#disability accessibility

"They should also do universal healthcare for domestic animals, and I am not kidding." Tagged it as an accessibility issue and called it a day.

But now I’ve got the energy to expand, so.

Universal healthcare for domestic animals is not a joke I am making. It's not fluff. It is a very real and very serious accessibility, public health, and ethical issue. Here's why:

1. It is an accessibility issue. People who rely on service animals rely on those animals. Their dogs are not hobbies. They are medically necessary, trained aides who allow disabled people to participate in society with dignity. Those animals need regular, high-quality care. Making that care prohibitively expensive puts disabled people in a dangerous, deeply unjust bind. If your infrastructure supports service animals at all, then their well-being must be part of the system too.

2. It’s also a public health issue. Untreated animals can and do spread disease, to other pets, to wildlife, to livestock, and yes, to humans. Parasites, fungal infections, bacterial illnesses, viruses. It's all real. Preventative care and prompt treatment reduce this risk dramatically. The fact that a single infected flock of birds can disrupt an entire poultry supply chain isn't hypothetical. We've seen how fragile and interconnected that system is. $10+ eggs weren't fun for anybody, and that’s just one example.

3. It keeps animals in the homes that already love them. One of the top reasons people rehome animals is not neglect or disliking their animals, it’s poverty. As someone who works professionally with animals, I’ve seen it over and over: people giving up beloved family members because they can’t afford a surgery, or a medication, or even a vet visit to figure out what’s wrong. These animals already have homes, already have people who love them. Universal veterinary healthcare could keep families together.

4. Emergencies happen. You can be financially stable, doing fine, and then one bad month, one injury, one freak diagnosis later you’re looking at a $4,000 surgery or letting your dog die, or worse, live, in pain. No one should have to pick between their financial future and their beloved animal’s life and welfare! Especially when that animal is their family, regardless of species.

5. The money exists. It's just going to bombs. If the US can afford to spend hundreds of billions destabilizing entire countries and destroying countless human and nonhuman lives, it can afford to make sure your dog’s broken leg gets set without bankrupting you. There are better uses of funding than military imperialism, and I think "keep people and their animals alive and safe" is a pretty easy one to start with.

Please stop putting inside jokes and witticisms in your alt text and image IDs. They do not help disabled people at all and confuse us. Alt text is for conveying the details of the image only. It's a necessary aid, not a space to put *wink wink* references in the hope that able bodied people will get it. This includes things like:

example: the image of a horror "deer" type monstrous entity, like the deer from annihilation or hannibal. don't caption it as "not deer" or "is that a deer? is that a ghost? who can say?" it's not funny or poetic, it's just fucking obnoxious for someone with no/low vision.

a fan art of katara from avatar the last airbender, wearing her usual outfit. DON'T CAPTION IT: "Katara in her usual outfit" describe the character and the outfit, even briefly. write: "katara, a dark skinned indigenous girl with dark hair and blue eyes, wearing a blue and white tunic, dark coloured pants and a blue betrothal necklace".

do not use weird fonts, emojis or the like in your caption. they are not easily read and often confused by alt text reader.

If you have thoroughly described the image, go ahead with jokes in context (for example, say, an exaggerated cartoon of Jeremy Allen White, you have described that his eyes are portrayed to be "uncannily blue", now you can make a joke about the blue eyes): but keep in mind, can the disabled person understand it without necessary context, given the way you have presented it? If not, are you using visual aid not for us, but to make inside jokes with non-disabled folk?

We're currently an unemployed student whose disabilities make it difficult to earn much income -> currently, most of our funds go towards medication, appointments, and food

We plan to host a livestream "donathon" in which we'll draw a little doodle for every person who donates during the livestream, but we don't know exactly when that'll be...

