to this ? How do they feel about it ?

I believe that is all I had in mind. I may add some more details in the future if I get other ideas, but this should already be a good start. I would be thrilled to answer questions if you have some, either in my askbox or through DMs.

I will tag this post with characters holding canes that aren't necessarily considered cane users but that some people may be interested in writing as such. Feel free to tell me if you'd like to see tags being added !

Canes

Canes are for when you need to take a little bit of weight off of one side of your body, need a little help with balance, or need a little extra stability when you walk. It's an easy mobility aid to find and get, and it's pretty easy to figure out how to use. Have the cane sized so the handle sits at wrist level, then hold it on the opposite side to the one that hurts. Match your cane strikes to the steps on the hurt side. It will hurt your arm, elbow, and shoulder sometimes, but having a properly sized cane will help.

Rollators

Rollators are kind of the "next step up" in support. They come with more restrictions, you get limited to ramps and stuff, but they're also the least restrictive wheeled mobility aid because they're light and easy to pick up and toss around. They also have a seat a lot of times and a basket so you don't need to carry stuff. They're for when you need a place to rest, something to lean on when you walk, better balance assistance than a cane, and less weight bearing than a cane. I also found that it helped me with fatigue quite a bit. There's two main kinds, euro style like the first, and regular like the second. There are other fancier ones but I'm covering the basics here.

Rollators are my favorite mobility aid and I've used everything from canes to a fancy high grade power chair. They're just the perfect balance of help and freedom. They provide so much support for how far they go.

Crutches

Arm crutches are pretty neat! They're a lot more ergonomic than a cane. In fact, some people use a single arm crutch as a cane. They distribute the weight a little better, so it's not all on your wrists, and they support you better than a rollator can. The major cons I found are that they take two hands to use so you can't carry much and I had a really hard time trying to learn to walk with them. A lot of people who use forearm crutches have other mobility aids and use the forearm crutches when they want to or need to walk.

Manual Wheelchairs

These are for when walking becomes more difficult than pushing a wheelchair. There's no weight being put on your legs and feet and depending on your needs, you can get really specific with your adaptations if you have a custom wheelchair verses a standard wheelchair. My first custom chair looked like a monster truck because i took in the woods and gravel, my second custom chair after I got sicker has a head rest, a backrest that holds me up, and a little electric box that I can attach that helps me push. The difference between getting a standard and custom wheelchair is dependent on how much money the user has, what kind of needs they have, and what kind of medical access they have. (One is not more "real" than the other.) I highly recommend getting a cushion for under your butt if you have a standard chair without a cushion, I used a standard full time for 6 months and a cushion made a huge difference.

Mobility scooters

Mobility scooters are for people who can't walk long distances, but can still walk with the help of a cane or unassisted. If you can walk around your house, but not really much else, a mobility scooter might be the aid for you! There's a lot of different styles and battery life lengths and handling abilities so try a few different scooters out if you can.

Powerchairs

Powerchairs come in a couple different types or "groups" depending on your needs. Group 1 is the kind of chair you're probably most familiar with. It's basically for someone who needs a powerchair to get around their house, the doctors, office, and grocery store. You can't do any custom seat cushions or anything, but it's for people who don't need it. Think of like... someone who can walk pretty okay still, it just hurts to walk or they're off balance or a little weak feeling. A lot of times more elderly people will use these, if you're more active look into group 2

Group two chairs are little more durable, a little more stable, sometimes you can switch the captains seats out for custom seating... They're what a full time powerchair user would use if they don't need specialty functions like tilt or recline. They also often have 6 wheels rather than 4 like the group 1 chairs have.

Group 3 powerchairs are reserved for specific diagnoses like muscular dystrophy, ALS, and other severe neurological and neuromuscular illnesses. These are also called "rehab" chairs because they're for making sure severely disabled people have quality of life. The tilt function is for pressure relief, though you can also get things like elevation so you can raise and lower your chair, and some of them can recline flat. There are other avenues of moving grade 3 power chairs beyond the joystick as well in case someone can't use their hands or doesn't have them. (Head controls, torso controls, and straw controls called sip and puff are alternatives.) They can go on a little worse terrain than group 1 and two chairs and go a little farther, but if they get stuck they weigh 350 lbs and it's awful.

