I just appreciate the whole irony of this.

[mariness]

The Disability in Science Fiction panel at Worldcon/Lone Star Con did not have ramps to the stage. Because they knew I would be there (I use a wheelchair), they set up tables in front of the stage, so at least I could sit at the same level as the rest of the panelists. (At the Prose by Day, Poet by Night panel, which to be fair I was only added to about two hours before the panel started, I was on the floor and the other three panelists were on the stage.) The disability panel also did not have an ASL interpreter.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Oh my, that sounds infuriating. Did tables in front of the stage work in terms of you connecting with the audience?

This is in no way an excuse, but I know matching ramps to stages is a frustrating business—one WisCon a disability panel also didn't have ramps (but sasha_feather moved heaven & earth and a ramp was installed within ten minutes). The answer, of course, is to have ramps for all the stages and bypass the frustration.

On ASL- how do we do this...

[selkiechick]

So I have been thinking about ASL and services and conventions, and the visibility of ASL at events.

At Arisia, we do not, in general, have ASL for specific events.

Why is this?

Because when I tried to hire interpreters to do this, they gave be the "are you kidding" face and refused the job unless they were able to meet and talk with the Deaf person in the audience (which we didn't have... we were trying to be ready in case there were any Deaf people in attendance). I was informed that ASL providers just don't perform for basic inclusion and visibility purposes (yea, I know this varies). Since then, I have met a few Interpreters (two) that do perform for Universal Design/visibility/Inclusion purposes. I feel like this places conventions trying to do the right thing in a bind. As it stands now, we require people who need ASL to register with the convention a couple of weeks before, and instead of covering key events, we cover set hours (10-5 Saturday and Sunday) and the Deaf Attendees decide what panels they want covered. It's still incomplete coverage. Arisia is a 4 day, 24 hour a day convention, I don't know how we would ever cover it completely... but it is coverage the attendees have some control over.