Accessibility Issue at World Fantasy Con

Fantasy writer and Tor blogger Mari Ness uses a wheelchair, which cons often fail to accommodate when they invite her to participate in panels set on a dais or stage. Ness made these criticisms of World Fantasy Con 2015, taking place this weekend in Saratoga:

Quite a few voices were raised in support.

Every event must comply with the requirements of the ADA. However, due to the way WFC 2015 handled its anti-harassment policy a certain amount of internet tinder awaited a spark, and ignited in this pair of tweets by Mary Robinette Kowal:

Kowal went on to make more general comments about the issue in a blog post,  “Thoughts on accessibility at conventions”.

Flash backwards to NerdCon: Stories. This convention was amazing. Truly. I will go again, and again. One of the things that I noticed, right away, was that they had a sign language interpreter. In hindsight, again, I’m realizing that there’s a reason that I saw more than one group of fans conversing in ASL. Not because there are more in Minneapolis, but because this is what fandom looks like when it is accessible.

Most of the conventions I go to are fan run. They start as a big party and then grow. So, it’s understandable why a first year con might not think about being ADA compliant. But after the first year… there’s no reason why a panelist should have to address a room from the floor, while the other panelists are elevated on a platform. Simple things like, don’t registration in a space that’s not accessible by wheelchair users. Have websites that are accessible for the blind.

Mari Ness, who often shares insights and her experiences with wheelchair accessibility while traveling and at conventions, said last year’s World Fantasy Con in DC scored much better:

Apart from two minor issues with my hotel room, both promptly addressed by Hyatt, I did not have any disability issues at this con.

(I did have issues outside the con while attempting to navigate Alexandria and DC, but that’s on those two cities, not World Fantasy Con. I also did get sick more than once anyway, but…well, I think that’s more or less my status quo now.)

As long time readers know, this is not something typical of World Fantasy, which for the last several years have featured Disability Fail after Disability Fail after Disability Fail. So it’s a major relief to find that yes, this convention can get it right, and I want to thank the 2014 World Fantasy Committee for getting it right this time.

In contrast, she had a stressful adventure just trying to board a train while in London for the 2014 Worldcon

We had five minutes to reach coach C (way way way way way down) on the other platform, and no access people in sight.

I offered to take the next train. I had underestimated the helpfulness of other Brits; the other wheelchair user was in an electric, so he offered to take my suitcase (it’s wheeled) and we rushed. I never ever want to push my manual that quickly, that distance, again. At the station end of the platform we explained the situation and were allowed through Secret Inaccessible doors and then sped down that way. At that point I started having breathing problems. My suitcase went on ahead of me; a porter saw me and started running with me down the platform. The ramp was set up and the train left while we were still getting ourselves into place.

That took awhile because I was still having breathing issues and palpitations. After that, I got my head down and pretty much stayed there until Swindon, which is to say if you are looking for a lovely description of a train ride from London to Bath you need to look elsewhere.

Also, she made this observation about Sasquan, the 2015 Worldcon —

1. Once again, apparently the only way to reach the Hugo stage? Stairs. No ramp.

2. On a much happier note, SASQUAN did provide a sign language interpreter throughout the ceremony, something I hope future Hugo Award ceremonies will continue to do. My understanding is that a sign language interpreter was also at the business meetings, so yay.

55 thoughts on “Accessibility Issue at World Fantasy Con

  1. Sadly, I agree with Camestros. The last con I went to was wheelchair accessible, although the hotel is very strangely architectured and going the long way around and those tiny open lifts that go up and down about 4 feet had to be deployed in some places. It’s no picnic for people with working legs, either; the whole hotel went for form over function, leading to much WTF. But the stuff under the con’s control was fine.

    Sign language interpreters also add more fun and visual amusement to people who can hear. Good repartee between speakers and interpreter is entertaining to everyone, besides just being common courtesy to the deaf.

    Big ups to the panelists who joined Mari on the floor.

    MRK’s got a HUGE point there, with the “oh, we can’t have a code of conduct, the creepers might sue us for these ambiguous situations” vs. stuff that’s codified into law with math and WILL get you sued.

    WFC 2015: Pervs welcome, wheelchairs not.

