Weekly Friday Procrastination Hour: Editing optional

Weekly meditations upon accessibility, assistive technology, alternate format and the movements of Almighty God as reflected in only a slightly horrible rating on the #DisabilityInChurch scale of difficulties. Only it's Friday afternoon and NOT the time window for the faith community blog so RantWoman's task is to make the meditations seem vaguely work-related. RantWoman will mix examples from various parts of her life. RantWoman WILL somehow offer a Back-to-School shout-out for all kids everywhere who have something in their lives that makes them "weird." RantWoman invites readers to list all the elements here that might make RantWoman weird in the average public elementary school, like basically being a fat four-eyed nerd, never mind that CHURCH piece too. RantWoman also invites teachers to consider, what if ...were in your class?

Digression: 

news item about health care for adult women with disabilities, who sometimes have children with disabilities and therefore belong in the Back-to-School shoutout too.
Enabling Sexual and Reproductive Rights for People with Disabilities

Ask and It Shall be Given: alternate formats

Braille? 

RantWoman has access to a braille embosser and braille translation software. RantWoman has not been asked for the documents she will present at an event in braille, but she needed to troubleshoot a complaint about something wrong with the embosser output. RantWoman has vast technical support experience where the offending device refuses to misbehave in RantWoman's presence. There are worse problems though than to have a braille document for RantWoman to fidget with.

Audio: 

RantWoman's faith community has just updated a book they update about every 20 years. RantWoman found a tweet from 2015 about document #a11y . RantWoman has a lot on her plate and has not been pushing very hard, but  RantWoman recently followed up to see about two paths: headings in the text or Audio. RantWoman owes the process some brain dump about audio options; RantWoman will also enquire whether others might want an audio version and what characteristics would be important for other users..

Electronic format: 

RantWoman has flocks and flocks of people in her faith community who RantWoman wishes would know to ask pres enters in advance about options such as website and email. RantWoman has given herself permission to be especially cross with one person who only on whim responds to requests to email internal documents. Dude, COPE!  Who knew RantWoman needs more reasons to exercise her life strategy to COPE and extract as much meaning as she can from whatever she has access to?

Ask and it shall be given: Zucchini edition

RantWoman has been wanting some zucchini chocolate cake. Lo, a donation of zucchini was delivered in exchange for a couple cups of Evening in Missoula tea.

Evening in Missoula friend can regale RantWoman ith stoires that sound just miserable about scoliosis and pain and responsible adults jut not figuring out the situation.

Ask and it shall be given: Found the Bunny!

RantWoman has Bunny Trauma. In particular when RantWoman was small, lots of eye doctor visits involved RantMom urging RantWoman to look for the bunny. Only as an adult has RantWoman learned: There Was NO BUNNY. RantWoman was just supposed to look for the bunny to help the eye doctor accomplish some needed eye measurements.

RantWoman thinks the Find the Bunny exercise probably involved images of something furry and cuddly. RatnWoman is aware that it is a good year for furry bunnies in Seattle, and guessing about predatory fowl population dynamics possibly a good year  for... As for the bunny RantWoman found, it came from a gift shop somewhere in the US Southwest. It came up in conversation and RantWoman could not even see the bunny across the room at first. Bunnies playing music would definitely be a thing around RantWoman and thankfully because of a decidedly NOT-furry bunny there is no longer a furry bunny hole hopping around in RantWoman's psyche.

Teach the children well: Cane Travel 1 

RantWoman went fishing in her Twitter archive for one set of moments teaching children about blindness. RantWoman discovered a couple moments knows as Worse Auntie. Bad Auntie unintentionally sets bad examples for children. Worse Auntie deliberately breaks rules AND tells someone else it is okay to break rules. On the way to a promise about an accessible document, RantWoman found a tweet about teaching children about travel with a white cane. RantWoman told kids that FOR THE LESSON ONLY, the kids had permission to bang on floors and walls with sticks.

Teach The Children well: Toddler Brownian Motion, Part 1 RantDad

RantDad has the same eye condition RantWoman has. Long ago in the hoary mists of last century, RantDad's RantWoman's and Rant Brother's eyeglasses were a lot thicker and with way worse spherical aberration than the high-index plastic wonders available today. RantWoman remembers RantDay coming home from work sometimes to a household full of the normal pre-school early elementary level of clatter and loose children and just yelling. As an adult, RantWoman has figured out that RantDad was yelling from his own frustration, not because of anything out of the ordinary for children. The yelling still scared RantWoman. RantWoman has an able therapist for further yelling issues, but ...  Further "weird" asterisk  if one's parent, besides the weird eyeglasses issue, also is, um severely overweight, plays the bassoon, and COMES TO ONE'S SCHOOL.

Teach The Children Well Toddler Brownian Motion, Part 2 in public.

To be blunt, it frightens RantWoman badly when children are allowed to run loose in parking lots, worship spaces, hallways. It frightens RantWoman even worse when adults in some kind of responsible role just glibly go on about "oh, some people just have different parenting styles." 

Really? Style this! RantWoman does not want to step on children. RantWoman does not want to trip over children. RantWoman does not want exuberant children plowing into tottery elders. RantWoman in superprotector oldest child complex mode does not want any of the BAD physics events that sometime befall toddlers running loose. RantWoman of course does NOT get to control all of this and RantWoman thanks one grandmother VERY much for attention when RantWoman first found words about the issue. RantWoman is also grateful to have figured out that sometimes parents need a nudge to pay extra attention when very small kids have no idea what the #whitecane means.

Ask and It Shall be Given: Technology

RantWoman is considering how to advise a student about getting a new device he clearly needs if he is going to head down one career path but might not need if he chooses a different focus. RantWoman should be getting paid for this. Should.