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      in Television

      A New Coalition Amplifies Disability Culture in the Music Industry

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      RAMPD, an organization of professional disabled musicians, will push for accessibility in the music industry, including adding visible ramps to awards show stages.For the singer, songwriter and producer Lachi, the acronym was everything.She helped start the organization that would become RAMPD — Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities — in July 2021, but it was a few months earlier, after moderating a panel for the Recording Academy about disability inclusion, that she came up with the name.“After that aired, musicians with disabilities were coming out of the woodwork and following me on Instagram, DMing me going, ‘What are we going to do? Are you going to lead this charge? What’s next?’” Lachi said in an interview. “Everyone was energized. And that’s when the spark came, of the acronym.”RAMPD, which Lachi co-founded with the singer-songwriter and violinist Gaelynn Lea, alongside a dozen or so founding members, works to amplify disability culture and advocate for accessibility in the music business. One of its main goals, fittingly, is to make accessibility ramps visible on TV during awards shows to help normalize disability in the entertainment industry.The coalition’s kickoff will be a virtual event at 5 p.m. on Friday, with opening and closing remarks live from the Grammy Museum Experience at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. (The Grammy Awards, originally scheduled for Jan. 31, have been pushed back to April 3.) Adrian Anantawan, a classical violinist; Eliza Hull, an indie rock singer-songwriter; and Molly Joyce, an organist and songwriter, will perform, alongside other disabled musicians, and professional membership applications for the group will open.“Our professional membership have awards, have toured, have worked with big names, are big names themselves,” said Lachi, who is based in New York. “And we’re not here to make folks feel warm and gushy. We’re not here to get handouts. We’re here to get gigs. We’re here to get on stages, we’re here to get paid.”“Disability isn’t ‘despite this, they did this,’” said the singer-songwriter and violinist Gaelynn Lea, a RAMPD co-founder. “It’s more like, ‘because of their identity as a disabled artist, you are enjoying this art in this form.’” Paul VienneauIn October, RAMPD partnered with the inaugural Wavy Awards for an event celebrating women, L.G.B.T.Q. artists, nonbinary musicians, artists of color, performers who identify as having a disability and allies. The organization advised the show on American Sign Language interpretation, captioning, audio description and ensuring the inclusion of people with disabilities on-camera and behind the scenes.Perhaps Lachi’s favorite part, though, was promoting the use of what she calls “self description,” known widely as visual description, which is added as audio to television programs and movies to help people with low vision and people who are blind, like herself.“My name is Lachi, she/her, Black girl, cornrows,” she said as an example. “So that’s what I go by. And that’s all it is.”She underscored how racism, sexism and homophobia compound the discrimination disabled people face. “It’s paramount for folks to recognize that disability has color, that disability has gender, that disability has sexual preference and that disability is not straight, white, middle-America male,” she said.Lea, who was born with osteogenesis imperfecta and is based in Minnesota, pointed out that she wouldn’t make the same music — which won NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2016 — if not for her life experience.“Disability isn’t ‘despite this, they did this,’” she said in an interview. “It’s more like, ‘because of their identity as a disabled artist, you are enjoying this art in this form.’”She added, “Disability culture and the movement that we’re starting I think really is actually up there in terms of cultural shifts with all the other diversity movements we’re talking about.”Through the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council in Duluth, Minn., Lea received the Arts Ecosystem Grant, which will allow RAMPD to build a membership database of professional disabled artists — something that never existed until now. RAMPD also recently secured a fiscal sponsor, Accessible Festivals, a nonprofit organization that will help manage RAMPD’s grants and donations, and allow for the group to grow beyond Lachi and Lea.“We want to see more leaders emerge out of this and people recognize them in the community, because sometimes it feels like I get asked to do so many events, and it’s partly because I feel like people don’t know anyone else to ask,” Lea said. “That’s something that we have to fix.” More

