I seem to be thinking about the balance between optimism and pessimism today.
Here are your three disability-related links for Wednesday, April 10, 2024.
1. nTIDE March 2024 Jobs Report: Despite Recent Declines, People with Disabilities Remain Engaged in the Labor Market
National Trends in Disability Employment (nTIDE) - April 5, 2024
“Despite small declines in the employment-to-population ratio over the past four months, employment remains at historically high levels for people with disabilities. The small gain in their labor force participation rate is a positive sign that people with disabilities are still engaging in the labor market by looking for work.”
Interpreting disability employment statistics always seems to be a “glass half empty” / “glass half full” business. Lately, the message seems to be that the job market is improving for disabled people, while there’s still a huge employment gap between people with and without disabilities. Still, a little dose of optimism in the field of disability and employment, backed up by verifiable statistics, isn’t a bad thing. What it means for actual disabled people thinking about employment goals is harder to pin down.
Source: Email bulletin
2. 'Overwhelming support' for disability benefit complicated by slow implementation, survey finds
Mitchell Consky, CTV News - April 8, 2024
“Khera’s comments emerged against a backdrop of criticism from Canadians over the government’s slow pace of disability resource implementation … According to Angus Reid, only one-in-20 (five per cent) of respondents report feeling “confident the federal government will follow through, while 45 per cent doubt it will and 13 per cent say they are certain the benefit will never be distributed.””
Disappointment about failure to deliver on promised and even duly passed disability programs and laws is an underrated factor in disability communities’ disengagement and pessimism. Here in the U.S. and apparently in Canada too, there always seems to be a large contingent of disabled people and their allies — often family members — who support disability policy changes in theory, but can almost be counted as opponents because they simply don’t believe positive changes will ever happen. This sort of arms-folded skepticism is often justified. Promised improvements take a long time to be visible. And changes meant to be good for disabled people often have unanticipated downsides. But too much of this disappointment also undermines the kind of disability activism that is really the only hope for actual improvement in disabled people’s lives and place in their communities. Maybe faster roll-out and more tangible results for actual disabled people should be a higher priority in designing better disability policy.
3. 'Overjoyed' Is A Switch-Compatible, One-Finger Accessibility App That's Available Now
Alana Hagues, Nintendo Life - April 6, 2024
“‘The name of the controller is Overjoyed because it's an overlayed joystick,’ Anthony shared with us, ‘but also, it is a feeling you get when you're able to play a game again.’”
This is the kind of adaptive product announcement that always sounds good, but is nearly impossible to assess independently. We need a kind of “Consumer Reports” for all adaptive products, including for gaming. Still, the fact that this particular adaptive controller is spearheaded by an actual disabled gamer is encouraging.
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