Web Accessibility vs Life Accessibility

After lack­ing the moti­va­tion to write a post for almost a year, I was finally able to admit that I don’t care about web acces­si­bil­ity as much as I thought I did. If you are look­ing for good, cur­rent infor­ma­tion on web acces­si­bil­ity issues there is a long list of peo­ple who you should fol­low before Curb Cut.

That said, I care very much about dis­abil­ity issues. Curb Cut has been an acces­si­bil­ity blog writ­ten pri­mar­ily for read­ers already inter­ested in acces­si­bil­ity issues. How­ever, depend­ing on your past expe­ri­ence you may or may not give a crap about dis­abil­ity issues.

My inter­est in web acces­si­bil­ity orig­i­nated from my rela­tion­ships with two of my broth­ers who were born with Down syn­drome. Like a good brother should, I wanted to make the web a friend­lier place for them. Well, it turns out that Patrick has no use for the Inter­net. Dallin Paul is a heavy Inter­net user, but thus far has been able to find every America’s Fun­ni­est Home Video Peo­ple Get­ting Hurt Col­lec­tion and Power Ranger video on YouTube with­out any prob­lem. If my goal is really to make the world a bet­ter place for them then it is time to refo­cus my efforts. There is lit­tle I could to for the Inter­net that would make it more use­ful to Patrick or Dallin Paul, but con­sider the following:

• Patrick has worked for over 10 years at a Uni­ver­sity food court. He works hard, is depend­able and well-liked by col­leagues and cus­tomers. Nev­er­the­less, there is very lit­tle chance that he will be offered a full-time posi­tion or any kind of benefits.
• Dallin Paul still has a fear of attend­ing church with my fam­ily because of some very unfor­tu­nate expe­ri­ences he had with Sun­day school teach­ers grow­ing up. When he does attend, he is wel­comed by some, tol­er­ated by oth­ers and ignored by every­one else.

I have spent a num­ber of years as a teacher in spe­cial ed class­rooms, trav­el­ing with Spe­cial Olympics teams and vol­un­teer­ing with var­i­ous dis­abil­ity orga­ni­za­tions. You wouldn’t know any of that from read­ing Curb Cut in the past. My dis­abil­ity expe­ri­ence is the only real value I have to offer and I pur­pose­fully kept it out of my writ­ing on web acces­si­bil­ity. Shame on me.

Here’s to a more authen­tic Curb Cut.