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      in Theater

      Neil Marcus, Whose Art Illuminated Disability, Dies at 67

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      A playwright and actor, he saw his life as performance art. He was best known for his play “Storm Reading.”At each performance of his play “Storm Reading,” the writer and actor Neil Marcus offered his audience a reminder: “Disability is not a brave struggle or courage in the face of adversity. Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.”Mr. Marcus, who had dystonia, a neurological disorder that causes involuntary muscle contractions and affects speech, starred in the play, which comically illuminated how he passed through the world in a typical week, through vignettes of him conversing with grocery shoppers, doctors and passers-by.In 1988, when the show had its premiere at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara, Calif., people more often than not looked away from those with disabilities. “We’ve always been taught as kids we don’t point, don’t laugh, just basically ignore them,” Rod Lathim, the director of “Storm Reading,” said in an interview.In contrast, “Storm Reading” encouraged audiences to laugh with Mr. Marcus about his experiences.“Neil invited and welcomed, and in some cases demanded that people look,” Mr. Lathim said. “And so he brought them into his reality, which was not a reality of disability; it was a reality of his definition of life.”The success and longevity of the play, which toured throughout the country until 1996, turned Mr. Marcus into a pioneer of the disability culture movement. He called his work a reclamation of personhood in a world determined to deny people with disabilities their autonomy.Mr. Marcus died on Nov. 17 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 67.His sister Kendra Marcus said the cause was dystonia.In 1987, Mr. Marcus and his brother Roger contacted Mr. Lathim, the director of Access Theater, a Santa Barbara company that regularly mounted plays featuring disabled artists. Neil Marcus sent over samples of his writing and asked Mr. Lathim if the theater would be interested in adapting them.Their conversation led to the genesis of “Storm Reading.” Mr. Marcus, his brother and Mr. Lathim worked together to draft the play, whose cast of three originally also included Roger as “The Voice,” who portrayed Neil’s thoughts during his interactions (the role was later played by Matthew Ingersoll), as well as a sign language interpreter.The show was physically taxing for Mr. Marcus. But it also invigorated him.“There’s no drug, there’s no treatment, that is, in my opinion, as powerful as the interaction between a live audience and an artist on the stage,” Mr. Lathim said. “And watching Neil transform from that was astounding.”Scenes from “Storm Reading” were filmed for NBC as part of a 1989 television special about disability, “From the Heart,” hosted by the actor Michael Douglas. The cast reunited in 2018 for a performance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.Neil Marcus was born on Jan. 3, 1954, in Scarsdale, N.Y., the youngest of five children of Wil Marcus, who worked in public relations, and Lydia (Perera) Marcus, an actor. When Neil was 6, the family moved to Ojai, Calif.Neil was 8 when he learned he had dystonia, and he attempted suicide at 14 after a taxing series of surgeries, he said in a 2006 oral history interview for the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.But counseling gave him confidence. He attended Ojai Valley School, where he was often spotted zooming around in a golf cart. After graduating from high school as valedictorian in 1971, he traveled to Laos; when he returned, he hitchhiked around the West Coast and eventually took classes at Fairhaven College, part of Western Washington University, and elsewhere. He moved to Berkeley in 1980 and became active in the disability activist community there.He explored art through various partnerships. With professional dancers, he participated in “contact improvisation” performances, which eschewed formal choreography and instead followed the seemingly frenetic movements of Mr. Marcus’s dystonia.He also wrote widely. He worked with the University of Michigan professor and activist Petra Kuppers on the Olimpias Performance Research Project, an artist collective that spotlights performers with disabilities in performances and documentaries. Their conversations on disability as art were published in a 2009 essay, “Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance.” The two also wrote a book, “Cripple Poetics: A Love Story” (2008), which features poetry and photography highlighting the physicality and sensuality of disability.The Neil Marcus Papers, including his essays, poems and correspondence, are held at the Bancroft Library.In addition to his sister Kendra, Mr. Marcus is survived by another sister, Wendy Marcus, and his brothers, Roger and Russell.In 2014 the Smithsonian National Museum of American History commissioned Mr. Marcus to write a poem dedicating its online exhibition “EveryBody: An Artifact History of Disability in America.”His poem began: “If there was a country called disabled, I would be from there./I live disabled culture, eat disabled food, make disabled love,/cry disabled tears, climb disabled mountains and tell disabled stories.” More

