Who We Are, Not What We Are: On Description, Intention, and Barriers

I read this lovely book yesterday that was a deep inquiry into access in higher education, The Question of Access: Disability, Space, Meaning by Tanya Titchkosky. It was published in 2011 but it still has so much relevance to how we think about access and accessibility mainly because sadly not much has changed in almost a decade. This stagnancy despite the AODA framework that has been in place since 2005, and despite that we are supposed to be striving provincially for full access by 2025 (which of course does not look very possible at the moment) is sad. Spaces are still labelled as accessible where they are not- no one step still means it is inaccessible. Doors are still not opening wide enough for chairs, mobility devices, or other mobility aids to pass through (more on doors later). Videos are still not captioned, images are not described with alt-texts. So much more was given as examples in this book, including the mobility and flexibility of active learning classrooms being inaccessible if everything is on wheels because then those who require access could possibly require others to have to move many objects out of the way so they can enter or position themselves in the class.

There was also a lengthy discussion on people-first language usage such as a person with disabilities, as opposed to disability-first language, such as disabled person. This is a conversation that I want to listen to actively, because in my position as an able-bodied person, I respect and understand that each person will have preferences for the structure they want used and I can definitely understand the value of both in terms of representation and discourse. Please feel free to tweet at me about this if you wish, as I always strive to be a supportive accessibility ally.

One of the things that Titchkosky gestures to in her work that really gave me pause is a slippage that happens when we try to say "who" someone is and instead what happens is a larger framing of "what" someone is (p.38).  I spent a lot of time thinking about what this means and what this would look like as continued praxis. This slippage is really the difference between subjectivity and collective grouping in my opinion. If you try to say who someone is but instead defer to what, there tends to be a collective grouping that can happen that is exactly the kind of thing that leads to erasure of individuality. If I say I am a white, cis, working class, able bodied, lesbian woman, all of these are who I am but also very much what I am as well. How to differentiate can very much be the difference between representation and erasure. I have a lot of thinking about this still to do but I think it is a good place to start when we talk about allyship and who we are supporting.

Doors as barriers

Towards the end of her book Titchkosky speaks about doors in her place of work and how certain doors and spaces beyond the doors were labelled accessible when they were not. It reminded me of the recent story I saw on Twitter where a door was labelled accessible and had a power-assisted door opener but when the door was opened the person was greeted with a set of wheelchair inaccessible stairs. I tried to find a link to the article but I can’t find it at the moment but when I do I will link to it here. Titchkosky references Sara Ahmed’s work and this also had me thinking of Ahmed in terms of doors as barriers. Or what it means to be greeted with stairs as something that leads to be greeted with stares when inaccessibility is pointed out. It lead me to think about the etymology of door, which is from the Middle English merging of two Old English words both referencing gates and that doors were often plural suggesting a particular structure and architecture. It also caused me to think of the word in French, porte, a feminine noun, from Latin porta, and if there was etymological connections to the verb porter in French which means "to bring" and actually works counter to the barrier suggestion that comes with a word like door.

There are doors that are architecturally embedded. But there are also doors of our own fashioning that we create for ourselves as well. Thus, to do strong ally work one has to be aware of the architecturally and structurally barrier-laden doors, the lack of power-assisted door openers but also the doors we create in our thoughts and processes when we think about access and accessibility.  Also the doors we create for ourselves to live our true selves and be who we are in all aspects of our life. 

Emotional barriers

All this door talk also had me thinking a lot today about emotional barriers as doors to progression and possibly doors to productivity. We start the year with plans and lists and sometimes you have to reassess those plans and lists and prioritize what seems manageable to you based on your mental and emotional space. Take writing for example, writing is a very emotional type task that most don’t recognize or want to recognize as being very emotionally invested. It is only when you give yourself time to reflect that one realizes how closely tied writing is to emotional capacity and not just mental or even physical capacity. I was supposed to edit something today and I just couldn’t. Tomorrow evening I will try again but for today it is not going to happen because emotionally I just was not there. And the subject matter is so important that it deserved my full mental AND emotional attention. Tomorrow is another day- the writing deserves that and I deserve that too.

For today I have these 1000 words of thoughts about doors, barriers, and how we relate who we are without being erased as a what without singularity. How important it is be true to ourselves if we want to start to challenge the dismantle the barriers we see or even impose on ourselves.