How to Become a Better Ally With Disability Lawyer Alice Wong
This week we learn about the rights of people with disabilities and how to become a better ally with the help of disability activist Alice Wong. Hear Alice share the unique perspectives people with disabilities bring to the conversation, what people without disabilities can do to promote and protect equality, and why Crip Camp is so important to watch.
Alice is a disability activist, consultant, founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project , a community partnership with StoryCorps, and an online community dedicated to spreading disability, media and culture in 2020. She also has a podcast called Disability Visibility and recently published Visibility for People with Disabilities: First-Person Stories for the 21st Century .
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Highlights from this week’s series
From an interview with Alice Wong:
On the importance of recognition of legal capacity:
I think you know that a lot of people just don’t understand: “Oh, like, I can move to another city if, you know, I have the means.” While many people with disabilities cannot just pick up the phone and leave or just decide to go to a bar like today. You know, it’s not that easy. It’s a little tricky. But I think you know that people without disabilities can do so much to make the world a little more hospitable and accessible just by realizing our privileges, recognizing them, and realizing that we all have a collective responsibility. You know that we can create access for each other. And that’s one of the things that I think is so good about people with disabilities that I love about my community, is the recognition that we are interdependent.
How the pandemic has changed the way people without disabilities are viewed:
You know, in a big and small way, and I feel like it took a pandemic for many people without disabilities to realize, “Wow, how it looks like this way of life is really different.” And it’s frustrating when they don’t get what they want right away. And I feel like a lot of chronically ill people, or just people who you know are completely confident, their whole life is centered either in their bed or on the couch. They are like, “Welcome to our world.” [Y] Now you have a little suspicion of struggles or problems because, you know, one thing that really annoys me is that people with disabilities are fighting for remote work options in offices … And all of a sudden, when people with disabilities took something away from them. All of this suddenly becomes not so difficult. They are not a problem anymore. I think it pisses me off a lot because most of the work we’ve done is really erased. This has not been confirmed. And I really hope, you know, when we get out of this together, we don’t get back to normal. I want jobs, organizations and institutions to continue to do what they do as they adapt to the pandemic. But just keep it to yourself. Leave it. Because it will only increase their reach, their involvement.
Here are some small ways you can be a better ally:
[B] Get rid of people with disabilities when they tell you something problematic. You know when they say, “Hey, it’s not very cool what your friend said, or,“ Oh, I like this video that you posted, but did you notice that you don’t have subtitles? “Or like,” I see you are posting a lot of great photos, have you thought about adding alt text? ” You know that these are the little things that people can do every day to turn on a little bit of access, which really says a lot. Because if you say, for example, the content of a publication, especially [with] a large publication … if you don’t add signatures to it. If you don’t provide a description of the image, you are saying that you don’t give a damn about the vast majority of the population. And people with disabilities have long said that access not only helps people with disabilities, but benefits everyone.
To hear more of Alice’s conversation about the rights of people with disabilities, we recommend listening to the entire episode.
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