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      in Movies

      AMC to Add Onscreen Captions at Some Locations

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      The move was lauded by advocates for the deaf and the hard of hearing, but theater owners worry audiences don’t want captions.AMC Entertainment, the largest movie theater chain in the world, will offer open captioning at 240 locations in the United States, a move that the company’s chief executive described as “a real advance for those with hearing difficulties or where English is a second language.”Movie theaters provide closed captioning through devices that some customers describe as inconvenient and prone to malfunctioning. Open captions, however, are displayed on the screen in a way similar to subtitles; everyone in the theater sees the same captions, on the same screen.Advocates for the deaf and hard of hearing have long sought more and higher-quality captioning, but theater owners worry that people who aren’t deaf simply don’t like seeing captions at the movies.“In some cases, putting open captions on the screen diminishes ticket sales for the movie,” said John Fithian, the president and chief executive of the National Association of Theatre Owners, although he noted that the evidence was mostly anecdotal. He said the industry, whose business has been battered by the pandemic, was studying the relationship between open captions and ticket sales.Christian Vogler, a professor at Gallaudet University, a school in Washington that serves the deaf, said in an email, “Detractors of open captions often have argued that the wider hearing audience would revolt over them, or that these would be a losing business proposition for theaters.” He praised AMC’s move, which was announced last week, saying, “The fact that a large national chain has had a change of heart is significant, and may even open the floodgates for others to follow suit.”Other major theater chains, including Regal Cinemas and Cinemark, did not respond to messages seeking comment, and AMC did not say what precipitated the company’s decision.But Mr. Fithian, whose group represents large chains and small theater owners alike, said the industry had been paying more attention to open captioning recently as advocates for the deaf and hard of hearing have voiced concerns about closed-captioning devices.“AMC’s the first to go public with what they’re rolling out,” he said. “But this is all part of an industrywide effort to improve access by both making sure our closed-captioning systems are working, but also by expanding the number of voluntary open-caption shows across the country.”The announcement brought some measure of hope to the deaf and the hard of hearing.Megan Albertz, of South Florida, was at a brewery on Saturday where a captioned version of the 1995 Robin Williams movie “Jumanji” was playing in the background.Ms. Albertz, 29, was born with profound hearing loss and realized, having previously seen “Jumanji” without captions, that she had originally misunderstood scenes or characters’ dialogue.“Over the years, I’ve rewatched movies I had seen in theaters on various streaming platforms with captions, and I am continuously blown away with how much language or lines I missed,” she said in an email.She called AMC’s decision a step toward “accessibility for all” but wanted the company and the industry to continue expanding open-caption options.In recent years, because of litigation, legislation and pressure from disability-rights advocates, the theater industry has made closed-captioning equipment more widely available. That equipment includes the Sony glasses used by Regal Cinemas and the Captiview device, which attaches to a theater seat’s cupholder and displays captions.“These devices have their fans,” Dr. Vogler, of Gallaudet University, said, “but are also widely despised, due to both their propensity to cut out, get misconfigured, run out of battery, and their inferior usability and ergonomics compared to” open captioning.AMC said that only select, clearly designated showtimes would feature open captioning and that the “vast majority” of its showtimes would still be offered with closed captioning.The company’s chief executive, Adam Aron, noted that the expansion was in time for Marvel’s “Eternals,” which is set to open on Nov. 5 and features Lauren Ridloff, an actress who has been deaf since birth and who plays the first deaf superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.In an interview with The New York Times in August, Ms. Ridloff said most movie theaters were not accessible to the deaf, who are often viewed as an “afterthought.”“You have to use a special closed-captioning device to watch subtitling in a theater, and it’s a headache, because most of the time the devices don’t work,” she said. “Then you have to go back to the front desk and find somebody to help, and by the time they figure it out that it’s not working — that it’s not going to be subtitled at all — the movie’s halfway done.” More

