From One Survivor to Another

8 months ago

reblogged: (via)

33 notes

ableism

September 12, 2011

My thoughts on image descriptions.

fromonesurvivortoanother:

So i’ve been started to add image descriptions to posts in my queue, and…

…at first i thought, “this will probably look silly or even intrusive to most of my readers.”

But then I thought about it, and I told myself, “but hey, think of how difficult and tiring it must be for people with eyesight problems or similar disabilities to navigate internet spaces like this.” I am allergic to coffee, and sometimes the people I work with want to have meetings in a place that makes coffee, and I always feel like a freak and an outsider when I have to ask them to move to another place. But it shouldn’t be something that I am ashamed of; if awkward little me, with my super rare coffee allergy, deserves accommodations, then so do other people.

And you know, it’s not cool to think “well then hey, those people just shouldn’t be on tumblr. tumblr is a media/image intensive site.” Because the point is that those people shouldn’t have to be second class citizens and feel excluded from places in the first place.

Those people should not have to enter through the back door like black people in the Jim Crow era south. Or my friend who had knee problems and had to use a wheelchair. Being born black is not anyone’s fault, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Having an accessibility issue isn’t anyone’s fault, and there’s nothing wrong with it. People with disabilities are just as human as the rest of us, and I think that means that they deserve a seat at the table for equal discussion and discourse.

So if people think that image descriptions are intrusive or obnoxious, then that’s their own entitled, privileged fault. And really, we shouldn’t support a world where we think that taking a few minutes out of our time to do something that should be required for basic human decency is a chore.

I mean really. Just read this post and see how hard it is for some people.

/rant

I wanted to follow up on this. Since I started adding image descriptions to my posts, I’ve learned a few things, especially as a person with a physical disability of my own:

I suddenly became very aware of just how much content on Tumblr is not annotated. It was shocking when I really started paying attention to this— probably only 1 in 20 posts have annotations, and my dash is understandably skewed since I follow mostly Feminists and other social justice people. This is not an acceptable situation.
I started to see myself in this situation. To give an analogy— and I realize that this hardly compares to constant, daily struggle—I am extremely near-sighted. Without my glasses, I literally cannot see two feet in front of my face. In a familiar place, that’s okay— I can navigate vague blobs. But in a new place, or one that I don’t know that well, it can be very, very scary. Once, I was at a concert when suddenly I lost my glasses in the middle of the moshing. For thirty seconds, I was completely helpless— someone could have hurt me, and I would be totally unable to defend myself. Someone could have stolen my wallet, and I’d never even be able to provide a description to the police. The crowd closed in, and I had no idea how I would find my friends again. Eventually I did find my glasses, but the situation still made me feel like an outsider— i became very aware of the fact that my body does not work “normally”. For people who are not as privileged as I am, for people who have to use screen readers or other methods for navigating the internet on a daily basis, I can only imagine how hard this must be— and how frustrating it is to always feel excluded or left out.
I was surprised by how defensive I became when people reblogged my posts and removed the descriptions. This is perhaps the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen. Either these people 1) do not know about people with vision problems, or 2) think that the descriptions are “tacky” or “ugly”. Both of these are a problem— if you see an image description, you should ask why they are there, not immediately erase them. To do so is just plain selfish and willfully ignorant. And if you are aware that people with these problems exist, and you choose to remove the descriptions in favor of some shallow, bullshit aesthetic appeal, then you have some serious ableism going on.
At first I felt as if I was unqualified for this, but then I quickly realized that it didn’t matter, and that I would learn how to do it properly. When I first started adding image descriptions, I thought to myself, “if an image is worth a thousand words, then how on earth am i going to convey the entire meaning into just a few sentences?” It seemed daunting. And of course, when I first started, it was awkward. But the more I did it, the easier it became. I gained new awareness and appreciation for the images I was reblogging by forcing myself to look over them for more than just ten seconds. As a writer and a poet, it was extremely gratifying to “test” myself on this. But I think that anyone, English major or not, can do this. And everyone should. It is a test of poetry, and I believe that everyone can be a poet. Using language effectively should not be a luxury— it should be a required life skill. And really, it doesn’t take as much time as I thought it would— maybe twenty more seconds for an image post. I think that it will also improve the quality of my blog and what I choose to reblog, because instead of just haphazardly throwing around images I like, I now carefully study the ones that speak the most to me.
I decided that I will always do this on my blog— not because I want accolades or grateful messages in my ask box, but because if I were in the same situation, I would want people to do the same for me.