  2. This is, sadly, nothing new. This is a world designed by and for the majority. The sad thing here is that this could have been avoided. Simply schedule the panel elsewhere from the beginning.

    As for whether the WFC committee is in violation of the ADA, that’s another question. Without knowing all the particulars, it’s difficult to say if they violated the ADA. If they took any “readily achievable alternative steps” after being apprised of the situation, then they probably covered themselves.

    The trouble is, a lot of people don’t consider such things simply because they don’t understand the potential problems in a given situation. They often don’t even realize that there could be problems. I once couldn’t even enter a room because a floor fan was placed a few inches too far to one side for my wheelchair to get by. When I used crutches, I wouldn’t have had much trouble. In a chair, I was stopped.

    *SIGH*

  3. It looks like the convention is held at a modern, recently-built convention center. I’d have assumed that the venue would be able to deal with this sort of thing fairly trivially — the thing was built post-ADA specifically to host this sort of thing. I’d figure that you could just tell Facilities, “Oh, by the way, do the whole accessibility thing.” I’d have thought this would be basically an already-solved problem.

  4. Good heavens, you would think accessibility would be a no-brainer by now.

    What were the organizers thinking?

  5. Someone probably didn’t think about ramps for the dais/platform, which is all on the con. The hotel’s probably ADA-compliant, but they don’t have any idea which rooms are going to need ramps. They just set up platforms in the rooms as told.

    Concom screwed up, not noting which panels were going to have wheelchair users.

    “Concom fail” seems to be the story this year.

  6. If anyone here is interested in adding to the hive mind of improving accessibility at conventions, OR wants advice or help with making a convention you work on more accessible, please come join us on the “Fans for Accessible Conventions” Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/FansForAccessibleCons

    It’s a worldwide effort to raise awareness of and improve accessibility/reduce barriers at fan conventions. 🙂

  7. I asked about the Hugo stage awhile back and if anyone answered I missed it. Sad to hear my suspicions were correct. It isn’t as uncommon as it should be to hear of a fellow wheelie being chosen to accept an award and then finding out they couldn’t get on the stage.

    I wish people would think about these things, and even better check. If there isn’t a wheelchair-user on the team, borrow a wheelchair from somewhere and test everything! I’m very tired of not being able to access things. I was very disappointed at the recent write-up of what was theoretically a panel about disability access for convention staffers but seemed to spend more time on other aspects of access like gender neutral bathrooms. That stuff is important, but maybe not during a disability access panel when said disability access got hardly mentioned.

    Using trains in London is pretty bad, yes – they’ve made a couple of minor improvements (dropping the book 24 hours in advance thing was a huge improvement, because while I was sort of getting about while ignoring it as a form of protest, getting a lecture from the station staff every time got very boring) but most stations still aren’t accessible, staff are often badly trained in getting you on and off (and it isn’t bloody rocket science), and the other passengers have a fondness for blocking access with luggage.

  8. Re: Sasquan Hugo Awards Accessibility

    The INB Theater in Spokane, WA, had an accessible route to the stage. It wasn’t obvious, but had been checked out by members of our Accessiblity Team during several visits to the city and the theater pre-con.

    There was only one room not accessible, the Music Room, which Sasquan deliberately did not use.

    Mike Willmoth
    Vice Chair
    Back of House Divisions
    Sasquan, Spokane Worldcon 2015
    [email protected]

  9. The memories I have, from my two visits to London, of the London underground transport system are basically stairs and stairs and stairs. I’m from the Bay Area. In my experience, public transit is single-level, like a ranch house. And where multiple levels are required, you as an agency have elevators and keep them functional (or have to deal with criticism).

    I’m pleased that the organization I work for is aware enough of accessibility issues that there has always been a ramp at any organization event I’ve been at that’s had a raised stage. This article has prompted me to push for “we need to reach out and ask ‘does anybody need ASL interpretation?'” for future meetings.

  10. Mike Willmoth: What was the accessible route to the stage? The INB auditorium website has a lot of diagrams of the seating, stage, and backstage areas, but it is not apparent how one would get a wheelchair onstage.

