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Inability to Type Not a Disability
gizmo_mathboy writes: "The 9th Circuit Court has ruled that not being able to type does not give one protection/privilege under the Americans with Disabilities Act(ADA). This article on Yahoo! has information concerning the case."
Articles like this always tend to freak me out. I'm one of the more autistic geeks out there- couldn't finish school, couldn't keep a normal job because of 'Asperger's Syndrome', a sort of communication-enabled autism. Nobody knew what the hell it was when I was growing up. I developed an ulcer and tried everything from pizza cook to inventory and stockroom for a guitar pickup company, continually getting 'fired in sorrow' by people who knew that I was killing myself _trying_ to do what they wanted, but something was just not fitting somewhere. I turned to drugs (BAD F**KING MOVE) which helped stave off suicide for the time being. I ended up in debt, in a homeless shelter, from there to a psych ward (voluntarily- beat the homeless shelter as long as I behaved well enough to be legitimately allowed to refuse psych meds) and it was there that I found an advocate that got me on social security Disability.
That has meant a lot over the last 6 years or so. I'd never been able to live free from fear of homelessness or hunger before. Your mention of 'skiing holidays' was wonderful because it put things in perspective- I live on about $6K a year. No car (I don't consider myself fit to drive), no DVD player, no cable TV, yada yada. And yet being free from hunger and the destruction of my former life is such a blessing that I feel guilty when reading the harangues of people with ten or twenty times the income and resources of me!
I used to be lazy- or something that looked like it but was more like being stressed into immobility. Once I had the ability to define things on my own terms for a while, it turned out I wasn't lazy, and now I even court RSI ( ;) ) doing things that I like, or things that I mostly like that seem to be a path out of Disability towards a niche I can actually handle. For instance, I'm doing things related to costuming and finding there are actually people out there who'll pay money for that. Great! And so I do that for 12 hour days, alternating with days where I can't face it and sit back and don't do it anymore. I always liked audio and sound engineering, and one thing I taught myself over the last couple years is programming (in 'REALbasic'- sort of RAD language like a cleaner VB), and I now maintain an audio mastering program that I wrote for my own use- but GPLed.
*ramble* sorry for the ramble. All this strikes _very_ close to home. The upshot is, actually, that I don't have total sympathy for this reporter. I think it's great if she gets SSI and is allowed to live on about 6K a year (trust me, one can) to provide a space for her to learn what else she can do. I _don't_ think she is entitled to stick to what she _thinks_ she 'is' in life. At different times, I've thought I 'was' a cook, a stockroom person, a writer for The Absolute Sound (got several articles published actually), a Mac tech, etc. I don't believe any of these things really were so suitable that I should have been allowed to _stick_ myself in that role permanently. I'm glad I moved on from those things, and can draw on all of it as I continue in life.
I think the biggest reason this woman deserved to lose this particular case is because life changes, seemingly faster and faster, and you can't put down an anchor. The most you can ask for is a damn good life raft. I have that, I use it- I don't bitch that the government doesn't give me more money or expect it to under-write the possible paths _away_ from disability for me. It'll take longer for me to chisel out a niche in society this way. That's okay. By the time I do, the niche may not last, but I'll have got good enough at chiseling out niches that I'll no longer fear anything.
My advice to this reporter would be: can you sit back and take stock without fear of homelessness and starvation at this point, and what other roles in life could you see yourself filling?
I was involved in an accident a few years ago that left me missing two fingers on my left hand. That of course make normal keyboarding impossible. I am an IT professinal and I have never been cut any slack becasue of my (and I hate using this term) disablity, and never thought I deserved any either, I have to applaud the court for not buckling under pressure and finally saying that SOMETHING was NOT a disablity.
Someone loses their ability to work in their profession and, for most, participate in their hobby/mental exercise/what-have-you then they are disabled. How does this not apply to typing? Unless someone wants to get me a nerve implant right to my brain/spinal cord, Ima fight that if anything happens to my hands to where I can't type.
.ph0x
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ps -aux | grep mind
Obviously the comments posted here will all be biased against the proposed new law. After all, you have to be able to type to post here, don't you? Most of the SlashDot readers type for a living anyway. That really limits those with an opposing view from being represented in this discussion.
Now imagine if one day you stopped being able to type... Its not impossible... Maybe you suffered nerve damage in your hands, or you lost a few fingers in a farming accident. There are lots of ways to gain this particular disability. You wouldn't be able to work, you wouldn't be able to play computer games, and you wouldn't be able to chat on IRC. Worst of all, you wouldn't be able to post comments about your plight on message boards like SlashDot that have no provisions for those suffering from this particular disability.
What happens when a 55 yo programmer has carpel tunnel or arthritis? If he is smart, and has planned well, he bids his currrent employer a tearful goodbye, and spends the rest of his days in the carribean.
Just my take on the matter.
Consider, a blind person can dress him/herself, do laundry, make a bed, even shop in some cases. They cannot drive, of course, however they can get around by walking or bus. And in some cases, someone with carpal tunnel or similar may not be able to drive safely, as the pain it causes their wrists can be extreme.
There was one comment on slashdot recently about a man who owned a small computer company, who was completely blind, but walked around without a cane or any sort of guide, built, troubleshooted, took apart, added to, computers by touch, using brail or text-to-speech for interaction with the computers, etc.
However, if they had fired this reporter because she'd gone blind, she would likely have won without trouble.
Voice recognition is COMPLETELY viable, even in 1997 it was usable, esspecialy if the user had some use of their hands to allow for manual corrections when neccisary. All they would have had to do was spend a few hundred dollars on Dragon Naturally Speaking, and a few bucks on a microphone, and everything would have been fine.