The Essential Work of Crip Resistance: Demanding Dignity in Spain's Pandemic Austerity

This article considers crip resistance to the politics of austerity with which Spain's government has reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly a decade after the 15-M anti-austerity movement and its occupations. Given the intensification of austerity politics and their effects on people with disabilities, I examine three instances of crip resistance and their virtual, local, and global settings. Beyond McRuer's expansive view of crip resistance as comprised of tactics that center disability against global austerity, my analysis establishes its groundwork in the current demands by Spanish disability advocacy groups and on Javier Romañach's modelo de diversidad funcional, the prevalent model of disability among Spanish disability activists that centers the concept of dignity. Throughout this analysis, I demonstrate how crip tactics that emerge in a crisis can help make sense of a continuing emergency as they challenge the existing conditions of cultural austerity and contribute to the concept of dignity as an organizing principle.

"Can you HEAR my FEAR?" A Korean immigrant with hearing loss reflects on surviving the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

This paper presents the perception and associated experiences of a Korean hard-of-hearing immigrant special education researcher as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded. These experiences include the rise of hate crimes against Asian Americans; increasing evidence that face coverings are a vital public health tool; the knowledge that face coverings can increase the risk of racist violence; and difficulty communicating with people who are wearing most face coverings due to being hard-of-hearing. It provides supportive resources, strategies, and hope for educators, disability rights advocates, and families of individuals who are Deaf or hard-of-hearing, promoting public awareness and embrace of difference.

The paradox of "remote working" in Covid-19 pandemic times: disability, inclusion, and accessibility in Brazil

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have adopted social isolation as a strategy to fight and limit the spread of the global crisis of Covid-19, which has impacted organization processes and employee's relationships with one another. Several issues such as the lack of accessibility and adaptations on work routines, that were already present in people with disabilities' life in the work environment are now highlighted, bringing to light theoretical debates and practical discussions about the experience of using technological accommodations as possible strategies for promoting accessibility and inclusion. Based on narratives of people with different corporalities in this contemporary shifting reality, in this article, we aim to reflect on how accessibility issues are being managed in labor practices in Brazil. More precisely, we seek to understand the role and effects of this new use of technology on social inclusion and exclusion of people with disabilities in the times and spaces where they work remotely due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Co-exploring the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihood of persons with disabilities in Bangladesh

Background: According to World Health Organization (WHO), vulnerable groups such as persons with disabilities are facing severe impacts of the pandemic. There has always been significant challenges and hurdles in terms of achieving adequate and equitable inclusivity of persons with disabilities in all sections of social life. Education and employment of persons with disabilities were least focused which created more marginalization for the community. The long term impact of these marginalization has also led to the lack of jobs and social security of persons with disabilities, which is very clear now given the crisis in place. In low and middle income countries like Bangladesh the situation is even worse. To better understand the conditions of persons with disabilities in this crisis situation, the present study was initiated to explore the dimensions of livelihood with respect to income and wellbeing of persons with disabilities and to generate evidence for developing policies around these issues.Methods: A qualitative study was undertaken among 30 persons with disabilities from 8 different geographical divisions of Bangladesh. The interviews were conducted through telephone calls due to the existing COVID-19 crisis and mobility restrictions. The respondents were purposively selected based on gender, type of disability, area of resident (urban, rural) and their ability to communicate, therefore most (25/30) respondents were persons with physical disability. Thematic analysis was conducted to generate the findings of the study.Findings: Study findings revealed that majority of the respondents were involved in informal jobs. Predominantly males were daily wage-earners and often the sole breadwinner of the families, very few females were involved in economic activities. Since they had no stable income, the economic shock from the COVID-19 pandemic had affected them badly even leading to household level famine. The study identifies low level of education and informal job security as the primary causes of socio-economic insecurity among persons with disabilities, resulting in challenges in ensuring a stable livelihood during crisis situations, such as COVID-19.Conclusion: Constant alienation of persons of disabilities from the formal sector results in the deterioration of their livelihood standards which even worsen during any emergency crisis such as COVID-19. The study pinpoints that only aided services are not adequate to ensure persons with disabilities' rights rather there is an urgent need of disability inclusion in formal job sector and livelihood training for persons with disabilities. To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and to irradiate the inequality towards persons with disabilities in the society it is important for the Government and concern bodies to focus on the inclusiveness with better implementation and monitoring strategies.

"It feels like we're going back in time": rights of children with Congenital Zika Virus Syndrome and their caregivers in the face of two epidemics

Over the past few months living and facing the COVID-19 pandemic, the fact that the virus and its spread are not democratic has already been proven: the most common profile among victims of the new disease are black, indigenous, and poor people. In addition, it is also racialized and people on the periphery have been experiencing the greatest economic and social impact of the pandemic. COVID-19, in this sense, seems to be consistent with other documented health crises, making its way along the wide avenues of inequality. In this article, we seek to describe how the paths of inequality traced by COVID-19 intersect with the paths of another epidemic, which is now almost invisible in the public eye: that of the Zika Virus. Based on field diaries from research carried out in Recife / PE between 2016 and 2020, we seek to show how families previously affected by Zika now face COVID-19, pointing to structural factors common to the two health crises that put the same people at greater risk of exposure.

