‘Let’s listen with our eyes and not just with our ears.’ Christine Sun Kim

All of these resources are thought-provoking. Khairani Barokka’s piece is fascinating as Khairani is so eloquent about intersectionality and how being a brown, disabled, woman impacts on the way others perceive and treat her and what she has to go through in order to perform. This puts in sharp focus the necessity of equity in our work at UAL. It also links to one of the examples from the SoN Disability Journal where a member of staff talks about the difficulty of getting the necessary equipment to do her job. It’s something about the lack of acknowledgement of the journey travelled just to have an equitable opportunity.

In the SoN Journal I also read the conversation with Elora Kadir, a student at CSM. I find this resonates with the work we’re trying to do about inclusion in digital spaces. The sense of anger, exhaustion and constantly being the one having to fight, whilst at the same time being judged for being too angry or not angry enough – it feels like something that is prevalent. In our team, we are in a position to take on some of that fight and not shy away from it because we’re too afraid to be the awkward person.

Two things that Christine Sun Kim said really struck me. The first was about the ownership of sound, and that it didn’t really belong to her, as a child. I hadn’t really thought about how that would be for a deaf person and how it could be addressed. The second thing was the physicality of sound. She says the vibrations are ‘visceral and internal’. ‘Let’s listen with our eyes and not just with our ears.’ I think this will be helpful in my work but I’m not sure yet how. It’s easy in digital learning and accessibility to develop a narrow focus i.e. to enable access to the information, but I think it will help to return to this quote to remind me to question my assumptions and ask the students what they need/want.

In reading #disabilitytoowhite, I realised that in our Accessibility Action Group at CSM although we represent different support services, we need to consider our own positionality as a group. Also, although we often work with the Disability team, we don’t often talk to the students they support. Are we enabling different voices or speaking on their behalf?

References:

Christine Sun Kim (2011) Available at: https://vimeo.com/31083172 (Accessed: April 2023) A Selby Film

Khairani Barokka (Okka) (2017) Deaf-accessibility for spoonies: lessons from touring Eve and Mary Are Having Coffee while chronically ill, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 22:3, 387-392, DOI: 10.1080/13569783.2017.1324778

Blahovec, S. Confronting the Whitewashing Of Disability: Interview with #DisabilityTooWhite Creator Vilissa Thompson. Available at: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/confronting-the-whitewash_b_10574994?guccounter=1 (Accessed: April 2023)

Shades of Noir, 2020 Disabled people: the voice of many Available at: https://issuu.com/shadesofnoir/docs/disabled_people (Accessed: April 2023)