    The notes about the orchestra pit refer to some kind of lift that could bring someting to stage level, however, because at the Hugo ceremonies the pit was filled with seats I’m guessing that’s not what you have in mind.

  11. @Lexica

    There have been some improvements since this map was made, but it illustrates the problem of tube access in London quite well. Overground lines are just as bad, too – the station by my parents doesn’t have any lifts so unless you stick to two out of the six platforms you’re out of luck. Good luck predicting which train to get on to end up at those platforms on the way home! The problem is that most of it was built well before access was considered important, and updating the stations is a slow and expensive process. I don’t think there are more than a handful of stations planned to be upgraded within the next five years and that simply isn’t quick enough considering how much still needs to be done.

    @Mike Willmoth

    Glad to hear it. Could you describe the access route?

  12. The smart thing for a con to do is request ramps for all raised platforms, period. (And to check in advance how many ramps the hotel has on hand!) If you make it a habit to provide universal access wherever physically possible, you aren’t left scrambling when somebody who can’t do stairs is added to the panel at the last minute.

  13. I had two pretty good legs on my trip to London and I thought the stairs on the Tube were going to be the death of me. No elevators, no air conditioning — it was state of the art when built, but badly in need of retrofit now. Not just for wheelies, but old people, children in strollers, etc.

    I don’t know if your average hotel has enough ramps to put one in every panel room, so cons will probably still have to prioritize.

  14. Re: Hugo stage accessibility at Sasquan

    The wheelchair accessible route to the Hugo stage involved going out the door and entering backstage. Less than ideal, but the layout of the INB made installing a ramp simply impossible. We did the best we could.

    I apologize to Meredith for the lack of response. If she sent her message to accessibility@, I simply never saw it.

    Bill Thomasson
    Accessibility Area Head, Sasquan

  15. The London Underground is very hard to retrofit, in part because of how it was built, in part because of where it was built, in part because you can’t really stop to retrofit any line because London would stop.

    Personally I think granting everybody with a disability the right to free cab rides on the budget of TFL would motivate them to fix the accessibility problem real quick, but that’s just my cynical me.

    We were talking about the accessibility problem for the Tun on Thursday. I wonder if pubs get some sort of exception from the Disability Act? Because that pub was just refitted and still no access to the function space. Apparently finding function space that is accessible in London is really hard. 🙁

  16. That said, the WFC needs to get a fucking grip already, and no, the fact that it is a floating convention is not an excuse. They do have a board and they are letting an astounding amount of reputational damage accrue.

  17. The thing about stage ramps is that they take up a lot of room and need to be placed in advance. If the con knows in advance that a program participant will need access, that’s fixable; at-con is difficult.

  18. The thing is, speaking as a non-disabled person, that if you need to ask in advance to make a special effort for you that means that you are not actually free to move around. Saying “oh but we have young people who can carry on the stage” is the same kind of un-helpful.
    The Tun (that is, the Inns of Court) probably has a goods lift for the cellar somewhere, but I am not going to insult a wheelchair user by suggesting they ask the pub if they can go that route. What if they want to leave and come back? What if they want to pop out for a cigarette?
    Also, Crystal Huff said that she almost got a fix, but was aboit 60 minutes too late.

  19. You don’t even need a wheelchair to test accessibility. Just try to take a child in a stroller somewhere without another person to help the two of you up and down stairs, curbs, etc. .

    Suddenly all the small daily insults that make life difficult for people on wheels become really painfully obvious.

    Accessibility is everyone’s problem.

  20. A very dear friend in a mobility device was pretty much ignored at her graduation ceremony and missed all the celebratory graduation group photos because the only accessible way into and out of the building was through a back kitchen entrance, which took some time to navigate whilst everyone else was charging out front. The photos were all taken on the front steps of the building anyway. Thanks ever so much, Meadville Lombard Theological Seminary.