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      in Television

      Jillian Mercado on ‘Generation Q’ and the Importance of Joyful Stories

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      This interview contains minor spoilers for Episode 9 of Season 2 of “The L Word: Generation Q.”In its five years on air, “The L Word” brought lesbian romances, drama and many, many sex scenes to the small screen. (One hundred eleven, to be exact, but who’s counting?)But Jillian Mercado — the 34-year-old actress and model who plays Maribel in the show’s reboot, “Generation Q” — never thought she would be in one of those sex scenes. Growing up with muscular dystrophy, she rarely saw physically disabled actors on TV at all.A Dominican American Bronx native who attended New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, Mercado began making her name as a model back in 2014, when she landed her first ad campaign with Diesel. Since then, she has signed with Creative Artists Agency; founded an initiative called Black Disabled Creatives; and joined the cast of “Generation Q,” her first acting role.Although the original “L Word” notably lacked major characters who weren’t cisgender lesbians (or really anyone who fell outside of the narrow scope of straight, white beauty standards), the reboot, which debuted in late 2019, welcomed Mercado into a notably more diverse cast. And this season, as a romance blossomed between Maribel and Micah (Leo Sheng), Mercado got to become the kind of character she wanted to see when she was younger.Mercado began making her name as a model in 2014, when she landed her first ad campaign with Diesel. Her character on “Generation Q” is her first major acting role.Bethany Mollenkof for The New York Times“Intimacy and sex for the disability community was never something I literally ever saw on TV until now,” Mercado, who uses a wheelchair, wrote last month on Instagram after her first sex scene aired in Episode 5. “My heart is so FULL of gratitude that I am able to say that I am one of the first people to show you how that looks like on national television, for millions of people to see.”In the show, Mercado plays a sharp-witted lawyer who often acts as the voice of reason, doling out advice to her younger sister, Sophie, along with their mutual friends. But a more vulnerable side of her character is revealed when Maribel’s friendship with Micah, a transgender man, grows into something more complicated. As Maribel and Micah sleep together and ultimately fall in love, it gives viewers an opportunity to celebrate the two characters’ joy rather than highlight their past traumas.“Honestly, the only thing that we want is for people to understand that we’re human,” Mercado said.In a video interview from Los Angeles, where “Generation Q” is filmed, Mercado discussed queer dating and the importance of telling joyful stories about disabled people. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Were you a fan of the original series?I actually used to watch it under my covers when I was younger because my parents thought it was a little too risqué for me to watch, which got me even more curious.Did you identify with any of the characters?I don’t think there was a specific person that I identified with. I picked parts of every character. I mean, Shane was always such a badass; she was a troublemaker. Her plots were always so chaotic and interesting.I come from a Dominican household, and we love drama. We love mixing things up. So I always leaned more toward her character. But I think that everyone just had a different aspect of what life is about. Each character highlighted the best and the worst qualities of the human experience in the dating world, and specifically the queer world.Do you think the show has done a good job deepening its representation of characters who aren’t white cisgender lesbians?I mean, I’m on the show, so that says a lot! There’s not one specific way to be queer, and that’s why “Generation Q” has been making sure that everyone is seen and heard.How did you incorporate your experiences as a queer, Hispanic person with muscular dystrophy into Maribel’s character while also being sensitive to your own boundaries and privacy?My character — and my work in general — always feeds into my real life and my personal life. But what I’ve learned, as I enter the adult world, is to really make sure that you do take time for yourself and make sure you’re aligned with what you believe in. But I also love being an advocate for my community, and I’ve been privileged to talk in my work about different things that have been lacking in my community.You’ve mentioned before that seeing Aimee Mullins open Alexander McQueen’s spring 1999 show in custom wooden prosthetic legs was formative for you as an aspiring model; were there any actors on the big or small screen who gave you a similar moment of inspiration?I think the only representation where there was with someone who had a physical disability was always in a hospital. It was always very medical, like, “Save this person from whatever their disability is.” But we’re not just all about medical devices or medical situations. We’re so much more than that. And on television, if there was representation, it was always played by somebody who didn’t have a disability. And their narration of what I was watching was not even remotely close to my lived experience or to what most disabled people live.Episode 5 of Season 2, which aired in September, contained an intimate scene between Mercado’s character, Maribel, and Micah, a transgender man played by Leo Sheng.Liz Morris/ShowtimeMaribel’s sex scene with Micah is one of few TV sex scenes involving a physically disabled person; what felt important to keep in mind as that scene was developed?The writers of the show were amazing and so communicative about what would make me feel comfortable and what was most important for me. But I know that I have never seen a sex scene with someone who is actually disabled, onscreen. And I was excited because I was like, ‘Oh, I get to do this for millions of people who’ve never seen it.’ But it also kind of hurt me that that was a reality.Yeah, it’s hot, and of course it’s “The L Word,” so everything looks amazing and beautiful, but for me, it was so much more than that. It was having the conversation that is such a taboo for people who have disabilities, where people think that we don’t go out; we don’t have relationships; we don’t have intimacy with anybody, because they think that nobody will ever love us because we look different or we live life differently. We all have different ways of being intimate with each other, and just because ours is more visibly different, it doesn’t make it less-than.“I think the only representation where there was with someone who had a physical disability was always in a hospital,” Mercado said of onscreen depictions growing up. “We’re so much more than that.”Bethany Mollenkof for The New York TimesMaribel’s relationship doesn’t blossom without friction, but her romantic plotline is notably healthy and positive this season. Why do you think the writers went in that direction with Maribel, as opposed to the complicated (and sometimes very messy) relationships that the show usually creates?It’s really special to have a story line where it’s not messy and not chaotic — because trust me, I love a good chaotic moment, but I’m a sucker for a love story. I’m such a hopeless romantic. I also think that because Leo is trans and I’m disabled, that’s already a story line in itself. People can just feel like these are just two people who really love themselves, and it doesn’t have to be messy because maybe society views them as messy.What would you like to see next for your character?Maribel is such a strong, boss character, so I’m curious to see where she goes because this is the first time that she’s really let her guard down. She’s been hurt so many times. But she’s such a stubborn, determined person that I’m curious to see if she’s going to be the one to mess it up. I know Micah is the sweetest character on this show, so there’s no way that he’s going to do anything like mess that up. But I feel like Maribel might. More