There's a few other types of mobility aid that I don't know enough about, like ankle foot orthotics and gait trainers, but these are the basic "mobility aid" most people will come across.

NB: This is a non-exhaustive list. I have little to no personal experience using most of these aids. I am not an ATP/OT/CPO/etc. I am, to borrow OP's words, just a clown with a blog. I have had a very hard time finding something that works well for me and have come across a lot of atypical aids in my search. I won't even touch on prosthetics because I just don't know enough. Big apologies for all the brand mentions; some of these are pretty niche and I haven't been able to find generic names. Also my insurance covers literally no DME (durable medical equipment, anything from canes and wrist braces to vents and IV poles) so do Not come for me.

Also? This is not the time to be bitter about aids that won't work for you personally. If these would be more cumbersome than helpful for you, you're not the target audience! Try to celebrate that some people find even the "weirdest" aids immensely helpful, alright?

This is under a cut because it's the longest post I've ever made in my life.

More info on white canes!!

There are 4 main styles.

The long mobility cane, which is swept in front of the user (using either 2 point touch or constant contact) to detect obstacles. This type of cane is usually the length from the floor to sternum/armpit. Some may prefer longer; for example growing children, fast walkers, and people who need more reaction time.

Guide canes are the next size down. These are roughly floor to waist height. They aren't swept in front of the user like a long cane. Instead, it is held diagonally across the body. Its sort of like an extension of protective technique. They can also be used to check the depth of curbs and such.

Symbol canes, as mentioned above, are mainly to identify the user as a person with a vision impairment.

(I have seen some European guide dog schools (particularly Dutch and Swiss) have handlers use both a symbol/guide cane and a guide dog.)

Support canes are the same as walking sticks mentioned above, except painted white or white and red. These are both to aid the balance of a user, and to signal they have a vision impairment.

There are also Adaptive Mobility Devices, or AMDs. These are used by people who can't use a cane for whatever reason, and sometimes used by young children as a pre cane device.

Tech that can regenerate my old meat legs.

Robot legs that work just like meat legs and are functionally just meat legs but robot

Literally anything that would mean I don't have to use a wheelchair.

If I do need to use a wheelchair, make it fly or able to "walk me" upstairs

What I actually want:

Prosthetic covers that can change colour because I'm too indecisive to pick one colour/pattern for the next 5+ years.

A leg that I can turn off (seriously, my above knee prosthetic has no off switch... just... why?)

A leg that won't have to get refitted every time I gain or loose weight.

A wheelchair that I can teleport to me and legs I can teleport away when I'm too tierd to keep walking. And vice versa.

In that same vein, legs I can teleport on instead of having to fiddle around with the sockets for half an hour.

Prosthetic feet that don't require me to wear shoes. F*ck shoes.

Actually accessible architecture, which means when I do want to use my wheelchair, it's not an issue.

Prosthetic legs with dragon-claw feet instead of boring human feet or just digigrade prosthetics that are just as functional as normal human-shaped ones.

A manual wheelchair with the option to lift my seat up like those scissor-lift things so I'm not eye-level with everyone's butt on public transport/so I can reach the top shelf by myself.

Temperature controlled seat

Android that brings my chair to me and is such a bro

Hovers smoothly over bumpy road and stairs and makes a woooowooooowoooo sound when it does

Chair wheels that light up when spun and charge my chair so it can be driven via joystick after a while of manual use

Alerts on my phone if the chair is being moved without my knowledge

Integrated GPS and the ability to dial emergency numbers

For wheelchairs:

An auto-balancer for doing wheelies when I go up/down a big bump. (hypothetically you could even go down stairs if you had enough balance like that, but ay yikes I would be Nervous, haha)

BETTER POWER ASSISTS OH MY LORD. the current ones I know of are super heavy and have a bunch of tech issues

A seat you can adjust yourself without having to get out of the chair, for if you're doing something more active versus just chilling/relaxing (the best body positioning for really active movement vs just sitting is different, at least in my experience)

Literally, some sort of alarm system that discourages people from trying to push me without asking, or like... push handles that only manifest when I want them to.