  21. What Anna said about the London Underground is correct, sadly. It’s a Victorian system that’s been extended and while some stations can be retrofitted to have lifts it would be next to impossible with others, particularly many of those in the middle of town. They do retrofit where they can, but it’s a slow process. The tube station I use to for work, Whitechapel, is completely non-accessible at present but it’s currently being rebuilt while remaining open and when finished in 2017 (I think) should be completely accessible. I’ve looked at my ownhome station, Upton Park, with a view to upgrading it and it would be easy to add a lift for the westbound platform but impossible for the eastbound without buying up an adjacent building, closing down the businesses in it, and demolishing it to make way for a lift. Which isn’t to say that adding the lift to the westbound by itself would be a waste since the next platform up the line was retrofitted with lifts some years ago. Having to go up one station when coming from the west then come back down to use the lift on the westbound platform would be a nuisance but at least it would be a solution and better than the total inaccessibility there now.

  22. TusCon been one of our favorite conventionsfor many years, but for about the last decade it’s been held at an older pre-ADA hotel where the main programming rooms were only accessible by a long set of stairs rising from the lobby. Which has meant Hilde could only get up there by the hotel calling several of the maintenance men to haul her and her wheelchair up the stairs by brute strength. She tried that once, and decided never again. (I used to be able to haul her up and down stairs by myself, but between incipient geezerhood and that bad fall a few years ago leaving my right arm rated as 40% disabled, I don’t trust myself to do that anymore.) So she’s been unable to attend a lot of the panels at TusCon while that hotel’s been used.

    The good news is that TusCon will be moving to a different hotel next year, and I’m told the meeting rooms there are all on one level and fully accessible. Yay for that!

  23. That’s nice to know about TusCon. Maybe I can go again next year. Who knows, maybe I’ll get to see you and Hilde again, Mr. Arthurs. I haven’t been to a con for roughly 20 years. It’s just been too hard to move around.

  24. I think I’m going to have to do some thinking about appropriate questions to ask the Helsinki Worldcon team. If I can make it there I’d quite like to be able to get around easily. It would be pretty devastating to save up for it and then be stuck for doing anything.

    @Bill Thomasson

    If you don’t mind clarifying a little, what was the plan for Hugo nominated people with (physical) disabilities, then? I understand all the nominees were seated at the front – was that near the door? Or were any nominees who needed that access going to be seated somewhere else, nearer the door? What about people who can’t manage stairs and also would find it difficult to walk around a circuitous route – since not everyone in that situation is in a wheelchair?

    @Anna Feruglio Dal Dan

    We were talking about the accessibility problem for the Tun on Thursday. I wonder if pubs get some sort of exception from the Disability Act? Because that pub was just refitted and still no access to the function space. Apparently finding function space that is accessible in London is really hard.

    I was disappointed when you mentioned that meeting awhile back and then when I checked it out I wouldn’t be able to access it. As far as I know pubs don’t get exemption, but places only have to make “reasonable” adjustment if they were built prior to the legislation, and “reasonable” usually means “doesn’t cost any more money” – which basically results in access being a low priority.

    I do understand the problem. My sister’s wedding next year is going to be on the first floor of somewhere without a lift, and obviously she tried quite hard to find somewhere accessible. I’m planning my outfit around what I can reasonably crawl up and down the stairs in. 🙂 I think she had some decent success finding accessible locations when she was a NaNoWriMo co-ordinator but I think those were rather more informal and smaller groups.

    and this:

    The thing is, speaking as a non-disabled person, that if you need to ask in advance to make a special effort for you that means that you are not actually free to move around.

    Is spot on. It was why booking travel assistance 24 hours in advance was (and is, in most of the country – only London has committed to going without, and on many lines it’s more like 48 once you’ve jumped through all the hoops) so offensive. I shouldn’t have to plan everything much further in advance than able-bodied people.

    @Peace

    Yes, buggies are a similar deal (to the point where there’s an ongoing dispute over whether buggies have as much right to wheelchair spaces on public transport as wheelchair users do). There are a lot of access issues with wheelchairs that I didn’t realise existed until I started using one – noticeable even though using the chair is overall a net gain for me. My Dad was less surprised because he’d spent a lot of time pushing buggies!

    I’m sad and angry but not surprised to hear of your friend’s graduation ceremony being handled so badly. Accessible routes requiring a far greater distance and investment of time is a serious issue. I can self-propel a little, but not very far, and accessible routes requiring a round-about longwinded approach severely hampers my ability to use them.

