July is disability awareness month but a lot of people tend to forget it :/ :/ :/
It’s all OK if you didn’t know, don’t feel bad about it, it’s a great occasion to listen to disabled people! We might not have pretty flags who will catch your attentions like during pride months, but we’re still here!
To clarify, now that I’ve looked it up, in the US at least July is specifically ADA Awareness Month. A great thing to do this month is look up laws surrounding pwd and our property.
Some examples:
Grabbing a mobility device (wheelchair, cane, walker, etc) without permission is assault.
Pushing someone’s wheelchair without permission is kidnapping.
Service dog teams are not required to carry any paperwork or certificates with them.
It’s also a good time to look at laws that need to be changed or better enforced:
People on disability income cannot get married without losing their benefits.
People on disability income cannot have more than $2000, including property value (my $300 mattress counts against it), which means they cannot save money if they don’t know about ABLE accounts.
Airlines habitually break the law by mistreating passengers’ wheelchairs.
Accessible construction is still considered an afterthought rather than a cornerstone of design. And no matter what construction companies say, it’s only more expensive to be accessible if you’re tearing up existing features to add ramps and such later, rather than doing it from the get-go.
Disabled people are routinely murdered by doctors who determine that they have no “quality of life” and are better off dead.
All these things disproportionately affect disabled people of color. Educate yourself, attend a virtual town hall meeting if you can, and bring these things up. Make things better.