Please don't feel pressured to donate if you're not in a place to safely do so! Times are tough, and there's nothing wrong with prioritizing your health and well-being <3

If you can though, our Ko-fi is

If you’re not disabled, but would like to help get more information, it would be highly appreciated if you could re-blog, and if you wanted to tag some disabled friends that would be great, too. Even better actually!

(under the cut: further elaboration on what this would include, some sample questions, and the questionnaire and info sheet)

I've been away from home for over a week. I have next to no expectations put on me here, but I still have my weekly physical therapy and both myself and Town Crier to take care of.

TC eats 3x a day and obviously, I need food too. My grandparents are cooking about one meal a day at a nearly consistent time, so I'm eating at least once a day consistently. At home, I was lucky if I ate a single meal a day.

I (sometimes) help with setting the table, which consists of paperplates, paper napkins, silverware, and glass cups. Since both me and my cousin help with this, I'm usually not doing any heavy lifting at all.

I spend part of the day downstairs and 'randomly' will go upstairs to lay down for awhile. Usually, after my mid day break upstairs, I bring my laptop downstairs and play some games until dinner and end there or resume playing until the end of the night.

No one critiques my daily routine. No one asks me to do more than I can. Everyone appreciates when I help out.

I was having trouble walking and standing yesterday because I did far too much the day prior, but because I spent the entire day resting I was able to contribute to cooking dinner and I cooked the pasta roni (~10 mins of intermittent standing required). I was able to play games and rest afterward without being yelled at for not doing more, and was even thanked for helping cook a portion of the dinner.

I have a funny sad thing to say about this: Somehow by being asked to do nothing, I've found I can do so much more than when I'm asked to do a tiny bit.

The shittiest part of this story, as random small bits put together as it is, is that I am more disabled when I'm asked to be functional, and less disabled when I can go at my own pace or back out if need be. At home I get asked to do things like empty the dishwasher (which is tons of light to heavy objects, Ina short period of time), vacuum (which is alot of heat, standing, walking, arm movement, a eight on my arm, back movement and back bending, navigation, balance, etc), cleaning things like the bathroom (which required detailed work for some parts plus moving all the things needed so they don't get in the way or touch the chemicals). I could go on and on and on but the point will get muddled if I write the entire list and every problem on every "basic chore" because the truth is that I need alot of breaks, a long period of time, and the option to back out of all of these things to be successful at it without seriously hurting myself. If I do too much today, it will affect me for multiple days. If I do too much for an entire week it will affect me for a month or more, etc. I sometimes feel really good like I did on Friday and accidentally over do it and need to be able to back down from most things for a period of time afterwards.

I normally can't make a box of pasta roni AND move anything heavy (like my laptop) on the same day at home because I'm always expected and forced to do so much more. I usually can't make cookies on days like today where I need to spend multiple hours at a time lying down in between short bursts of sitting or activity, but today I could because there's nothing else I have to do so spending potentially all of my energy is okay. Resting afterwards is okay. No one is upset because less than an hour after making cookies I had to lay down and still am. NO ONE said it's not okay. However if I go home cookies are a luxury therefore the logic goes that "if you can bake some cookies, you can do some dishes too". At home I wouldn't be able to make the cookies because it opens up the idea I'm able to do a ton of chores. I'm not okay right now, that's why I'm resting.

I feel like I'm ranting in circles at this point... but honestly I don't get why most people will see me do one "simple" (for them) thing and assume I'm okay to do things even they don't want to do because it takes up alot of energy... I really don't get it. My health sucks, it goes up and down all day long, all week long, and yet people want to pretend I'm making it up if I can do literally a single thing normal people can...

For the month of July (Which is disability pride month!! Happy pride!) I'll be doing a fun little game— super simple, anyone can participate.

I'll post one image, gif, or etc and three descriptions for it. At the end of the post will be a poll, in which you vote for the description you think is the most helpful! When the poll is over, I'll reblog with my thoughts.

The purpose of this game is to help people who don't know much about image descriptions learn more about them and to help people get better at writing them.