  25. It felt a bit lonely to “attend” the Hugo Awards at Sasquan by going to an entirely different building and sitting in a room where the proceedings were shown on a screen and captions were projected for the conversation.

    I was grumping about this, later, and Seth Breidbart told me that they looked into it, but there was absolutely no place to put a CART projection screen up in the actual auditorium which was used for the Hugo Awards, and that’s why those of us who have difficulty hearing (or who have other auditory processing issues, or for whom English is an nth language and therefore seeing it in print helps a great deal, et cetera) had to “attend” the Hugos from a room in a different building.

    I find it difficult to believe that what Seth said was accurate, really. Because seriously? No room for the captions screen?

    [Edited to add: I just ranted about this to PNH. Rant included the phrase “because being in a small room across the street from everybody else really felt like the grand coming-together of fandom.” He mildly inquired as to why I didn’t post the full-on rant, because why are we still having this conversation???]

  26. This is a recurrent problem and something con organizers really need to be factoring in. Mari is good about speaking out despite the fact she hits this issues over and over again at cons, and I hope she keeps doing it until people start consistently listening.

  27. I can understand why the WFC ConComm initially failed to have ramps set up in the function rooms. What I cannot understand is why, 24 hours after Mari was unable to participate in her first panel, they still had not provided a ramp the next day. And them so concerned about issues of legal liability.

  28. @Elise Matthesen

    I know hearing-impaired doesn’t imply fluency in sign-language, but since it says above that there was a sign language interpretor at the ceremony itself (assuming “at the ceremony” didn’t mean in the room with you?) I hope you were all informed of that as an option since it might have worked for some? Either way, sticking people in a room in a separate building is hardly what I would call inclusive or accessible. Disappointing to hear of your experience.

  29. I volunteered for the backstage crew for the Sasquan Masquerade. People in giant costumes have accessibility issues. The theater has a long, sloping corridor that goes from backstage to a lobby on the river side, which is on a level with the seating area at the front of the theater. So essentially there is a ramp built into the theater. It was used by all of the Masquerade participants, except for the giant spider which had to exit through the loading dock.

  30. Anna Feruglio on November 8, 2015 at 1:48 am said:

    The London Underground is very hard to retrofit, in part because of how it was built, in part because of where it was built, in part because you can’t really stop to retrofit any line because London would stop.

    By the sound of it though that particular tale involved one of the overland routes (which are almost universally terrible) – you can’t, generally speaking, get to bath from london via the london underground.

    And in its defense, the tube is also a bit more accessible than the overland trains, if only because the gap between the platform and trains aren’t large enough for a person to fall into like they generally are at above ground platforms for instance and TfL has most stations be a bit more heavily staffed than is usual across the country.

    With the usual exception for Bank station that violates not only most basic laws on health and safety and disabled access, but also common sense and euclidean geometry.

    Lisa Hertel on November 8, 2015 at 3:56 am said:

    The thing about stage ramps is that they take up a lot of room and need to be placed in advance. If the con knows in advance that a program participant will need access, that’s fixable; at-con is difficult.

    Generally the way to solve that problem is to have a ticky box or note on the panel scheduling form that tells people to contact the con organisers if you need special arrangements – does WFC’s forms have that sort of ticky box/note?

  31. @Meredith

    Yeah, I’m one of the people for whom (as you mention) hearing-impaired does not mean fluent in sign language. (My hearing loss was not measured until my mid-twenties. I tried taking some ASL classes at the local technical college, but I was the only person taking them because of my own accessibility needs. Everyone else in the class was studying to be an interpreter. It was extremely emotionally gruelling for reasons I cannot fully articulate even to this day, and I did not take more than a couple of semesters, which didn’t give me enough ASL. Then too, everyone in my life was hearing, and none of them used ASL, so there wasn’t much practice in my already-in-progress life, and I stopped paying for classes and gave up.)

    (Um. Leaving all that there, because it’s illustrative of the situation. Hoping I don’t get nasty emails this time telling me I should be ashamed of myself for not learning ASL.)

    I believe the ASL for the main auditorium Hugos was added relatively late in the convention and therefore not in the program book, but yes, someone did inform me about it, which was excellent of them even though it wasn’t a kind of access that works for me.

