I've been reading The Future is Disabled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. I was planning to save taking notes for my second read, but there have been enough revelations that I wanted to write some of them down. I'm sure there will still be plenty more notes to make when rereading.
I finished The Future is Disabled a little while back, but figured I'd write up some more of my notes.
Tiny Disabled Thoughts #3
In "The Free Library of Beautiful Adaptive Things," Piepzna-Samarasinha talks about how how their local library has a "library of things." I first came across this concept in the video We Need A Library Economy by Andrewism. In his video (which isn't long and is worth a watch), he talks about creating an economy where folks can simply borrow and use almost anything in the same way many communities currently can with books.
Piepzna-Samarasinha's local library included "Aids for Better Living for Individuals with Disabilities" - better known as adaptive aids or assistive tech. It was wonderful to hear about all sorts of things that people can check out, from easy-to-hold utensils to accessible video game controllers.
One of the major barriers to assistive tech is cost. Things designed for disabled people often cost more than general tech, or they're an additional expense an abled person wouldn't even have. Combine this with the large variability in disabilities, and you can pretty quickly end up acquiring tech and aids that didn't quite work for you, or that you don't need that often. I have a box of splints, a TENS machine, and other assorted things in my room - both their combined cost and the fear that I might need them again keep me from giving them away. But if I could check out a TENS machine from the library? Maybe I wouldn't need to hold on to mine. (Maybe I could even donate it to the library!)
Also, I'd have loved to have been able to try out a manual chair more often before I bought one - perhaps I'd have realized that a power chair would suit me better sooner. (And maybe I could have even tried a power chair out before buying one!) It would be great to try out the Xbox adaptive controller (or the eventual PS5 controller) to see if it helps with pain without shelling out hundreds of dollars first.
One of the enlightening things from this book and other disability justice (and anarchist) writing is to both see amazing things already being done, and to imagine what it could be like if we did more of it.