I became obligated to do cross-disability organizing when I helped develop the telephone access program for people with speech disabilities called Speech-to-Speech (STS). See website below. People who can use this service have CP, ALS, Parkinson's etc. Only a portion of people with each of these disabilities can use STS. Your speech has to be impaired enough to require an experienced listener with good language processing skills to be understood, but it must be clear enough to be deciphered by the Communications Assistant (CA) who helps connect telephone calls for the consumer. It is extremely difficult to identify potential STS users within the disability groups. Once identified, potential users are rarely able to motivate their group to advocate for STS mainly because people with speech disabilities make up such a small proportion of group members that they have little political power. In addition, speech disability itself is an obstacle to success advocacy. I would like to hear from others with cross-disability advocacy challenges.
Bob
Bob Segalman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (Hon), President
Speech Communications Assistance By Telephone, Inc. (SCT)
Call 1-888-877-5302 and then ask for me at 916-448-5517
website: www.speechtospeech.com
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Subject: DISABILITY-RESEARCH Digest - 30 May 2011 to 31 May 2011 (#2011-126)
There are 10 messages totaling 1913 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. shift to "cross-disability" organizing (4)
Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 18:04:27 -0700
From: Sharon Barnartt <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: shift to "cross-disability" organizing
Richard Scotch and I, in our book Disability Protests, discuss this issue in
the American context at some length. It is not as clear cut as you make it
seem--for one thing, organizations such as ADAPT do not fit neatly into the
category of cross-disability organizations. Rather, they, and a number of
other organizations such as NDY, are single issue, multiple disability
organizations. I hope you will look at our book or other sources in order
to make a more nuanced and more empirically correct argument.
Sharon Barnartt
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