De-Masking deafness: Unlearning and Reteaching Disability During a Pandemic

In academic writing about disability, the impetus is typically used to subvert society's ableist structures and challenge misconceptions and misunderstanding around disability. However, due to the world-wide spread of COVID-19 and the restrictions put in place to reduce the virus's impact, such as asking people to wear masks in public places and the closing of universities and moving to entirely online learning, the author, who is deaf, found herself vulnerable and confronting a lack of access due to these measures. This reflexive paper will investigate how the pandemic and its effects forced the author to reconsider her ownership of her deafness. It will add to a growing body of autoethnographic disability research by contributing another facet to understandings around disability and self as they are actualized in the midst of the pandemic.

Let them go! Compassionate release for disabled prisoners with chronic health conditions during the COVID-19 public health emergency

Inmates with disabilities are at high risk of serious illness and death from COVID-19 due to crowded and unsanitary conditions. The punishment for serious crimes is incarceration—not exposure to a dangerous, contagious virus. Prisoners have human rights, notwithstanding the loss of most of their civic rights. Critical Disability Studies draws attention to multiple and overlapping injustices and oppressions. Prisoners with disabilities often suffer from race and ethnic discrimination, poverty, trauma, multiple physical impairments, mental illness, and/or cognitive limitations. This essay calls for action to accelerate compassionate release of disabled inmates, many of whom are at high risk for COVID-19, and offers recommendations for improving conditions of confinement for disabled inmates who remain incarcerated.

Stimming, Improvisation, and COVID-19: (Re)negotiating Autistic Sensory Regulation During a Pandemic

Many autistic people consider repetitive and sensory practices such as stimming central to their identity and culture. In this paper, I argue that stimming is an improvisatory practice because it constitutes an articulation of autistic aesthetics and sensory preferences, is a crucial component of autistic culture, and consists of moment-by-moment negotiations with environmental and sensory barriers. Autistic people often stim with the help of technologies such as music and stim toys or tools to mediate between inner worlds and outer environments that may over/underwhelm us. I argue that during the COVID-19 pandemic, where the objects we touch (and our bodies) have become potential locations for transmission of the virus, our relationship with stimming (and our stim tools) has changed. This article connects critical improvisation studies, discourses on autistic stimming, and affordance theory to present a framework for understanding autistic stimming during the COVID-19 era: as improvisatory responses to the opportunities and barriers presented by the pandemic. I argue that stimming during the COVID-19 era is a continuously mediated response between our body-minds and the affordances of our environment, and I maintain that this process is a lived improvisation.

Smartphones, Disability and the Australian Experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic for People who are Blind and with Low Vision

This paper offers insight into and analysis of the disparate and diverse experiences of Australians with disability, at the intersections of technology and geography during the COVID-19 pandemic.Drawing on interviews with the blind and low vision community we identify a significant cross-generational uptake of smartphones. Participants demonstrate a reflexive and creative use of these devices when faced with reduced accessibility, and the significance of geography – not simply the distinctions between countries, but between urban and regional residents.These interviews are contextualised within a broader discussion of how Australians with disability responded to the pandemic via analysis of blogs, articles and social media. We focus on the voices and perspectives of disabled people, and that community's emphasis on individuality and intradisability diversity.Lastly, we present an overview of the discussions being held around the role of contact tracing and apps, privacy, validity and vulnerability. This discourse is important for ensuring support for the disability community pre and post global health emergencies, but also a valuable exemplar for understanding the relationship between digital inclusion and social equality more broadly.

Reports on the materiality of disability in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic from a damaged land

This article aims to describe changes in the routine of people with disabilities in face of Covid19 pandemic and the ongoing coping measures underway in the state of Alagoas, in northeast Brazil. Data from in-depth interviews with subjects marked by different experiences of visual, hearing, motor and intellectual impairment are analyzed here. Participants are part of an extension project, started in 2019, under the responsibility of the first author of this article. The project changed the routine of the university in face of the presence, circulation and engagement of bodies and minds that escape the conventions of normality in the academic space. The interactions, mediated by a series of applications of digital communication, addressed the following issues: 1) the loss of individual and/or family income resulting from the pandemic, and its impact on their material conditions of existence; 2) the emergence of new demands related to physical and mental health as well as changes in previous therapeutic strategies; 3) the characterization of access to communication technologies, the new possibilities and restrictions for maintaining extra-family bonds, such as contact with friends, participation in social mobilizations and in academic activities. In the analysis, we focused on the mutual dynamics of care, especially the engagement in support and assistance practices from family and friends. The attention to changes in the environment from the different collective demands in face of the pandemic exposes some displacements in the ways of embodying disability as well as the ability to give powerful responses to complex demands for adaptation. The intersection between different social markers of difference, like race, gender and class is also central to the identification of continuities, which involve the pre-existence of physical distance as a reality of disability.