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      in Movies

      Shopping Cart Theory, and Practice

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      An essential tool. An inspiration for artists. A public nuisance. The humble shopping cart has been all of these in the decades since it was invented. But what does it reveal about our character?The next time you go to the grocery store, consider the ordinary shopping cart as something more than a rattling basket blocking your parking space.In the 1930s, an American grocer named Sylvan Goldman invented the precursor to the modern day shopping cart, using a folding frame that was fixed on a set of wheels. He hoped that people would buy more groceries if they did not have to carry heavy baskets as they browsed.And they did.But over the decades, the shopping cart has evolved from its mundane existence as the centerpiece of every grocery store run.Like the Campbell’s Soup can, it has become an unlikely icon in a subculture that celebrates the common object.Shopping carts have been the focus of books and films, and their use examined in magazine columns and classrooms as tools to explain how humans behave in public. They have found a dubious niche on the internet as the stars of a YouTube show, followed by half a million people. They have even inspired musicians: The steady clacking of a cart rolling down a street was the inspiration for both the sound and the words in Neil Young’s 1994 song “Safeway Cart.”They are also a nuisance. Legislators and store owners across the United States have struggled with how to prevent the carts from being stolen, left in handicapped parking spots, discarded on sidewalks, abandoned at bus stops or tipped into creeks.Shirley Yu for The New York TimesAn Enduring Cultural ArtifactIn 2005, a cart infiltrated the British Museum, when the artist Banksy paired one with a cave man on a piece of fake prehistoric rock art — and then secretly installed the rock in a gallery, unnoticed for days.Another Banksy creation, the painting “Show Me the Monet,” incorporated discarded carts in nature. It sold at auction for about $10 million in December.John H. Lienhard, a history of technology professor at the University of Houston, described shopping carts as a “flash of genius” that altered American life during an episode of his public radio show, “The Engines of Our Ingenuity.”Decades after that 1995 broadcast, Dr. Lienhard is still trying to explain how the utilitarian origins of shopping carts broadened into cultural appeal.“They mirror us,” he said in an interview. “We want to walk. We want to carry. And now we aid our walking and carrying. And then our walking and carrying becomes mentally associated with wheeling.”“That means the technology of the commonplace is terribly important,” he said.Far From the SupermarketThe 2009 film “Cart” illustrates what Dr. Lienhard called the “symbiotic relationship” of humans and shopping carts.In the film, a shopping cart is given a mind of its own, navigating the perils of city streets as it searches for a boy who has left his jacket in the basket. The cart then saves the boy’s life by blocking an oncoming car.Jesse Rosten, the director, said the idea arose when he and a friend spotted an overturned cart in a parking lot. A sad song was on the radio as they drove past it, adding to the potential for cinematic melancholy.“We laughed the whole way home, imagining back stories for this down-and-out cart who was struggling against the world,” he said. “We’ve all seen abandoned shopping carts out in the world, and the film is one take on how carts end up where they do.”Portraits of carts in the wild are also captured in the 2006 book “The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification.”The Buffalo artist behind the book, Julian Montague, spent seven years photographing carts in dumpsters, in alleys, on lawns, wherever they turned up. “It is a weird object,” he said.“Somebody can take it someplace and chop the wheels off, or take laundry to the basement,” he said. “Unlike a plastic bag, it has multiple lives.”Shirley Yu for The New York TimesCarts as a Test of CharacterSome people steal them. Others leave them wherever they like.Private companies have gotten creative. In California, stray carts are reported on hotlines to companies that specialize in repatriating them to their store lots.At the supermarket chain ALDI, shoppers unlock carts with a quarter, which is returned when the carts are. Some customers leave the quarter in the cart for the next person to use.