Fiber Fool

I know I mentioned last week that I would be giving away some more knitting patterns to those who helped me come up with category titles for the new blog. I will do that, though not today. I’m going to interrupt the blog schedule for the important blogging event – Blog Against Disablism.

The moment I read about this at Emma & Co I thought I should participate. I hemmed and hawed and finally did sign up. Now, I’ve been writing and re-writing posts all night in my head rather than sleeping. I’ve struggled with what to write about. Now this morning I’ve circled through some of the other 100+ blogs participating in this event today in hopes that seeing the topics others are choosing to blog about today would help me better formulate my post. Unfortunately, I’m still as scattered in my thoughts as I was when I first hit the “Post Comment” button to sign up.

I’ll start by saying that I would guess most of you know several people with some form of disability – a mental disorder, a physical handicap, a learning disability etc. I know several from each of those categories and probably fall into two of them myself, though both are probably pretty mild in comparison to many others. It is important to be aware of disabilities; however, disabilities do not make a person less of a person than non-disabled person. We all have things we excel at and things we don’t, regardless.

As I’ve mentioned before, my mother is blind. So, my biggest experience with disablism is as a spectator as a daughter of a blind woman. There are so many rants I could get into here, though if you are a regular reader of blogs from disabled people or their families I’m sure you’ve heard most of them. So, I will list a few talking points of which I won’t get into (too much), but may perhaps serve as some food for thought…

• Products are getting sleeker and more complex. Items we use daily such as microwaves, ovens, washing machines and dryers, remote controls, cell photos and other items are filled with buttons that often don’t have edges or have no buttons that differ from others as a point of reference for someone having to operate them by touch alone. Items that are “designed” for the visual impaired will usually carry price tags of 3-10 times the standard price when there is no reason for mainstream version to be inoperable for the visually impaired.
• While I understand the need to control spam comments, this word verification that is popping everywhere from comments on blogs to completing registration at web sites is now also cutting off vast majorities of the Internet to those who are visually impaired as their screen reading software cannot read graphics, especially those that sighted people can barely read themselves.
• Some movie production companies are recording a second audio track often referred to as “Descriptive Video” and limited theaters around the US and the world offer devices similar to those for the hearding impaired that then play this audio track to the visually impaired so they can get the most out of a movie without having to have someone with them to describe the video and disturb other movie goers around them. This is great, except for the most part only major metropolitan areas offer this service. So, the movie studios have gone to the expense of engineering this track, why then do very rarely find such a track on DVDs? Even non-visually impaired people can benefit from it as non-hearing impaired people benefit from the use of closed captioning. You can knit and craft to a movie without worries of missing some vital information that was present only visually as one example.
• Also, many PBS and TCM programs as well as more and more local programs are being audio described (access is through the use of SAP), yet the cable, sattelite, and UHF companies are not required to transmit it so it is often inaccessible to the visually impaired even though it exists and the effort and expense has been expended to create the audio.
• People feel that just because you (or someone with you as in my case) has a companion animal that they may bother you in the middle of a meal or a conversation and demand to pet them or tell you the stories of every pet they’ve ever had. Fortunately, people are learning that working animals are not to be pet and at least ask, but if we’ve just been served our food or we appear to be in the middle of a conversation, leave us alone!

To end on a bit more positive note, my mom is one of the best people I know. She goes with the flow and adjusts to her situation like I can only dream of. At the age of about 33 she first learned how to use a computer with the aid of special software to read the screen to her. She then went on to school and got an AS degree with a 4.0 GPA, beating me on every test of the classes we took together (she started by getting me early enrollment having me be her note taker, then the school started lining up note takers for her, but we still took several classes together). She now does all the scheduling for the farm employees and at least the first level of interviewing and often gets called in to do the firing as well (my dad isn’t very authoritative or much of a people person). She also does billing for a few small business owners. She is a wonderful cook and baker and taught me quite well. She has a great sense of color despite the fact that she can no longer see them. She is giving and caring and helpful.

Most importantly, for this blog anyway, she knits beautifully!

Pattern: Garter Stitch Feather and Fan, over 220 sts (click on photo below for a closer look at the stitch pattern)
Yarn: Plymouth Encore Colorspun Worsted (7124)
Needles: US 9, Addi Turbo
Dimension: 36″ X 65″
Process Dates: Late July 2005 - Mid April 2006 (with several months worth of breaks awaiting some mistake fixing by my grandmother)
Recipient: Zoe in TX

Notes: I used the K2, * pass sts back to left needle, K2tog tbl, K1; bind off method on it and also woven in the ends for her.