Variable shock absorption - if I could make it super shock-absorby over rough terrain, but then "harden" it somehow on smoother terrain, that would be really efficient!

How about wheel gearing? Like on a bicycle. Add in a push-motion-reverser thingy (look up Rowheels to see what I'm talking about) and I'd love that.

For crutches/canes:

SHOCK ABSORPTION. Crutches and canes are hard!!

On that note, multi-terrain tips!!

A magnetic crutch cuff that can detach from the crutch if needed so I can reach across a counter and not accidentally kneecap someone with the stick.

Better collapsibility.

Have fun with the scifi aspect. Have your character tinker and add a load of gadgetry into their aids (and that goes for wheelchairs and crutches/canes). I don't know. Stick a grappling hook function into it. Have them be usable as defense weaponry. Have a cloaking device built into the crutches/canes themselves for stealth. I dunno. Use your imagination!!

If you want your setting to be accommodating, change the environment more than the person.

i.e.: On a worldbuilding level, if you want to portray a society that keeps disabled people in mind, then that needs to be reflected more broadly, even without your disabled character on screen. Because this means that your society was considering disabled people as part of itself when it was figuring out what's necessary.

If your computer takes voice commands, it should also have an optional keyboard in case someone can't speak.

If your magic school has multiple floors, it should have a teleporting rune circle for those that can't take the ever-changing stairs.

Whenever you have a feature you're adding, ask yourself—"If my character couldn't use this, what would they do instead?" And if the answer is "they'd have to wait until they could" or "they need someone else to use it for them," then your setting isn't accommodating. An accommodating setting always has an actionable answer to that question.

And as a bonus, if you follow through with it, oftentimes you'll end up with a more interesting world and story overall. Spells most people can speak can be written in ancient elven instead? That means you can have a character sneak a spell into a magic-banned city by writing it on their hair ribbon, and that it's possible that a book might be a self-generating spell on its own. Your spaceship has textured lines on the walls to let blind people navigate without guidance? Not only can you make it look artistic (different colored paints, glowing patterns), but now your engineer can make it to the warp core when the power's out and oxygen's finite.

Don't limit yourself just to what's needed in the moment. Figure out interesting alternatives to your setting's features, and your world will automatically feel more alive.

Cheat Code 1: How to avoid eliminating disability in your setting

Hello!

I'm not a burn survivor myself, so I'll mostly talk about facial differences/visible disability in general and link some stuff made by burn survivors.

First thing, I think it's important to remember that being a burn survivor changes a lot of things - not only appearance. Very important part is the psychological one, but I'm not a burn survivor so I will just let the resources linked below speak.

From the physical aspect, burns can also come with: chronic pain, limited range of motion due to scarring, tightened skin, problems with regulating temperature, itching, skin irritation, and even different nutritional needs during the initial healing process.

There is also specific everyday care associated with burns - something you basically never see in fiction. That could be things like occupational therapy, physical therapy, skincare (like heavy moisturizing and scar massaging), wearing sunblock, wearing splints, or stretching to prevent contractures or tightness.

There are also different types of burns and they (unsurprisingly) differ from each other - for example, electrical burns have a much higher rate of amputation than any other type. Chemical burns can cause eye issues. A burn caused by a fire in a closed space might result in a brain injury due to the lack of oxygen. A much larger portion of people than you (probably) assume have survived burn injuries as small children, and if they were young enough they might not even remember the event at all, unlike older people who might be very affected by the trauma.

Experiences of a person with 80% body surface burns, a person with quadruple amputations from an electrical burn, a person with a facial burn, and a person burnt very recently will be different from someone who has a 5% body surface 2nd degree burn in a spot that’s usually hidden, who has lived with their burn for a decade - despite them all being burn survivors.

