5SR - August 7, 2023

Today’s #5SmartReads contributor is Qudsiya. Qudsiya is the creator and host of the podcast, Down to the Struts about disability, design, and intersectionality. She’s thrilled to be rolling out Season 7 of the podcast, dropping into podcast feeds over the next several weeks! You can also subscribe to Qudsiya’s newsletter, Getting Down to It, for updates. When she’s not podcasting, Qudsiya loves organizing adaptive sports adventures through the Metro Washington Association of Blind Athletes.

What Are Disability Doulas? (The 19th*)

As someone who slowly came into disability identity through adulthood, I love the concept of the disability doula because, rather than focusing on what is lost, the doula is part of a support system that helps people birth a new identity as their body-mind changes.

In our youth-obsessed culture, I wonder if disability doulas could be valuable for all of us as we age and our bodies and minds change in one way or another over time. What if we saw this less as mourning what we have lost, and more as giving birth to a new conception of ourselves? What a kinder, gentler way to grow old!

I certainly benefited from many disability doulas who helped me find the tools I needed to embrace my blindness, and I only hope that I can pay it forward to serve as that support system for others who are navigating a similar experience.

Adaptive Clothing is Empowering Disabled People and Hitting the Runways (NPR)

From early childhood, even though my vision was better than it is now, I had to use all sorts of assistive devices, and I eternally wondered—why does stuff that’s made for disabled people always have to be so ugly? I’ve been delighted over the last several years to see increasing efforts to design accessible products that actually look cute and stylish.

Keisha Greaves, founder of the fashion line Girls Chronically rock is pioneering this idea by creating fashionable clothing that meets the needs of people with all sorts of mobility and sensory disabilities.

Greaves pretty much summed up my feelings on this subject when she said that she created her company so that disabled people “feel happy and feel confident within our own skin because I'm like — yes, we may have a disability, but we still like to go out. We want to have fun, we want to look sexy just like everyone else.” You go, girl!

Filling the Accessible Housing Gap for Disabled People of Color (Next City and Prism)

Only 4% of U.S. housing units are considered livable for people with moderate mobility disabilities, and its even harder to find units that are actually affordable. Meanwhile, seven million disabled renters are cost-burdened, meaning that more than 30% of their income goes in rent.

This article does a great job of explaining how these challenges disproportionately affect disabled renters of color, and profiles the Kelsey Civic Center in San Francisco as a sustainable model for affordable, accessible housing that uses universal design principles to ensure a diversity of units that meet the needs of people with different types of physical, cognitive, and sensory disabilities.

Now is the time to advocate with cities and counties to demand greater investment in affordable housing that works for everyone, because having a roof over your head is essential to all other forms of financial and family stability.

Disabled Authors Deserve and Demand More (Publishers Weekly)

With her usual sharp clarity, Alice Wong explains the myriad systemic barriers that keep disabled authors writing authentically about disability experiences off of our shelves.

There’s certainly been a lot of progress, with books like Disability Visibility, Year of the Tiger, Haben, Black Disability Politics, and many others, but we’ve still got a long way to go.

A huge shout out to Hitha for creating space for disabled voices on her platform, which is a wonderful step towards advancing disabled authorship. I hope that publishers heed Alice’s words and continue to build the canon of disability stories.

What It’s Like to Eat At Restaurants When You’re Blind (Eater)

I’m sad to report that I’ve experienced many of the dining out humiliations that Andrew Leland describes in this fantastic piece—from waiters asking my dining companion for my order instead of me, to scrambling for accessible restaurant options that can serve my friends who are wheelchair users, to inaccessible online menus. But when everything works well, dining out as a disabled person can be an amazing experience.

In this piece I wrote for Vox, I talk about going on a business trip and having my first ever solo meal at a Denver restaurant, where the servers were super kind and helpful, and I was able to select my meal from a fully accessible online menu. That was one of the most powerful moments of my early life as a white cane user, and it just took some thoughtful technology and a few people with great attitudes. Let’s advocate together to make restaurants more accessible for everyone! dis