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Tag: disability

The language of inclusion on a form

While surfing Twitter, I was drawn to this article because of its title: “Disability-smart customer service: handling difficult situations“. I clicked the link to get to the article, but I didn’t read it. I happened to scroll at the same time and ended up at the registration form section of the page. The form really caught my attention. After the usual name and email fields on the form, I saw a text box labelled “Adjustments”. Inside the box, placeholder text stated: Please tell us if you require any adjustments for this event e.g. dietary, access, assistance, alternative formats, interpreters or disabled parking I think using the term adjustments and the language of the placeholder text is neutral. This could be far less stigmatising than the label of “Disabilities”, “Accessibility”, or “Special Needs”, and much more inclusive. The article is on the Business Disability Forum website. The event for this registration…

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My Ignite! slides and transcript for UX Camp CPH 2013

Whew! What an amazing day and a half at the 2013 edition of UX Camp CPH. I contributed 5 minutes to the start of the event. I volunteered to be a part of the team that Ole Gregersen assembled for a mini-Ignite! session on the Friday evening. My 20 slides are posted on Slideshare and at the bottom of this post. I want to say thank you to those people who came up to me and continued the conversation that I started. It was lovely to meet all of you, and I look forward to hearing more about your ideas and experiences. Without further ado, I present the script that I used to practice my presentation – 15 seconds for each of the 20 slides. I prepared a script, then made notes as I practised, and finally, I made more tweaks mentally as I gave the presentation. This is my…

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Pain and Respect – My BADD2012 Contribution

A group of us had just finished an excellent dinner and were now deciding what dessert to eat. Everyone was laughing and talking at once. Except for one person. One person who had, moments before, been joking loudly, fell silent. She sat very still. Her husband noticed and turned serious. “We need to leave now“, he said, and they left. The rest of us paid for our meal and moved to the exit on foot and on wheels. The silent woman and her husband were already farther down the sidewalk heading back to their hotel. I was shocked at what I saw. To me, it looked like the man was walking beside a stiff, wooden figure. The figure was not the sporty, active person I had met a few days previously. This was a person possessed. She was possessed by the pain of fibromyalgia right in the middle of having…

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