  32. Elise Matthesen on November 8, 2015 at 9:02 am said:

    (Um. Leaving all that there, because it’s illustrative of the situation. Hoping I don’t get nasty emails this time telling me I should be ashamed of myself for not learning ASL.)

    Good lord, that’s awful.

    The needs of someone learning a language out of necessity and those learning to be interpreters are entirely different. It’s no wonder you found those classes impossible.

    I am sorry you have had such difficulty.

  33. People have been asking Gallifrey One for YEARS whether there could be any hope of having ASL interpreters. The answer is always no. I love Gally, but this is a problem.

  34. Using trains in London is pretty bad, yes

    I need a cane but since I can walk miles and miles faster than TABs with only a light tingle of having spikes driven into my knees I don’t think of myself as particularly disabled*. Then came the day I tried to get on board a VIA train….

    * just standing, otoh, is excruciating.

  35. You don’t even need a wheelchair to test accessibility.

    My sister uses a cane, and has a rolling walker (she calls it a rollator). I have arthritis in at least one joint. Sidewalk ramps (known here as corner cuts) are really helpful – there are days I find four-inch steps to be painful. (I’m careful walking down those ramps, too; going up actually feels safer.)

  36. I often need to use a walker, and one thing I’ve found is that usually if there is a ramp or an elevator it is placed so far away that walking there is difficult and painful, and it’s easier to just take the stairs while carrying my (folded up) walker. I imagine it’s just as tiring and/or painful for someone in a manual wheelchair.

  37. Everyone else in the class was studying to be an interpreter. It was extremely emotionally gruelling for reasons I cannot fully articulate

    I hurt so much reading this. I’ve had hearing problems all my life. A few years ago I finally reached the point where I became eligible for hearing aids.

    I can almost imagine the pain the classes must have put you through. I’ve not learned ASL either. Not being fully deaf or fully hearing and always having a problem learning other languages it has been beyond me and the few who tried to teach me.

  38. @Fred Davis

    I think you just described Bank station perfectly!

    @Elise Matthesen

    Well, I sincerely hope you don’t get any emails this time, and its dreadful (but sadly unsurprising) that you’ve received them before.

    I can quite imagine that ASL lessons in that environment would be painful. I think taking wheelchair skills in a class of people with perfect walking ability would make me pretty unhappy, too.

    @Karen Williams

    I often need to use a walker, and one thing I’ve found is that usually if there is a ramp or an elevator it is placed so far away that walking there is difficult and painful, and it’s easier to just take the stairs while carrying my (folded up) walker. I imagine it’s just as tiring and/or painful for someone in a manual wheelchair.

    Yes! Exactly. Not everyone in a manual has arms the size of my thighs. Disability “access” that requires taking an extremely long circuitous route isn’t really access, and yet that’s an extremely common approach.

    (My sixth form college had one lift for the entire building, which only had three floors and sprawled out. It was pretty much useless.)

  39. The reason problems like this exist and will continue to exist is basically because it is almost impossible to understand something as a barrier if you haven’t experienced it as a barrier.

    I was born with a disability, went from “walking” (more of a controlled crash) and falling down a lot, onto crutches and then having to use a wheelchair more and more as I get older. Even being disabled my whole life did not fully prepare me for the realities of any of the transitions I’ve had to make. Crutches have their own advantages and disadvantages, different from walkers or wheelchairs. Manual wheelchairs have different things which crop up from motorized scooters, which are different from motorized wheelchairs. If I transitioned from a manual chair to a motorized anything, there would be things I’d have to learn (and unlearn) from having been in a manual.

    If even a seasoned gimp like me has to learn what the potential problems are, than the average person with zero experience being disabled probably has no clue as to what the problems are. The sad reality is, people on wheels will continue to have to explain about accessibility over and over again until and unless they start dealing with people who have been in their shoes, either temporarily or long-term. Because no one who hasn’t been on crutches, or in a chair, or hear-impaired, visually-impaired or what have you, will ever fully understand just what the difficulties (or solutions) are.

    It would be nice if every concom had a gimp or gimpette on speed-dial, but these problems exist because the people putting together these events all too often don’t even understand that it’s a problem-because it’s not a problem for most people.

