Blogging against Disablism, Early.

Well, I'm sort of blogging. Mostly, I'm just providing a link:

Here is a video address from Marlee Matlin and the International Labor Organization, made on the International Day for People with Disabilities (December 3, 2007); it's in Pidgin Signed English, with English subtitles (I think there are also titles available in Spanish and French), and voiced over in English.

For some reason, all embedded media has vanished from my journals. I can still watch them on YouTube, but not here (or in LJ). There's also nothing for me to click either. All I see is a blank space where a vid would have been. So here's a link, instead: Decent work for people with disabilities.

For those of you who can't watch vids, here are the bits that stood out for me:

• One in ten people have a disability, world-wide



• That's six hundred and fifty million, total
  
  
• And four hundred and seventy million of working age.



• That it's not just important to offer jobs to the disabled, but also to offer jobs suited to their abilities and interests
  
  
  • You know the only job that my New York State "rehabilition" social worker told me was available, that she was willing to recommend me for?
  
  
  
  • (after I graduated with a 3.79 GPA in Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Communications)?
  
  
  
  • Packing raw eggs into cartons on an assembly line.
    
    
  • Oh, yeah. That's a perfect job for someone with poor balance, poor muscular timing, and spasticity in her hands.
  
  
  
  • And the salary wasn't even enough to cover the costs of wheelchair-accessible transportaion to get to the job.
  
  
  
• That, in the face of this discrimination and lack of dignity and choice, many people with disabilities just drop out of the workforce.