The Society for Disability Studies is the academic home for people who understand disability from the social (justice) model. They’ve been publishing Disability Studies Quarterly since the 1980s. DSQ mixes up high academic and practical activism — it’s always worth checking out their open access archive if you’re interested in anything related to disability. The SDS is not a rich academic group, so they’ve recently partnered with Ohio State University’s ongoing Multiple Perspectives on Inclusion conference to maintain an in-person annual gathering. I’ve attended SDS several times, always learning a lot and (typically) never wrote up the sessions.

This year the con was held online. It turned out to be much cheaper — they had been paying hotel costs of ~$200/hour — and more accessible for some of us. (Nothing like attending a session while reclining in bed — thanks to my iPad holder.) Virtual meetings are by their nature easier to record; the SDS have promised to make all the sessions available — video, captioning transcript, supporting text and slide shows — for a month after the conference’s end. (While this hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t surprise me. The conference organizers — most of them disabled — were operating at 160% effort and negligible sleep for a month before the 4 April start date.)

Here begins a series of loose notes on the sessions I attended: I’m happy to be more discursive in comments!

Cross-Disability Communication

Led by Devva Kasnitz and Sara Acevedo

Communication impairments are almost universally reported to be some of the most stigmatized and least accommodated. Communication differences are still not celebrated as intriguing diversity. Would that we had the childhood wonder of the apocryphal story of the Berlitz child who assumed everyone spoke a different language until he went to school. Looking at both form and content, this workshop explores communication across and between disability and disability communication. We mark and expand both our interdependence and accommodative exchanges of communicative labor, and the places where accommodations can conflict and patience and creativity are our best offense to demand a just society. Let’s dance.

Devva Kasnitz is the sole SDS founder still living, and a force of nature. She’s an anthropologist with a notable speech impairment—sample it on this YT video about yarn & spinning. Sara M. Acevedo is an autistic mestiza scholar born and raised in Colombia with background in linguistics and anthropology. Devva’s been mentoring Sara in the past year, so they were well-equipped to present on how negotiating communication impairment changes all involved.

• Understanding people whose communication is atypical requires cooperation and focus
• Sara: listening to Devva requires a focused effort that silences the "screaming in her head" of anxiety and autistic overload
• Devva uses "revoicers" to repeat what she says. It was evident during this presentation that even folks who are familiar with her speech don’t catch all of it the first time — at least five people contributed to revoicing.
• In a pinch, interpreters tend to decode her speech better than civilians, because they pay such close attention to language
• When Devva was still lecturing, she’d introduce herself with (paraphrasing) I know I’m difficult to understand. Ask for clarification because I make sure what I say is worth the effort.
• For some people (myself included) physical presence improves the ability to understand spoken language. While online interactions provide benefits, they also include drawbacks.