When it comes to more thorough research, I recommend going through Phoenix Society’s and Face Equality International’s websites to learn more about both real burn survivor’s perspectives, and face equality as a social justice topic. I think the 3rd link (see below) puts it very well when talking about burn survivors being represented in fiction:

“Most likely, these characters were not created by someone with lived experience. The result is an increasingly garbled game of telephone [...] To avoid contributing to this false narrative, embrace research as part of the process. Explore interviews, first-person accounts, and articles from reliable sources.”

I personally think that the links below should be mandatory reading for writing not only burn survivors, not only people with facial differences, but visibly disabled people in general - because the treatment we get is often so similar the advice still holds up just fine. And if you don't plan on writing any of these, you should still read them to see how prevalent of a problem ableism in media is.

Lise Deguire's Hey Hollywood - scars don't make you evil.

Face Equality International's International Media Standard on Disfigurement.

Niki Averton's Tips for Writing about Burn Survivors.

The main sentiment that you will read from basically any first-hand source is that if you're writing the burn survivor to be either:

evil (just throw the whole character away)

a guy with the "World's Saddest Most Tragic Backstory Ever and It's So Sad and Tragic" (because he revealed he has a scar)

a helpless victim who is there to be The Helpless Victim

...then you're already doing it wrong and need to make some major changes.

From our blog's reblogs and posts, you might want to look at tips for writing a visibly different/disabled character and tips on drawing people with facial differences. Neither are specific to burn survivors but cover the topic of visible disability and facial differences.

Now for tips on drawing burn survivors (that weren't included in the last link);

Reference real people. 99.9% drawings of burn survivors seem to go through the same "increasingly garbled game of telephone" that Niki Averton mentions with how burn survivors are written, in that the newer the drawing, the less in common it has with how real people with burns look like because people reference from each other and none of them ever think to actually check if their depiction is accurate. If you just google "burn survivor" you will very quickly notice that burn survivors don't have that damn red overlay layer put on top of their skin. It just doesn't look like that, and basic research (aka Google Images search) will tell you that - and still, people color a hand with bright red and think that's how it looks like (it doesn't).

In the same vein, maybe don't just draw an able-bodied person and then put some scarring on top (or maybe do exactly that. No burn scar and no burn survivor is the same, and there are people that fit what I just described... but hear me out for a second). Think about how scars interact with their features - do they have both of their ears? Do they still have all of their hair? Do they only have parts of their eyebrow? Do they have all of their fingers? Can they move the same as before their burn, or are their scars limiting their joints? How did their body react to the post-burn hypermetabolism? Lots to think about. Take into account what type and thickness of burns your character has.

Ditch the mask trope. Just ditch it. There's no need to cover your character's scar from the world unless you as the author think it requires to be hidden, is too scary to show, or other ableist trope that seems to always come up with drawings of visibly disabled people, especially burn survivors. The one exception I will mention is a transparent face orthosis/mask (TFO) that facial burn survivors might wear while awaiting a skin graft early after their injury. But as the name suggests, it's transparent and doesn't work for the "scary facial difference, better cover it up and only reveal it in some hyper dramatic scene!" trope because you can see right through it. (I will also mention that TFOs are a very modern thing. Your medieval burn survivor wouldn't be wearing one).

No "body horror", no "gore" tags or trigger warnings or whatever. That's a human being. If you feel the need to warn your followers before they see a disabled person existing, you're better off not drawing them.

Some last notes;

Throughout this ask I used the term "burn survivor" rather than "burn victim" because that is, to my knowledge, the general community preferred phrase. Individual opinions will differ (because no group is a monolith) but "burn survivor" is generally the safest term to use and probably the best if talking about a fictional character.

Similarly, I used "facial difference" rather than "disfigurement". Just as the above, opinions will differ on what is the best to use but I personally, as someone with facial asymmetry and a cranial nerve disorder, heavily prefer the term "facial difference" over "disfigurement". (I am in this case The Individual Opinion Differing because you can notice that in the links above, facial difference and disfigurement are used interchangeably. The general community uses both, some people have specific preferences. I'm some people). When talking about a fictional character, "facial difference", "visible difference" and "disfigurement" are all probably fine. Just stay away from calling a person "deformed".