“We’re always amazed at the ‘pay-it-forward’ spirit that happens in our parking lots,” said Kate Kirkpatrick, communications director at ALDI. “As a result, we rarely run into issues with carts not being returned.”On many days, Seth Sanders, 20, a clerk at Safeway in Bellingham, Wash., can be found dodging cars as he rounds up carts that people have left in parking spaces or shoved aside in the massive lot.About a quarter of customers do not bother to return their carts, he estimated, which means he spends a lot of time doing it for them, in between bagging groceries, cleaning and finding items for customers.Mr. Sanders has wrangled carts in the cold, in the rain, and in the smoke from wildfires. One customer, in a hurry, shoved a cart in his direction with such force that it hurt his leg.“I want to say it is almost kind of selfish,” he said. “It is kind of a test of character. It is our job to pick up after people, but if it is the smallest thing you can do to help out, I feel like it is not a lot to help out a little bit.”Shirley Yu for The New York TimesEnter the Vigilantes …Of course, shopping cart slackers have their reasons.In a 2017 column in Scientific American, the anthropologist Krystal D’Costa explored why people failed to return carts. It “hit a nerve,” she wrote in a follow-up.In more than 2,000 comments on the magazine’s Facebook page, some said they were afraid to leave children unattended, or struggled with a disability, or feared making someone’s job obsolete. Within the past year, the so-called Shopping Cart Theory has become an article of faith on Reddit and other social media sites. The theory posits that the decision to return a cart is the ultimate test of moral character and a person’s capacity to be self-governing.It is a theory fully embraced by the video vigilantes known as The Cart Narcs, self-appointed enforcers who confront shoppers trying to leave without returning their carts. The series has about 500,000 followers on Facebook and YouTube.The Shopping Cart Theory has even reached academia — if middle school counts as academia. Students at the Lausanne Collegiate School in Tennessee were recently asked by Greg Graber, the school’s director of social and emotional learning, to analyze it in a class on critical thinking.One student said anyone who noticed a wayward cart should just return it. Another warned against rushing to judgment. Mr. Graber agreed.“It seems to be a popular belief now that people who leave their shopping carts in places are lacking in values and morals,” he said. But that belief “does not allow for growth or grace.”… and Here Come the LegislatorsIn April, the Shopping Cart Theory was cited in coverage of a proposed state law that would fine shoppers who did not return their carts.Paul Aronsohn, a disability ombudsman for New Jersey, had approached State Senator Kristin Corrado with the idea. He said the state needed to deter shoppers who abandon carts in the wide spaces designated for people with disabilities.Senator Corrado introduced Senate Bill No. 3705, which would impose a fine of $250 for doing so.“Apparently it is a pet peeve to a lot of people,” she said.One person who would benefit is Kelly Boyd, 41, of Hamilton Township, N.J., who has used a wheelchair since she was 9. When she drives her van to the store and lowers a ramp to disembark in her motorized chair, she often finds a cart blocking her way.So Ms. Boyd said she has to nudge it out of the way with her van, or drive to a remote part of the lot where she can use two spaces to get out. That has led to angry notes left on her car and confrontations with other drivers.“Everything I do as a person with a disability takes longer and then to have to deal with that is more frustrating,” Ms. Boyd said. “It is surprising how some people do not care.”This is not the only state legislation tackling shopping cart nuisances. Some places, like Los Angeles and Clark County, Nev., require wheels that lock when a cart is taken far from a store. Some cities in Washington impose fines on stores for wayward carts, and other cities are taking note.Last year the board of supervisors in Fairfax County, Va., met to address “the visual clutter” of stray carts with a proposal to impose $500 fines on people who wheel them off store property.“It is a real problem,” Jeffrey C. McKay told his fellow supervisors during the session. But others on the board argued that it would penalize people who are struggling economically and use the carts to get food home or carry their belongings.One of the supervisors, Dalia A. Palchik, said that had been her childhood experience.As immigrants from Argentina in 1989, Ms. Palchik said, she and her three siblings often accompanied their mother to the store and then pushed the cart to their rental house on the edge of Fairfax City. They had no car available.The memory came flooding back during the discussion. “It was one of those things I was ashamed of as a kid,” she said in an interview. “Why are we criminalizing people trying to get to the grocery store?”The ordinance is still under consideration. More

