I have chosen my tiny ecology sit spot to be my front deck, why my front deck you may ask? Because it is in close proximity to snacks when I hit those tough topics and because only three years ago it was a fully treed lot, part of a forest at the end of a rural road. It has proven to be a great spot to sit and observe how I have changed the ecosystem and how my efforts are affecting everything around me. It is making me realize both how small I am, yet also how important I am as I feel that I am the sole source of food for our local mosquito community. As I sit here itching, I am pondering disability justice and how I currently show it in my everyday practice, and I could not help but be saddened by my current lack of it. I have had the honor and privilege of volunteering with a local community center helping children with special needs when I was younger, the Child Development Center, and my sister works in a practice helping autistic children develop skills necessary to navigate difficult situations life brings. I am surrounded by so many people affected by disabilities and those helping others with their disabilities, yet I still could not connect the two without being guided. This guided me right into the kitchen to grab a cupcake, tear the bottom off to place on top like a sandwich, and boost my blood sugar to further support the mosquito community. Fortunately, this was both the epiphany and snack I needed. I did not know this was the best way to eat a cupcake until I was shown, much like not realizing the disparity in how climate change events affect the disabled community until it was brought to my attention. This has led me to focus on two of the prompts in particular. How do disabilities affect those in my community? Why is this important in relation to climate change and climate communication?
When I refer to the community for the first question, I veer away from my rural community of mosquitos and turn my focus to a more urban definition involving the town’s general population. Urbanizing my sit spot, I went downtown to observe the general population and recognized a diverse group of marginalized social identities presenting a range of disabilities from addiction, physical disabilities, and visible psychological disabilities. I am focusing on observations around physical disabilities as ableism is the main theme of the prompts selected, albeit it is not the intersectional approach needed as “…liberation does not occur for multiply marginalized people without dismantling multiple systems of oppression…” (Jampel, 2018, para. 6), one could say it is just the patty case. Physical disabilities ranged from requiring crutches or wheelchairs for mobility to congenital disorders such as limb differences. I tried to shift my perspective to theirs and dine or shop in the aging downtown with their disabilities in mind. Immediately I began noticing issues I never noticed before, such as missing curb cuts, step-ups into businesses without ramps or rails, and entrances without accessibility assistance to open doors that were often too narrow for wheelchairs. I noticed that all newer buildings and public service buildings had these in place indicating some awareness of accessibility needs, but the aging downtown has not yet evolved beyond past ways of ableism.
Now that my “shopping” was complete it was time to try and plan a route home on public transit. I have heard that our transit system was sub-par at best and it was time to see how close I could get to home, or at least to a family member’s house who could support me if needed. Wright (2020) iterates that disabled people need access to transportation from their homes to maintain any quality of life such as working or socializing. I could get nowhere near my house without special arrangements that are not always available, which was expected. The closest I could get to family help was still a 1 km walk, or 10 minutes if fully abled. What really perturbed me was the lack of information available on bus routes though. Bus shelters had paid advertisements for local businesses instead of route information indicating the route the bus took or where transfers needed to occur, no indicator of which website or app could help produce a guide, and no schedule of when the bus was due (every half hour which I discerned from looking up the schedule on my phone). Even with my privilege, I found this system difficult to understand and use. What if I was cognitively disadvantaged and could not connect multiple maps and various web pages on the app to create my route home? What if I had a visual impairment and could not read the data on the app? What if I was dealing with homelessness, addiction, or discrimination that accompanies these and did not have access to a cell phone or web to digitally access the routes? It is not uncommon for disability justice, racial justice, and environmental justice to intersect (Jampel, 2018, para. 2) creating a scenario where this information is unavailable due to people’s unwillingness to help the underprivileged, especially when it is a marginalized group. Using Wright’s (2020, para. 33) statistics and our population of roughly 86,000 people (Statistics, 2016), I calculated there to be approximately 14,620 visually impaired [17%] and 8,600 [1%] mobility impaired in our community, that would have greater difficulty navigating the downtown and transit system. Using the Prince George Point-in-Time Homeless Count Report 2021 (Florey et al., 2021), note that there is large underrepresentation due to the nature of the study, there were 356 homeless accounted for the night of March 18th 2021 [0.41%]. This indicates that 23,576 people out of 86,000 will have increased difficulties shopping downtown and using public transportation, these observations bothered me and made me appreciative that I am privileged enough to be able to retreat to my sit spot, grab a cupcake and ponder how some of the disability injustice I witnessed could be exasperated due to climate change and how climate communication could help.
While constructing the perfect bite of comfort, I could not help but notice that the icing was separating both portions of the cupcake from reaching each other. Similar to how climate communication may not be able to reach the desired demographic due to a barrier created by a disability. Should a climate disaster occur how can we help people get themselves to safety through the communication of safe spaces? People with disabilities have a higher mortality rate than those without as proven by past occurrences. This is not directly from the emergency, but from being neglected or left to die (Ghenis, 2018, para. 5) making it important to provide means of empowering self-preservation. Boutilier et al. (2019, p.74) speaks of creating a wayfinding system such as spatial (architectural landmarks supported by maps) or linear (series of directional signs to be followed) wayfinding. Combining spatial and linear wayfinding would serve as a way to direct people to safe locations when technology has failed or is unavailable due to life circumstances. This same method could be applied to bus stops as well to address the transportation issue encountered. Instead of paid advertisements, there could be a map utilizing clear typography and tonal contrast to depict the routes and schedules while tactile messaging on the protective cover communicates to the visually impaired (Boutilier et al., 2019, pp. 17-34). This will not remedy all issues, but it could help lessen the impacts of climate change by communicating safe places in a manner that overcomes barriers in place. This week’s prompts opened my eyes to the extent to which disabilities affect our community, how ableist our downtown is due to both oversight and its age, and forced me to focus on communication methods suitable for intersectional disabilities to help reduce the impact of climate change on this community. It is our responsibility as climate action leaders to ensure communication is modeled to reach all groups. Cupcakes were definitely harmed in the making of this post.
References
Boutilier, R., Forest, E., Kuo, J., Li, E., Rallo, A. (2019) Access Ability 2 A Practical Handbook on Accessible Graphic Design. Association of Registered Graphic Designers. https://www.rgd.ca/database/files/library/RGD_AccessAbility2_Handbook_2019_06_01(1).pdf
Huddleston, J. (2019, November 20). The Proper Way to Eat a Cupcake. Mashed. https://www.mashed.com/175773/the-proper-way-to-eat-a-cupcake/
Jampel, C. (2018, January 11). Intersections of disability justice, racial justice and environmental justice. Environmental Sociology, Vol.4 Issue 1, 122-135 https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2018.1424497
Florey, L., Pateman, K., Thandi, A. (2021) Prince George Point-in-Time Homeless Count 2021. Community Partners Addressing Homelessness. https://www.pgnaeta.bc.ca/uploads/homelessness/Prince%20George%20PiT%202021%20Count.pdf
Ghenis, M. (2018, May 17). Commentary: Disability and climate change – impact on health and survival. Environmental Health News. https://www.ehn.org/climate-change-and-disability-2569643231.html
Statistics Canada. (2016). Focus on Geography Series 2016 Census. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/fogs-spg/Facts-cma-eng.cfm?LANG=Eng&GK=CMA&GC=970&TOPIC=1
Wright, E. (2020, February 19). Climate Change, Disability, and Eco-Ableism: why we need to be inclusive to save the planet. UX Collective. https://uxdesign.cc/climate-change-disability-and-eco-ableism-why-we-need-to-be-inclusive-when-trying-to-save-the-88bb61e82e4e