“I’d be even sooner if I used to be typing in Braille,” Caitlin stated.
“Present-off,” I stated.
Caitlin was a champion Braille competitor. In truth, so was Haben. They knew one another from the Braille Problem, an annual occasion held by the Braille Institute in Southern California.
Sadly, I didn’t develop up studying Braille. I had low imaginative and prescient and will learn magnified print by way of highschool and into faculty and graduate college. I’m working arduous on my Braille nowadays, however I’ve a protracted approach to go.
“I’ve executed this a bunch of instances,” Caitlin stated, making an attempt to make me really feel higher.
“And also you don’t have to fret about spelling or punctuation,” Haben jogged my memory.
“Yeah,” stated Caitlin, “I’m making hella errors!”
“I nonetheless really feel silly,” I stated.
“That’s ableist!” Caitlin stated and typed.
“Is it?” I requested.
“It denigrates folks with mental disabilities,” Haben affirmed.
“Hmm,” I stated, feeling unsure. Silly originates within the Latin verb “stupere”: “to be surprised, amazed, confounded.” So the phrase doesn’t have root connection to incapacity. That stated, the sting of calling somebody “silly” has every little thing to do with disparaging those that are perceived to be much less in a position intellectually.
Though I grew up in San Francisco, a key metropolis within the beginning of the incapacity rights motion — detailed lately within the activist Judy Heumann’s memoir, “Being Heumann,” and within the Netflix documentary “Crip Camp” — I knew nothing then of incapacity as a cultural phenomenon or a supply of satisfaction. I used to be 18 when the People With Disabilities Act of 1990 was handed — a serious achievement that solidified lots of our rights, and raised consciousness of us all through the nation. Haben and Caitlin, although they’ve clearly each skilled ableism, have by no means identified a pre-A.D.A. world. They’ve come of age with Incapacity Delight alongside different satisfaction actions.