    I’ve been at this dance for a long time and my legs are getting tired.

  40. It’s not as if there aren’t disabled people in fandom. Some of them are or have been on concom here in the UK.

  41. Well, I am more than happy to be available to answer questions about the bits I know about and I’m sure plenty of other disabled fen of varying types would, too. Perhaps we could put together some sort of basics FAQ? It couldn’t cover absolutely everything (disabilities are by their very nature extremely variable in impact) but perhaps the most widely required things could have a go-to resource? There are a couple of Fan organisations already around, has anything like that been put together yet? Most of what I’ve seen so far doesn’t seem to have done anything like that, but fandom is a big place and I’m sure I could have missed it.

    @Robert Reynolds

    Your comments on this thread have been great. 🙂

  42. @Kathryn Sullivan

    Thanks! I just had a look and they’re producing some good stuff. Nothing like an easy to access collated basics FAQ though – unless I missed it.

  43. There are a LOT of disabled people in fandom, always have been. So why cons continue to ignore it is beyond me.

    Elise, I have no problem with your lack of ASL. And what about people who don’t get hearing loss till they’re in their 60’s or 70’s? Are they supposed to just blithely pick up a new language in their old age?

    Curb cuts are wonderful. Who wouldn’t rather step off a curb that’s flush or almost, as opposed to 4-6 inches? The most TAB among us sprain ankles doing that all the time. Not getting injured while crossing the street is something everyone should be in favor of.

  44. London’s South Bank was recently mostly flattened out – no curbs at all, just flat. Total bliss to roll around, very comfortable, very smooth, no joints randomly bounced out of place – and I still haven’t quite mastered bouncing up curbs without assistance so a lot quicker than searching endlessly for a ramped bit. If there was a way of doing that everywhere (I’m not sure what difficulties it would cause for people with visual impairment, and whether those could be mitigated) I would be thrilled. I’d settle for reliably placing the cuts opposite each other instead of off-set by twenty feet so I don’t have to spend so much time in the road.

    If, theoretically, I were to (AFTER finishing current projects) start to ask around for contributions to a sort of con access basics FAQ, would people be interested in contributing? Assuming no-one puts one together in the mean time.

    ETA
    @Lis

    Good to know! I’m still going to be thinking about questions, because prompting beforehand is better than recriminations after the fact. 🙂

  45. Meredith: Thanks for your kind words. 🙂

    lurkertype: I’m not sure that it’s concoms ignoring the number of disabled fans in fandom so much as it’s just the sad reality that the world is designed by the majority with an eye towards what works for the majority in general.

    Most people wouldn’t be too terribly inconvenienced by a program situated on a raised platform or a stage, so it just wouldn’t occur to them to think about such problems. It’s an all too typical circumstance everywhere.Out of sight is often out of mind. I’ve known disability coordinators who work with these issues as their job to have brain cramps and miss something.

    Yes, it happens frequently. Yes, people like me have to keep pointing out the same problems repeatedly. I don’t know the solution. I’m not sure there is one. Maybe people can be educated, I don’t know. The best thing I can think of is, if you are disabled and plan on attending a con, contact the concom and tell them what your particular concerns are and ask them to make the con as accessible as possible.

    I wouldn’t count on much, because con staff are, after all, volunteers. It would be nice if the larger cons at least would have someone designated as a disability services coordinator. Some of them may already do that. But, to be frank, in my experience, most people simply don’t think about disability access because it doesn’t impinge on their consciousness. It’s not part of their lives, so it’s not something they think about.

  46. I joined the FB group and took a very quick look around. I recognize a few names including Crystal Huff. I know at least a few of the people in the group have experience creating and implementing very good con harassment policies. I suspect the group intends to create an FAQ and possibly template disability standards/checklist based on name, description, and member list.

    I’m not very active on FB right now. I’ve attended a few conventions and volunteered onsite at all but my first. I’ve only been on one committee early on. While I’ve tried to volunteer from a distance for a couple others it hasn’t worked out partly due to my health problems.

    I don’t know how much I’ll participate on the group due to my health and lack of experience running cons. At the moment that’s where I’ll put effort and watch what’s happening.

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