Alternate abilities and queerness

Dr Samhita Barooah

World Disability Day marks the beginning of engaging with sensitive innovation. Every December 3, globally the needs and challenges of persons with disability are recognised and respected. When legal, community and structural measures are transformed to co-create enabling conditions with disabled persons in the everyday concerns of society, one creates alternate abilities. Every ability depends on exposure, experience and techniques of practice. Ableism is the real form of disability in today's world. Its not enough to be able to do something effortlessly with all your senses working, functional limbs, mental sensitivity and psychological stability. Our bodies and mindsets are tuned to effortlessness and taken for granted attitudes. So many socio cultural practices are laid out to celebrate ableism and discard disability of mind, body and the psyche. The moment one falters and moves away from the periphery of ableism for any contextual reason, discrimination creeps in. Ableism centres around the intersections of age, sex, intellect, power, ownership, economic stability and societal acceptance. All these are attached to a physical body of being able and influencial. Why are alternate abilities crucial in this context?

In the pandemic, post pandemic and post structural era, most structures are crumbling and new normals are challenging every ability that one used to be applauded for. Communications and technology dominated the pre-pandemic world. But today both have proved to isolate rather than integrate people across cultures, homes, communities, borders and continents. We are devising alternate abilities to deliver services, essentials, supplies and products which are alternate ability user friendly. Mobility sector is innovating to include persons with disabilities. Public architecture can also innovate to engage with the specific abilities of the persons with disabilities. It is very crucial these days to invest in future changes of lifecycle which might be transformational in a person's life. With pandemic related mobility restrictions, ableism has erupted in differential forms. Societies with alternate abilities could withstand the changes in workplaces, businesses and resources. Resistance to exclusive practices have further strengthened with the pandemic realities.

With the new vaccination trials and exclusive care and treatment facilities for covid patients, persons with disabilities have become further critical to be included within the policy, legislation and political priorities. Are persons with disabilities included or are they positioned as vaccine trial scapegoats is a big question? It becomes a very hard decision to understand whether persons with disabilities across diverse genders have found inclusive space within learning platforms, online learning applications, safe distanced classrooms. Are homes meant for persons with disability adequately equipped, financially stable and infrastructurally inclusive to ensure all needs? Alternate abilities are hardly understood, productively recognised or professionally supported in this digital era.

For a person with disability, physical spaces are restricted, personal space is intruded in lieu of care and vigilance, social space is excluded, professional space is limited, community space is divisive, policy space is pitiful, political space is inaccesible and sexual space is tabooed. How does alternate abilities evolve with such ableism which is intoxicated with the able bodied person in every family. During the lockdown period, wonder how did persons with disability survive within the four walls of their house and community. Alternate abilities also emerge through queerness that exists around us. Does this queerness engage with the diversity of thought, action and policies?

We have language disability in diverse locations. There is an urgent need for local dialect translation devices to communicate better. Along with the different provisions of national education policy there is a huge need to ensure sign language in different state and international languages within the optional choices for elementary schooling. Signage interpretors are needed in every public location to ensure safety and guidance to commuters in public transport, markets and public utility places. Elders with Alzheimer's also needs such support services. Multiple vulnerabilities like functional disabilities, covid confinement, immobility, lack of care givers within home space, gender queer discrimination, digital non-literacy can leave anyone disabled in today's wired, complexed and individualistic world. Alternate abilities need a lot of support amidst foundational practices of everyday living. Queerness within a structure, flexibility in infrastructure, fluidity in planning, responsiveness to immediate and distant problems might go a long way in ensuring a queerability future which goes beyond ableism. Our alternate abilities are hidden behind veils of shame, fear, rejection and pain. Lets get our communities accessible, policies practically applicable, laws justify actions and people realise their alternate abilities to ensure equity with dignity. Within diverse entitlements of persons with disability the acceptance of one's own alternate ability holds utmost importance. Mobility, technical adaptability, public amenities access, equal opportunity in leadership positions, personal relationship security holds huge relevance to persons with disability. Assessments of alternate abilities, diversifying product innovation to fullfill specific needs, co-create emerging enabling conditions holds utmost priority. Gender, queerness and disability has an integral intersection which is the need of the hour. Just a few days back, we were discussing whether to allot the toilets meant for the disabled persons in public spaces accessible to queer persons too. This was a suggestive makeshift logistical arrangement. But a hard claimed space of the persons with disability across any gender cannot be further demarcated for the queer community. Within the realm of persons with disability there can be space for queer persons with disability. But queer persons sharing the already claimed space of persons with disability might be problematic. This requires further debate and discussion regarding the needs of the queer persons and persons with disability across the gender spectrum vis-a-vis accessible toilets in public, institutional and private spaces too. This reminds me of how home toilets used to be inaccessible to children with disability affecting their sexual and reproductive health adversely. Such children could use the institutional toilets only when they used to come to their schools, therapy centres and other such places of utility but never go to their own home toilets as they could not restructure them. In today's era of pandemic, disasters, conflicts and displacements many temporary shelters are also bereft of such sensitivity towards persons with disability. Wonder if our public monuments, tourist locations and hospitality industry has such accessibility scope for clients with alternate ability needs. Can the spectrum of access reach these diverse spheres where persons with disability share similar public space and not get abused in private for existing ableism?