Author: diyabled

What DIY?

As I started writing for DIYabled, I was getting asked by a lot of folks what is DIY? The acronym stands for Do It Yourself and while a DIY movement has a lot of history, the term itself can really refer to anything from remodeling homes to fixing your own bike. When I talk about it, I am referring to the DIY ethic that has existed in the underground music scene. It was an ethos that had its beginnings in the 1970s as a way for bands to bypass the corporate mainstream industry by, you guessed it, Doing It Yourself. Over the last 50 years, this DIY ethos has grown from the art/punk music scene to what we see today. All genres, from intimate folk shows to electronic dance parties to experimental music, have turned to the DIY ethos as a means to develop an opportunity to make music and play for the people who helped create it.

Why DIY?

I was fortunate to part of a group of folks in the 90s that worked together to set up an infrastructure for bands to tour, put out records and actually play their music for an audience! We lived in the south and wanted to play our music and share our art there and beyond. We did not fit into the mainstream at the time so we created our own spaces: houses, basements, even the outdoors. No places were off limits. With a generator and some speakers a show could be created just about anywhere. It was a community we created ourselves for ourselves. DIY is about community. And without a community, we are alone.

Why think about accessibility?

People Living with Disabilities (PLD) make up the largest minority in the world. It’s been reported that there were about 57 million PLD in 2010 in the U.S. alone. As a community, if you are not thinking about accessibility, you are excluding a huge group of people. Any group of individuals that understands the true meaning of the DIY ethic also understands that without it, this minority could not live. Because most people I meet have no idea what accessibility means exactly, I decided to make this zine to give some tips about DIY accessibility.

How to know or make your space is accessible?

Due to the nature of DIY, accessibility is a huge issue. But this does not mean that you can’t try to make your space PLD friendly if not completely PLD accessible. What that means is PLD can get in and out of a space to enjoy an event, even if they may not be able to use the bathroom or parts of your space are not completely accessible.

The space. Wide open spaces with with no obstacles like record shelves or garbage cans in the way.

The entrance. If it is completely ground level, perfect. If there are stairs, build a ramp. There are lots of DIY wheelchair ramp tutorials on YouTube. The ADA requires a ramp ratio of 1:20, so for every inch of height, you need 20 inches of length for the ramp. A step that is 3 inches would require 5 feet or 60 inches of ramp. This is not always possible to do with the amount of space available so if you have to, just make a steeper ramp. Do it! Having a ramp will allow any person in a wheelchair to access your space. If it is too steep you can always use our greatest resource, humans, to help push the wheelchair up the ramp.

Doors. The ADA requires door widths to be at least 32 inches. If your door width is a bit smaller, that is fine because that width is for an average wheelchair to fit through the doors. Some people have wheelchairs that are smaller than 32 inches and some that are larger.

Bathrooms. The biggest challenge. ADA has specifics and from my experiences, DIY spaces rarely have accessible bathrooms. A door that is actually wide enough is required but if the wheelchair can actually get in and the person can get to the toilet, having grab bar would help. You can purchase them at your local hardware store and they’re really cheap!

In reality every space cannot be accessible. When a space is having an event, informing people in advance about whether or not they can get in is another way to include the people of your community. An easy way to do this is displaying an accessible symbol if your space is PLD accessible. This is a symbol saying that you are PLD friendly, please contact for specifics. You can also put up an accessible symbol with a line through it if your space is completely inaccessible. Disability comes in so many shapes and sizes that you should always offer contact information so if PLD are intrested they can make 100% sure they can get in. These small gestures of consideration are important because there is nothing more heartbreaking than watching all of your able bodied peers walk into an inaccessible space.

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As 2017 unfolded, it forced me to think about our history as Americans. Sure, in school I learned a few things about women’s suffrage, slavery, and Martin Luther King Jr, but if we stepped back and took a closer look at America’s history, civil rights was not the popular idea as is seen today.

Black men were allowed to vote in the United States in 1870, before women of any color, but barriers like literacy tests, grandfather causes, and the poll taxes prevented most black men from voting. The voting rights act was not passed until 1965, 95 years after black men were allowed to vote. This new law made sure that every person (women, people of religious minorities, Latinos, People Living with Disabilties, LGBTQ identifying, and whites) are allowed to vote in the United States.

When you’re born into a generation when these rights already exist, it seems so strange to imagine that at one time, we voluntarily chose to let only Christian white men vote. Somehow it makes you think these rights were acquired overnight but they were not! When we look at where we are today and we see the discrimination due to religion, race, gender, sexual preference/identity, and ability, we should not be surprised.

Civil rights was something that we accomplished as a country on paper; however, we did not really continue fighting for it as a whole society. Instead, discrimination was shrouded in silence. We have laws in place to prevent these discriminations but a woman may still not get a job because of her gender or if she reveals that she is interested in having a family with children. Another person may not get a job because of the color of their skin. This is all due to the personal or corporate secret discriminations. Employment is merely one area where we see discrimination in modern times.

Let’s look at voting. How much different is the discrimination that exists between then and now? Representatives gerrymander their districts, effectively choosing their constituents rather than having the people choose who they want to represent them. This suppresses the votes of the very people to whom we have given the rights. This is done in a much more covert way than having things like literacy tests or poll taxes which was obviously meant to keep black or poor men from voting. So when we turn to our modern “It’s not my fault” mentality, we somehow feel that these rights are things we born with, not something people had to fight for and fight hard. When immediate justice is not served, we want to look to others for blame: the poor, the uneducated, the Russians. But when we step back and truly look at the history of discrimination in the United States, we can see that not only has it existed, but we can also see the people that have been discriminated against who continuously fought for their rights  whether their actions quite often failed more than succeeded. Yet despite the failures, these people still got up and spoke their minds. They essentially became the thorns poking continuously in the sides of the people who were suppressing their rights. And all this was done in a world where getting a another person to listen about civil rights seemed anything short of being a miracle. So when we see discrimination and do nothing except complain about its existence on our social media while 20 of our friends hit the “like” button, are we really moving forward? Or will we need actual human action to express how important our rights are to us?

It is true that we have been tested this year as to what our beliefs are as Americans. To spite this, we must not forget the generations before us fought and fought hard to make sure we have the rights we all deserve. When you are feeling overwhelmed by the injustice you see, step away from the news, social media, and opinion blogs and look to your right and then to your left. Look at the people around you and remember no matter who see — a woman, a queer, a Latino family, a family of mixed race, or a person with a walker — just remember there were so many people before whom not only fought but gave their lives for these the rights we enjoy so far. Discrimination will never be completely extinguished. When any person is being marginalized, we are accountable to make our voices heard, to stand up for them, and to forever continue this fight that was so bravely started for us a very long time ago.

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Today I went to The Big Crafty here in Asheville. It was such a great event for the extremely talented Asheville art community to share what they do with the community they live in. I did really enjoy it, but unfortunately there was one huge thing overlooked that was really bothering me the entire time I was there. Some of vendors had booths that were inaccessible to people living with physical disabilties. As I looked around I noticed the large amount of people using wheelchairs, walkers, and canes and I was really bothered that these people would not have the freedom to explore all the options available to them.

People Living with Disabilties(PLD) are extremely susceptible to depression due to isolation and when an event like this or of any kind is not all inclusive by being aware of this is contributing to the isolation this community feels. While I do not think this was purposeful act of the disregard of awareness of the PLD it is something that we as a community need to strive to remember because the damage to a PLD’s independence in this case is not one of just physical, but mental as well.

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