Every time I see a ‘modern au’ ft a character that has some sort of limb replacement like a metal arm or w/e and the ‘cool au version’ of it is a sleeve tattoo I literally want to reach through the screen and slap some sense into whoever posted it
They got a prosthetic in canon they gonna get a prosthetic in the au!!!! Because, I know this is a little far-fetched, but people who need prosthetics actually exist!!! In real life?! What a coincidence?!
Also you want cool prosthetics??? They totally exist
Want your character to have a cool prosthetic in the modern day?
steampunk? check
#aesthetic? Floral?
avant garde?
cyberpunk?
there are no excuses for erasing canonical disabilities
Guys, look. They finally made a baby stroller for wheelchair-bound mothers. This is so important.
My wife is a physical therapist. She started tearing up when I showed this to her.
I love seeing ableist norms broken.
Just a quick wave to RemapNI who adapt devices for people with disabilities
Reblogging for the above comment since the (wonderful) stroller in the photos is a proto-type, and unfortunately isn’t going into production. So it’s good to know there’s another company out there providing this kind of adaptive technology!
You’re sitting at a cafe with your friend when suddenly a woman walks in with a toy poodle in her purse. The manager at the counter informs her “I’m sorry, but we do not allow dogs”. She replies with a heavy sigh and a “She’s a service dog. She can come with me”. Not knowing much about service dog law, and worrying about getting sued for asking further questions, he sits this woman down at a booth. There, she promptly unzips her purse and places the dog on the booth seat next to her. When the woman’s food comes out, the little dog begs and she feeds her bits off her plate. This dog is not public access trained, and proceeds to bark at those who walk by. This dog is a nuisance and causes many in the restaurant to complain. The manager cannot do anything but inform the unhappy customers that this is a service dog, so he can’t ask her to leave. In the end, it’s the customers who end up leaving.
Now I walk in with my highly trained service dog pressed against my leg in a perfect heel position, and I’m quickly bombarded by the manager telling me “No dogs! No dogs! We ALL know what happened last time”. Confused, I tell him “This is my medical alert and medical response service dog. Her right to accompany me is protected under federal law.” With a sigh, he seats me at a table far away from others where my dog promptly tucks under my feet, out of sight. When my food arrives my dog is still tucked tightly under the table because she knows she’s not supposed to eat when she’s on duty. She stays there ignoring those who walk past for the remainder of my meal. When we leave, a woman by the door exclaims “Woah, I didn’t know there was a dog here!”
See the difference?
Scenario number two occurs at a local grocery store when a man decides to bring his certified emotional support animal into the store with him. Upon entering he flashes a fancy ID card and certification papers. This dog is not as unruly as the first, but he still forges ahead of his handler, sniffs the food on display, and may seek attention from those who walk past. You find this dog adorable, and when he and his owner walk past you ask to pet him. The owner says yes and explains how all he had to do was go online, register his dog, and a few weeks later they sent him a vest, ID card, and certification papers.
Now I pull into the same grocery store. I’m in a rush to get an ingredient for a dish I’m making so I hurry into the store with my service dog next to me. I’m quickly stopped by a manager who demands to see my service dog’s certification card. Remember, this is NOT required by law, and most real service dog teams don’t have them. After 15 minutes of trying to educate, pulling up the ADA website on my phone, back and forth bickering, and drawing more of a crowd than I want to describe… I’m finally allowed in. I grab my ingredient, stand in line (where my service dog obediently moves between my legs to make space for those around me), and I get bombarded by people asking to pet my dog. I explain that she’s working, she has a very important job to do, and she’s not allowed to be pet while on duty. People walk away grumbling and complaining about how rude I was when other handlers like the man they met earlier allow their dog to be pet.
Moral of the story? Fake service dogs create real problems. The ones who are impacted the most are the true service dog handlers who rely on their dogs every day to help mitigate their disability. How would you feel if everywhere you went, you couldn’t make it 10 feet in the door because people were asking you questions? Imagine how much time that would take out of your already hectic day. Businesses lose customers because word gets out that there are unruly dogs in their store, customers become misinformed and start thinking some of these behaviors are okay, some people even start to believe the lies that anyone can just register their dog online and make him a service dog. The result? MORE fake service dogs. MORE real problems.
I will reblob this until I die because it’s one of the few things that constantly genuinely infuriates me
This comic came up in my work recently, as I was interviewing Janice about design and disability. She generously gave me permission to quote her in the comic. All the characters in this comic represent feedback I’ve heard as an accessibility professional, both from disabled and able-bodied folks.
It’s always interesting when I’m giving an accessible design 101 workshop how many people come with ideas about disability as a binary thing – they often think of the most extreme form of a disability as the most common kind (ex – a person with a visual disability literally getting no visual input, a person in a wheelchair not being able to move at all), whereas disabilities manifest in lots of different ways, and fluctuate with time and circumstance. This is why there’s not one perfect accessibility solution, and we need flexibility and accommodation in the way we design our environments and systems!
