Accessibility & Disability Justice Resources

Given my work’s focus, the majority of resources here focus on accessibility in regard to language, sexuality, and creation of community spaces. Disability justice is widely-encompassing so I hope that the resources below act as a spring-board for further exploration. If you have any resources to add, please feel free to let me know through my contact form!

Topics covered below:

  • Guides for Accessible Spaces
  • Language Access: Interpretation, Transcripts, and Captioning
  • People and Organizations
  • Media and Text
  • Other Resources and Lists

Guides for Accessible Spaces

Sample Event Accessibility Plans, Community Agreements, and Guidelines:

I’ve done some work as accessibility coordinator for various events, so below are ones I’ve created or been heavily involved in (unless noted otherwise).

Language Access: Interpretation, Transcripts, and Captioning

Some ASL Interpreters:

Some Spanish/English Interpreters:

Live-Caption / CART Providers:

Transcription Service Providers:

People and Organizations

People to Learn From:

  • Neve is an individual artist, accessibility consultant and event planner, dance educator, and political conceptualizer working to put liberation and joy for disabled people of all stripes.
  • Bianca Laureano is an award-winning educator, curriculum writer, facilitator, and sexologist. She is the Lead Educator for the Netflix film Crip Camp (2020) and is leading the efforts to create a curriculum that is rooted in disability justice practice, self-determination, and social-emotional learning competences.
  • Robin Wilson Beattie is a disability and sexuality health educator and writer, teaching the world to embrace and explore your sexuality,  regardless of ability. 
  • Lydia Brown / AutisticHoya is a writer, dreamer, organizer, builder, advocate, attorney, activist, strategist, educator, trainer, consultant, and speaker working in grassroots organizing, public policy advocacy, and writing focused on disability justice and intersectionality.
  • Andrew Gurza is a disability awareness consultant and content creator. He hosts the sex and disability podcast: Disability After Dark.
  • Shanna Kattari is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, the Department of Women and Gender Studies, and Director of the [Sexuality|Relationships|Gender] Research Collective.
  • Robin Mandell is a writer, sexuality advocate and educator. Her website, Ready Sexy Able, is an online clearing house of sexuality and disability information and resources.
  • Rachael Rose is an educator, writer, and activist whose work focuses on sexuality, sexual health, and the intersections of chronic illness and sex. 
  • Grayson Schultz is a writer, sex educator and health activist. They work to open hearts and minds to conversations about sex, chronic illness, pain, and disability through their website, Chronic Sex. 
  • Bethany Stevens is a sexologist and disability consultant who loves to generate conversations about the nexus of the taboo subjects of disability and sexuality.
  • Cassandra Perry is a cripsex agitator currently living near Washington, DC on unceded Nacotchtank land. They work as a consultant, advocate, and peer supporter, among other things and their endeavors center sex, disability, mental health, accessibility, poverty, technology, and accountability.
  • Heather Kerstetter is a disability activist and social worker who writes and speaks about disability, accessibility and ableism.

Organizations:

  • Cascadia Deaf Nation is a community organization by and for Deaf folks of color, which does a wide variety of classes and trainings, as well as consultation services, and interpreting services
  • Pleasurable (previously DASAN) is a community of disabled folk of a variety of fields who do outreach, written resources, panels, conferences, a podcast among other efforts to ensure that that access to sexuality, pleasure, and intimacy is seen and treated as a fundamental human right, not a luxury only for the able-bodied. 
  • Finding Your Individuality is an organization that provides counseling services as well as training for them, specializing in the rights, freedoms and needs of people with disabilities. 
  • National Coalition for Latinxs with Disabilities does conferences, workshops and shares resources and community by and for latinxs.
  • Sins Invalid is a disability justice based performance project, that centers and is led by disabled people of color. In addition to presenting multidisciplinary performances by people with disabilities, Sins Invalid offers political education and performance workshops. `
  • Project LETS is a national grassroots organization and movement led by and for folks with lived experience of mental illness/madness, Disability, trauma, & neurodivergence. They specialize in building just, responsive, and transformative peer support collectives and community mental health care structures that do not depend on state-sanctioned systems that trap our folks in the medical/prison-industrial complex.
  • The Disability Visibility Project is an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture, with a podcast, interviews, blog posts and more.

Media and Text

Podcasts:

  • Disability After Dark: Discusses all things sex and disability and aims to explore parts of the disabled experience that we don’t often hear about.
  • The Accessible Stall: A monthly discussion regarding various issues affecting the disability community. 

Books:

Documentaries:

  • Scarlet Road (2011) This film follows the work of Rachel Wotton, an Australian sex worker who specializes in working with disabled clients.
  • (Sex)Abled: Disability Uncensored (2013) This short documentary addresses misconceptions and stereotypes about sex, relationships, and disability.
  • the TLC episode of Strange Sex focusing on Rafe and Non Genital Orgasms (2018 edition) Through the story of a paralyzed man who experiences non-genital orgasms using his thumb, this episode shows viewers how someone transferred orgasmic sensation from the genitals to another part of the body. 
  • Sexual Healing: Inside the World of Medically Assisted Sex (???) A short documentary from Vice’s “Slutever” focused on sexual surrogacy.
  • CripCamp: A Disability Revolution (2020) This Netflix documentary explains how a camp for disabled people inspired an activist movement. 

Other Resources and Lists:

Acknowledgements:

Header image by 272447 (no longer available) from Pixabay

And thank you to Ren Grabert for organizing what was once a messy list of people and organizations into something coherent and lovely!