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      in Television

      Mark York, Actor on ‘The Office,’ Dies at 55

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      The Ohio native, who advocated greater visibility onscreen for people with disabilities, appeared in early seasons of the NBC sitcom as Billy Merchant.Mark York, the actor best known for playing Billy Merchant on the NBC sitcom “The Office,” died last week in Dayton, Ohio. He was 55.His death was confirmed by the Montgomery County coroner’s office, which said on Tuesday that he had died in a hospital of natural causes. Mr. York’s family said in an obituary that he had died after “a brief and unexpected illness.”Mr. York appeared in four episodes of “The Office” from 2006 to 2009 as the property manager of the office park where Dunder Mifflin, the fictional paper company at the center of the series, made its home. His character, Billy Merchant, who like Mr. York was a paraplegic, was introduced in the second season when Michael Scott, the bumbling branch manager played by Steve Carell, brought him to the office for a cringe-inducing meeting on disability awareness.In the scene, Mr. York’s character gamely answers Michael’s clueless questions about his wheelchair use. But when Michael tries to equate it with burning his foot on a George Foreman grill, Billy interrupts: “You know what, Michael? Let me stop you right there … and leave.”“The letters I get about the character are great,” Mr. York told People magazine in 2010, saying one fan had written that he “shed light on how crazy office politics can be” for workers with disabilities who are just trying to do their jobs.Making wheelchair users more visible onscreen was only one of Mr. York’s goals. He also supported efforts to find a cure for spinal cord injuries, serving as the Southern California representative for SCI Research Advancement, a nonprofit foundation that works to expedite research.“He would constantly come up with ideas for us, and ultimately he came up with an idea to contact the White House,” Will Ambler, the founder of the group, said in an interview.In January 2010, Mr. York, Mr. Ambler and one of the foundation’s board members met in Washington with Kareem Dale, President Barack Obama’s special assistant for disability policy, and other government officials. Mr. York, an avid traveler, drove there from Ohio in his car, a red Dodge Magnum with hand controls that he called Roxanne and had more than 300,000 miles on it.For wheelchair users, driving is a way of regaining freedom, and Mr. York “just took it to the highest level he could,” Mr. Ambler said, adding, “He was liberated, he was free and he could go anywhere he wanted.”Although they didn’t get the changes that they proposed, the group has pressed on and Mr. York had recently suggested approaching the White House again.“He was working on it until the very end,” Mr. Ambler said.Cast members from “The Office” shared their condolences on Twitter.“He was a terrific human, a positive force and a dynamic actor,” said Rainn Wilson, who played Dwight Schrute.Marcus A. York was born on Nov. 27, 1965, in Arcanum, Ohio, and graduated from Arcanum High School. In 1988, a car accident left him disabled. The accident gave him “a new lease on life,” according to a biography on his website, and he graduated from Anderson University in Indiana with majors in psychology, sociology and social work. While he was in college, friends encouraged Mr. York to pursue modeling and acting, and he later moved to California.In addition to television commercials, Mr. York appeared in the shows “8 Simple Rules” and “CSI: NY.” He also had an uncredited role in the 2001 film “A.I. Artificial Intelligence.”According to his obituary, he had been working in recent years as an inventor and had obtained two patents.Mr. York is survived by his parents, Glenn and Becky York, and three brothers, Brian, Jeff and David. More

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      Disabled People Fear Being Left Behind as U.K. Culture Venues Reopen