Anyways, mostly remember that you don’t know for sure what’s going on when you look at someone, and in the face of uncertainty, try to default to kindness. That serves me pretty well.
Anyone who tries to tell you that WWII soldiers didn’t use “fuck” as punctuation is lying.
No, guys Douglas Bader is the best!
In 1931,at age 21 (!!) Bader crashed after attempting some aerobatics too low to the ground, and he had to be rushed to hospital, and the plane crash pulverized the bones in his legs.
Bader woke up in the hospital to find that one of his legs had to be amputated. Several days later, his other leg was removed. Now a double amputee, Bader was told he could never do anything he loved again. Rugby, dancing, flying, let alone walking. Yet that didn’t stop him. When his legs healed enough to allow for prosthetics, he told the men building them that he needed to get them done quickly, as he “would need them to take someone out dancing later that week”. They laughed at him, as no one had ever walked without a cane, or even regained full mobility with TWO prosthetic legs.
Bader, basically saying ‘fuck you i can do what i want’, then went on to never EVER use the cane. A few months after the initial fitting, he took his sweetheart, Thelma Edwards, dancing in his own, specially modified car.
Eventually he got a job doing desk work at Shell, as the RAF gave him as Medical Discharge, due to the loss of both legs (one above and one below the knee). He was unhappy with this, as he LOVED flying, and knew he could fly the planes if there were only some minor modifications. But the RAF didn’t want, or need, less than 100% physically fit men in these interwar years. Yet Bader kept petitioning the RAF commanders to let him fly, and they eventually agreed reluctantly, if Bader could only prove to them he was physically fit.
To the RAF’s surprise, he passed the tests with flying colours, and basically demanded a plane. Then WWII started, and the RAF needed experienced, trained, officers.
During the Battle of Britain, he pioneered some innovative new flying tactics (called the Big Wing), and Bader was given command after command. He was eventually given command of a motley unit of Canadians who had lost most of their numbers and supplies in the Battle of France. He pulled them together into an effective fighting force, and was commonly seen wandering around with his distinctive rolling gait, yelling at the supply distributors, and with a massive cigar in his lips.
Though, while on one of his flights over Nazi-occupied France, he got shot down. The way the plane went down however, if he didn’t have detachable legs he would have been unable to bail and would have died.
Then Bader was captured by Germans and sent to a hospital, where he received a new prosthetic leg from a German official (who found him hilarious, a pilot with no legs!)
Bader escaped the hospital but was recaptured due to his distinctive gait and relative slowness of walking pace (just wait this is a pretty common theme from here on out).
He was then transferred to Stalag Luft III (a POW camp lead by the Luftwaffe (German version of RAF)), where he was involved with, and had so many escape attempts the Germans threatened to take his legs away.
After a final, most nearly successful escape, Bader was transferred to the Colditz Castle, six hundred and fifty kilometers from non-Nazi occupied land. With walls two meters thick, and which sat on a cliff seventy-five meters above the River Mulde, this castle was escape-proof.
For officers deemed an escape risk, Like Bader, this castle was the last stop. It held the worst of the escape prone POWs. Several other POWs in the castle had ridiculous plans to escape, ranging from paragliding, to using contortion and gymnastics. Yet Bader, with his instantly recognizable gait and lack of legs, would only be a hindrance at best, and would ensure they would all be recaptured, and killed as spies at worst. So Bader spent the rest of his time in Colditz, from Aug 1942-April 1945, when the castle was liberated by the US Army.
Bader was given many awards and distinctions, yet after the war he left the RAF (for good this time) and went on to work at Shell again, this time flying around the world in his own plane with his wife.
More than that he became an activist and a hero for disabled people.
Before, if someone had lost both of their legs, they would have been told, like Bader, that they would have no options but to walk with a cane, or be wheelchair bound, and live a drastically limited life to what they lived before.
After Bader, when kids asked if they could ever walk again, their nurses and doctors would point at Bader and say “Well, if he can, there is no reason why you cannot”.
He was eventually knighted, not for his leadership in war, or his medals, but due to his massive work in propelling disabled activism and repelling the stigmas around the ‘limitations’ of disabled people.
(There is a great biography of his life by Paul Brickhill, called Reach for the Sky, and he is pretty great. I did a book report on it in grade 11 and it is very, very interesting, if you are interested at all in WWII, or stuff like that!)
TL;DR – Man looses both legs in a plane accident at 21, told he could never walk again. Through sheer stubbornness and ‘Fuck You.’ energy, he becomes a pilot and the squadron leader/group leader of many different units in WWII, before becoming POW in the most inescapable POW camp–due to proclivity to escape–until the end of the War. 1976, was knighted for his work on behalf of disabled people, and being a disabled activist.
L.J.'s Obsessions 