Access Fandom

We're part of a movement: The Electrical Eggs

2025-10-29T23:18:28Z

Posted by: jesse_the_k

When I started working on WisCon access in 2007, some kind soul (name lost) gave me a black teeshirt printed in tactile gold--with both Latin letters and braille. It sang the praises of ELECTRICAL EGGS, who advocated for handicap accessibility in the 1970s and 1980s. I loved the shirt but didn't know their history.

So I was thrilled when the September 2025 Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, volume 14 number 2, starts off with Eric Vero's article:

Oral History of The Electrical Eggs: Science Fiction, Disability Activism, and Fan Conventions

https://cjds.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cjds/article/view/1262

The journal offers PDF, HTML, and "simplified HTML" versions of each article; all are open access, peer-reviewed, and Creative Commons licensed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

ABSTRACT

Before the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted in 1990, American science fiction fans in southern states organized, collaborated, and practiced accessibility at conventions. This grassroots movement began with the work of Samanda B. Jeude and a coalition of other science fiction fans who fought for visibility and access to convention spaces. In this oral history of their organization, “The Electrical Eggs,” I interview two key members decades after their participation in making conventions accessible. I complement these oral sources with brief histories of the role of eugenics and ableism in science fiction and the rise of disability activism in America. Although, the science fiction fandom still faces historical forces like ableism that have been present since its beginnings, the work of the Eggs is a testament to the power of collective action to provide accessibility in fan communities.

comments

Bare Bones Convention Accessibility Timeline

2025-10-29T02:24:08Z

Posted by: soc_puppet

Between a friend contacting me a couple of weeks ago for help setting up Accessibility at the new con he joined, and just tonight hearing about the absolute bullshit that's been going on at TwitchCon (no ramp for their Guest of Honor wheelchair user to get up to the raised stage to receive an award, third year in a row with no ramps for him as a GoH), I figure I may as well share this here.

It's far from perfect, since I'm still almost entirely self-taught, and I built it on the convention I used to run Accessibility for, so there's some stuff that's not exactly universal, but hopefully it'll help someone out there!

( Convention Accessibility Timeline and Jobs )

This is far from perfect and from comprehensive both, but if you work on Accessibility for a convention, or are looking to get started doing so, hopefully you can use this as a sort of template to build around or tweak to your needs. Suggestions in the comments are very welcome, though I don't know if I'll be up to incorporating them into the post. Questions are also very welcome; I'll do my best to answer how I dealt with things, but anyone who wants to is free to chime in!

I've got more info to share as well, but I'm going to hold off on that for another post or two, as this one wore me out a bit already 😂

Edit: For clarity, since I was just overthinking it: This isn't a comprehensive list of services that were provided at the convention I worked; it's just a behind-the-scenes look at how I was involved in setting up some of the services we provided. (Plus some that I never got around to, like the ASL interpreters and Braille documents 🤦‍♀️) If you want inspiration for that, I suggest looking around for convention Accessibility Policies. Those should list out the various accessibility measures that a given convention has in place.

comments

Whether, why, and how to use Whisper to transcribe speech

2022-12-23T21:36:12Z

Posted by: brainwane

Whisper, from OpenAI, is an open source speech recognition tool that also does translation. You can try it right now at https://replicate.com/openai/whisper or install it on your own computer to run privately. You provide an audio file, and it emits a text transcript as well as .srt and .vtt subtitle files.

This is a really useful (and free!) tool. I have started using it regularly to make transcripts and captions/subtitles, and I just wrote a blog post to share how, and why -- plus my reflections on the ethics of using it and similar tools trained using machine learning.

Note that it works on existing files, but does not work for live-transcribing an event as it's happening.

comments

Crip News Considers Joni Mitchell's Recent Re-debut

2022-08-03T23:45:07Z

Posted by: jesse_the_k

Kevin Gotkin’s free weekly newsletter is full of interesting links to people making disability culture. Kevin’s intention-setting post acknowledges that crip horizons are broad. This Monday, Gotkin examined how Joni Mitchell’s recent return to performance is entwined with impairment and disability, disability loss and gain.

Uncaptioned YouTube video of Joni Singing 'Summertime' at Newport Folk Festival 2022

Quoting Crip News:

( 286 words exploring the disability dimensions of that video )

Subscribe to Crip News for free at https://cripnews.substack.com/

comments

Convention Survival References

2022-02-04T08:01:52Z

Posted by: ysabetwordsmith

I have some posts on convention survival techniques:

* How to Accommodate Special Needs While Attending an Event

* How to Manage Your Energy at Conventions

* Working Around Microphones

After a convention, you might need:

* Coping with Emotional Drop

* Coping Skills: Connecting with Your Environment

comments

Access for Us -- British Fans Improving Access

2020-07-20T21:21:59Z

Posted by: jesse_the_k

Access For Us is a non-profit blog, raising awareness for disabled fans. Thanks to fans sharing their stories we hope to create change towards the lack of accessibility, and the discrimination towards disabled music fans at venues across the country, and via online ticket systems.

Stories from disabled fans of music, theater, mixed martial arts, movies and more -- plus disabled people who work behind the scenes of events.

comments

Access Resources for Cultural Events

2013-04-24T17:05:22Z

Posted by: jesse_the_k

Body of Work is an 11-day festival in Chicago this May 15-25, 2013, with scores of events across many venues. Films, spoken word, 2D art, theater, dance etc, check details at
http://www.bodiesofworkchicago.org/festival/festival-schedule.html

The festival's access resources points to the best cultural access manuals I've ever seen:
http://www.bodiesofworkchicago.org/resources/access.html

This looks like the TL;DR summary:
http://www.bodiesofworkchicago.org/images/Documents/bow_manualUpdated.pdf
which explicitly includes the 2010 ADA standards.

This manual provides backing (to wave in the face of US decision-makers: it's the law!) and also implementation details (how wide should the aisle be? minimum size type on signs?).

Awesome tool!

comments

Free ebooks for readers with disabilities

2010-10-21T14:41:58Z

Posted by: elf

I was reminded of this while looking for the new Vorkosigan book as an ebook:

Baen Books has made available its entire catalogue of e-books to people who have a reading disability. This can be visual impairment or physical inability to hold a book.

This was originally done for Veteran's Day 2009, but is not limited to veterans, and they're apparently broad in their concept of "reading disability"--they mean "if you have a hard time reading books on paper, have some free ebooks. Have a lot of free ebooks." (There's a form to fill out requiring you tell them what kind of disability you have; dyslexia is one of the options.)

There's free software that reads all their types of ebooks (and I believe all are available in HTML so they can be read in any web browser), so this isn't limited to people with dedicated ebook readers or who like to read on their phones.

For those who don't have a qualifying disability, Baen also has an extensive free library of ebooks.

comments

Author posts about disabliity

2010-07-17T12:09:10Z

Posted by: jadelennox

Kristin Cashore, author Graceling and Fire, writes about her experience being an author with thoracic outlet syndrome which gives her chronic pain and inability to type, and about using MacSpeech Pro as an author.

Thought it might be interesting.

comments