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      Some disabled people have spent a year devouring shows online, and they want continued access. Some theaters are promising to provide it, but fears persist.LONDON — Before the pandemic hit Britain last year, Michelle Hedley could only go to her local theaters in the north of England if they happened to be doing a captioned performance.That happened five times a year — at best, said Hedley, who is deaf.But during the pandemic, suddenly, she could watch musicals all day and night if she wanted, as shuttered theaters worldwide put shows online, often with subtitles. “I started watching anything and everything simply because I could!” Hedley, 49, said in an email interview. “Even subject matters that bored me!”“I viewed more theater than I had done (it felt like) in a lifetime,” she added.Michelle Hedley worries she will be forced to go back to being “grateful” for being able to access just a handful of captioned shows each year now that British theaters have reopened.Mary Turner for The New York TimesNow, Hedley fears this access is about to be lost.On Monday, theaters, museums and cinemas started reopening across England, some for the first time since March 2020. Audiences have been so grateful to be back inside theaters, they have clapped following the announcements to turn cellphones off.But for many disabled people, who make up 22 percent of England’s population and have diverse requirements — such as wheelchair access, audio description or for “relaxed” performances where audiences are allowed to make noise — this moment is causing more mixed reactions. Some fear being forgotten, and that struggling venues will concentrate on producing in-person shows and forgo online offerings, or cut their in-person services for disabled people.There is little evidence of that so far, and some venues say they will continue to include disabled people, but the real effect of venues’ reduced budgets won’t become clear for months.“I will be forced to go back to being grateful for just five shows a year,” Hedley said. “It is very frustrating.”Others are concerned, too. “I just have this sense of being left behind with people being so euphoric that they can do things in the flesh again,” Sonia Boué, an artist who is autistic, said in a telephone interview.Before the pandemic, Boué, 58, would only visit museums if she was convinced a show would be worth the huge amount of energy the experience took. Getting the train from her home in Oxford to London could be overwhelming, she said, as could dealing with crowds in a packed museum. “I’ve been in situations when I’ve just wanted to throw myself down on a station platform and lose it,” she said.Online, she could view shows whenever she wanted. Last year, she went back again and again to one by the painter Tracey Emin and the photographer Jo Spence, she said, with both influencing her own art. “The whole experience was so rich and wonderful,” Boué said.Sonia Boué believes that following Britain’s lockdowns, it should be easier than ever to identify with, and consider the needs of, disabled people.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesBritain’s cultural venues have struggled over the past 12 months, with thousands of layoffs. Many venues only survived the pandemic thanks to emergency funding from the government.Some high-profile venues have said they will keep working to include disabled people as they reopen. Kwame Kwei-Armah, the artistic director of the Young Vic theater in London, told The Guardian in May he wanted to livestream at least two performances of all future shows, with viewers limited to about 500 per stream, mimicking the theater’s capacity. The Young Vic intends to guarantee some of those tickets for disabled people, a spokeswoman said in an email. On Friday, the Almeida, another London theater, said it would film and released digitally its next season’s shows “where possible” but gave no further details.But for regional theaters that are coming off a year without ticket sales, streaming may not always be possible. “It’s a huge financial outlay, making films, so you really need to think about it from the start,” Amy Leach, the associate director of Leeds Playhouse, said in a phone interview. She hoped her theater would do that for future work, she said.People’s concerns are not just about cuts to streaming. Jessica Thom, a performer and wheelchair user who’s made work about her Tourette’s syndrome, said in a telephone interview that she was worried that some venues may see online shows as an accessibility alternative to offering the relaxed performances she loved to go to, where people were free to move around or make noise. “The anxiety about being written out is real,” she said.Last week, English National Opera said it would be doubling the number of relaxed performances it offers in its next season, although only to two from one.Leanna Benjamin, a wheelchair user who has myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) and often experiences pain, said in a telephone interview she was worried venues may drop online ways of working that have flourished during the pandemic.In the last year, Benjamin was commissioned to write three short plays — her first assignments as a playwright. “I’m like, ‘Thank you, Covid!’” she said. “You may have made me be isolated and life feel really tough, but on the other hand you’ve launched my career.”Those commissions included work for Graeae, Britain’s leading deaf and disabled-led theater company, as well as “The Unknown” for Leeds Playhouse (streaming until June 5).She has been helped in such work by being able to have meetings and rehearsals virtually. “My experiences have been incredibly inclusive,” she said, “and I think a lot of us are having the same concerns about ‘Will we go back to old ways of working, when we’re told we need to be in the room?’”Leach, of Leeds Playhouse, said she didn’t think that would be the case. Her theater was intending to keep using video technology so it can expand work with disabled people in the industry.“I worked out the other day I’d need to be guided by about 25 people to go from my home to a London theater,” said Joanna Wood, who lives on England’s south coast.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesNot all disabled people have found the pandemic liberating in terms of access to culture. Joanna Wood, who is blind in one eye, and can only see blurred shapes with the other, said for her, the pandemic has been a disaster.Before the pandemic, she’d attended plays or gone to art exhibitions at least once a week, taking advantage of a boom in audio description (for a play, that involves a describer explaining what happens onstage in between gaps in dialogue).But it took months for theaters to start putting audio-described content online, she said. There were some highlights, she added — the Old Vic in London made sure all its livestreamed shows had audio description — but she often felt like she had gone back to the moment five years ago when she started losing her sight and couldn’t access culture at all. “It felt completely disabling,” she said of last year’s experiences.Some theaters, like the Globe in London, have started offering in-person performances with audio description, Wood said. But she won’t be able to attend for months. “I worked out the other day I’d need to be guided by about 25 people to go from my home to a London theater,” she said. “I can’t tell if someone is wearing a mask or not, I can’t keep distance, so I don’t feel ready,” she added.Many other disabled people feel similarly anxious about attending events in person, she said, having been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. She was worried theaters might cut back on services assuming there isn’t demand, even if the trend for that hasn’t happened yet.Six British museums and theaters said in emails they intended to maintain provisions for disabled audiences, and not cut back. Andrew Miller, a campaigner who was the British government’s disability champion for arts and culture until this spring, said many institutions would be hard pressed to “wriggle” out of commitments even if they for some reason wanted to, as much funding in Britain comes with a requirement to expand access. But future funding cuts could make the situation “messy,” he said. “There is a genuine worry there’ll be significantly less investment,” he added.Boué said she just hoped British theaters and museums kept disabled people in mind. It should be easier than ever to identify with disabled people, she said. When the first lockdown hit, “it was this jaw dropping moment when everyone felt completely immobilized and like they didn’t have the freedoms they’d always taken for granted,” she said.For once, “it was like disability was really everyone’s problem,” she added. More