Disability Pride Month at StoryForge
34 years ago today, on July 26, 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in the United States. To commemorate this date, Disability Pride Month is celebrated every July - mostly in the US, but there are celebrations in other countries as well.
StoryForge is proud to celebrate Disability Pride Month, both as a company and as a community. Not only is it the right thing to do in general, but we also want to recognize and celebrate our community members and teammates who are disabled - especially considering that these individuals often experience unjust stigmas, outcasting, and occasional full-on discrimination as they try to go through everyday life. This is a bigger population than you might think: the CDC estimates that one in four adults in the US either is currently disabled, or is expected to become disabled in their lifetime. And there are a lot of writers included in that group!
In fact, I'm a part of that population. (That said, I don't really consider myself to be much of a literature writer... I do write a lot of code and documentation, though!) I have a vision impairment that is not fully correctible, even with glasses or surgery. It impacts pretty much everything that I do in my everyday life, and while that impact is minor in most things, the biggest consequence is that I can't drive. Given that I live in the US, but not New York City, that poses a major challenge to my ability to get around my own city - in fact, it's easier for me to get to Tokyo than some places in the Twin Cities.
Disability is unfortunately one of those topics that's hard to discuss, especially because no two people have exactly the same disabilities, needs, or lived experiences. However, it is an identity axis that is absolutely worth celebrating and including in any definition of diverse communities, alongside other important axes such as race, gender, orientation, ethnicity, and (for global communities such as ours) nationality. As a company, we are proud to be creating a community that is welcoming to writers and readers of all abilities and supportive of writers who choose to share or incorporate their personal experiences with disability into their stories. This is why we are so focused on building an amazing experience online, as doing so allows anyone with a browser and an Internet connection to join our community and have the same opportunity to write and publish.
To that end, StoryForge is committed to ensuring the accessibility of our platform and community to writers with disabilities. That said, we know that there are a variety of accessibility tools and accommodations that people use in order to adapt things in a way that works for them specifically. If you encounter any trouble using the platform with accessibility tools, please send an email to help@storyforge.com to let us know - and make sure to tell us what tools you're using, as they may be different than the tools that I (or other developers) use or test our platform against.
We polled the StoryForge staff for recommendations of great disability representation in books and movies, and here are some of our favorites:
CODA(2021): Part heart-wrenching, part heartwarming. Great at telling the story of how disabled (in this case, Deaf) people adapt to the world, and the struggles that those who support disabled people face to make things accessible - though I have to dock a few marks for a couple instances where some very blatant artistic licenses flout the ADA. That said, I genuinely cried when I saw this and it rightfully won Best Picture. (Tate)
My Name is Khan (2010): It was wholesome, then it was heartbreaking, then it was wholesome again. I was much more impressed than I expected to be and WILL be making others watch it. (Sabrina)
The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells, first book in series published 2017): It’s reallllllly good disability rep but it’s not actually called disability rep. Like I can't PROVE that that killer robot is autistic. But that killer robot is autistic. (Sabrina)
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Gabrielle Zevin, 2022): an amazing book that made me cry and it has some great disability representation, both on the neurodiversity side and on the physical side (Leah)
So, whether you are disabled yourself or are an ally to this great community, from all of us at StoryForge: happy Disability Pride Month!