#assistive tech

The little bit of pedal assist kind would probably be very handy for getting around this bike-friendly town and also help me get back in better shape.

(Probably better park the thing inside the house when I'm not using it, though. Even though this ain't Greater London. Thankfully, in some ways.)

The prosthetist initially treated it as a given that I could get a second leg set up for cycling, since that's apparently better with a pin lock socket for fuller knee ROM and some other different components. But, that apparently still needs to be officially approved, when I asked about it again out of curiosity. And then of course there's the fabrication time.

Kiku is crowdfunding again.

Someone found Kiku's instagram post from when Kiku was trying to crowdfund for an ipad pro and donated, and Kiku doesn't feel right not posting to crowdfund again. (Kiku would likely not be doing this if the person who donated had not donated).

Kiku is trying to get an ipad pro 12.9" to use for AAC because Kiku has been having a lot of problems with Kiku's vision recently. Kiku also needs to get a screen protector for the ipad. Kiku has a case and shoulder strap already. Please help if you can! Kiku really needs this ipad because Kiku's vision issues have been making using aac very difficult. If you can't help please share.

The goal is $450 to cover ipad and screen protectors.

Below are Kiku's partner's paypal link and the amazon wishlist with the ipad on it.

Current total:

This Chronic Bodymind: Separate, Isolate, Bolster, and Squeeze with Pregnancy Pillows and Body Pillows

I thought about calling this series “This Old Bodymind” to evoke “This Old House”, but I don’t want to reinforce the notion that you have to be old to be disabled. So, I’m trying on “This Chronic Bodymind”. This first installment of “This Chronic Bodymind” is about an essential part of my coping system: pillows. I don’t know how I endured before assembling my trio of body pillow, pregnancy…

Brennan Carman '20 Demonstrates Web Accessibility For Visually Impaired by Brennan Carman

This video is really helpful in explaining why using Semantic HTML is really important for web accessibility, screen reading and in assisting people that are visually impaired. 

The link to the YouTube Video outside of my blog:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPCkZTwUFMw 

Can we please stop teaching children that there is something shameful about having to wear glasses?

Let’s stop telling kids they have to take them off for pictures so they “look good” or so we can “see their beautiful eyes”

My mother was a photographer and she never once told me to take my glasses off for a picture. I am legally blind without them. But every school picture or picture anyone else ever took of me my glasses have been removed, either because they photographer verbally insisted or ACTUALLY physically removed them from my face and took them out of my reach without my consent. (I’ve had to wear them since I was a baby, so you can imagine the anxiety attack that happens when someone renders me blind and takes my assistive technology out of my reach.)

Why would you make a disabled person remove their assistive tech to satisfy your aesthetic? You know what sort of message that sends? 

“This thing that is a necessity for you is ugly for us.”

I take them off when I take selfies, and you know why? Because with them on the camera’s selfie mode gives the error message that it can’t find a face. I have to take them off to use the face recognition because the coating I have on them to protect my eyes from UV light makes the computer and phone unable to find my face.

I do have contacts lenses I can wear, but they are massively expensive for me, because of what is wrong with my eyes, and I tend to wear them very sparingly, and often I cannot afford more. So, in person, I pretty much always have glasses on. So pictures of me without them don’t really feel like pictures of me.