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I appreciate your response. Can you elaborate on the juxtaposition of being mentally ill. and considering yourself normal? This is not clear to me in your respo

I appreciate your response. Can you elaborate on the juxtaposition of being mentally ill. and considering yourself normal? This is not clear to me in your response. I suffer from mental illness as well (a disability), and I certainly don’t consider myself normal. I’ve overcome my issues, and I’m perfectly happy talking about my experience at/in appropriate times/places. I just acknowledge that the average person within the realm of normal can’t relate to my experience. Coincidentally, I get the most relatable feedback doing inspirational speaking at homeless shelters; there’s nothing about my life today that would indicate they consider me normal in their sphere. I’m all for learning to use the right language when talking to folks with disabilities, and your comment here seems insightful. I’m just not making the connection you’re trying to build.

jnovek 4y ago
I think I’ve chosen language that doesn’t communicate well. It makes sense to me in my head, but the HN crowd doesn’t seem to follow what I mean. :-) Fundamentals: the social model essentially places the onus of accommodating disability on society as a whole rather than the disabled individual. A simple example is the difference between asking a person who cannot walk to climb stairs vs providing a ramp. The stairs represent the typical medical model (the disabled individual must adapt to how society works) and the ramp is the social model (society should adapt to how disabled people work). It’s not so much about being normal as it is about _feeling_ normal. Viewing the world through the lens of the social model allows me to say, “this situation could be better” rather than “I could be better”. This is important became sometime the latter is impossible — there are features of my body that cannot be improved. I’m pragmatic about this, BTW. I don’t think we should rebuild every aspect of society to accommodate the minutia of disability. I think it should be an aspirational value that we hold and act on when we can. Does that help? I can talk about mental health in this context as well, it’s just a lot to put into a single post. :-)
- comfypotato 4y ago
  Ah yes, much better, thank you. It's a ripe area for technological improvements. In the same way the video chat is better than the alternative of asynchronous written communication (not to say I don't love a handwritten letter) tech will mostly be a boon in this area.
  - jnovek 4y ago
    I’m really excited about AI as a boon for accessibility. Example: chronic pain messes with your ability to recall. These days I have more trouble recalling facts than I used to. This makes programming hard, as much as programming is about intuition and problem solving, it also depends on memorizing a lot of facts (what was that built-in function called again…?) I started using Copilot a few months ago and, while I almost always reject Copilot’s suggestions, it’s been amazing for remembering names of things. For me it’s been much better than an IDE (for example) because it presents the things I have trouble remembering with some context code.

jnovek 4y ago

I think I’ve chosen language that doesn’t communicate well. It makes sense to me in my head, but the HN crowd doesn’t seem to follow what I mean. :-) Fundamentals: the social model essentially places the onus of accommodating disability on society as a whole rather than the disabled individual. A simple example is the difference between asking a person who cannot walk to climb stairs vs providing a ramp. The stairs represent the typical medical model (the disabled individual must adapt to how society works) and the ramp is the social model (society should adapt to how disabled people work). It’s not so much about being normal as it is about _feeling_ normal. Viewing the world through the lens of the social model allows me to say, “this situation could be better” rather than “I could be better”. This is important became sometime the latter is impossible — there are features of my body that cannot be improved. I’m pragmatic about this, BTW. I don’t think we should rebuild every aspect of society to accommodate the minutia of disability. I think it should be an aspirational value that we hold and act on when we can. Does that help? I can talk about mental health in this context as well, it’s just a lot to put into a single post. :-)

comfypotato 4y ago
Ah yes, much better, thank you. It's a ripe area for technological improvements. In the same way the video chat is better than the alternative of asynchronous written communication (not to say I don't love a handwritten letter) tech will mostly be a boon in this area.
- jnovek 4y ago
  I’m really excited about AI as a boon for accessibility. Example: chronic pain messes with your ability to recall. These days I have more trouble recalling facts than I used to. This makes programming hard, as much as programming is about intuition and problem solving, it also depends on memorizing a lot of facts (what was that built-in function called again…?) I started using Copilot a few months ago and, while I almost always reject Copilot’s suggestions, it’s been amazing for remembering names of things. For me it’s been much better than an IDE (for example) because it presents the things I have trouble remembering with some context code.