Assignment #2: DISABILITY CURRENT AFFAIRS: COVID-19 Background: There is great discussion and distress around the subject of societal responses to Covid-19 as it relates to people with disabilities

Subject:Health SciencePrice:16.86 Bought3

Share With

Assignment #2: DISABILITY CURRENT AFFAIRS: COVID-19 Background: There is great discussion and distress around the subject of societal responses to Covid-19 as it relates to people with disabilities. Whether it be people with medical disabilities/pre-existing conditions, or people with mental health, developmental, intellectual, or sensory disabilities, the experience of quarantine, social distancing, and the question of receiving medical or other assistance, is daunting for many people with disabilities and their loved ones. However, most nondisabled people remain unaware of the implications of the Coronavirus to the disability community. For this assignment, your task is to examine and learn how the Covid-19 pandemic is impacting this population. Learning Objectives: Students will summarize three references that address the topic of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the disability community. Students will apply their knowledge of course concepts to the Covid-10 Pandemic. Students will examine the controversies surrounding disability and Covid-19 and evaluate their own perspectives on these issues. Assignment Content Requirements You are required to summarize three references on this subject. These references can be a combination of peer-reviewed articles, online sources, or online videos. In your summaries, include the information to the reference, who the audience is for that reference, the purpose of their message, key points, and arguments. Consider the issues and arguments listed in the references you have explored. What three concepts discussed in class so far, presented themselves in your references? Elaborate on how they correlate with your findings. Contemplate the media exposure of Covid-19 and how it relates to people with disabilities. Is disability representation present in dominant media platforms? Do the perspectives you have read about or listened to permeate your social media feeds? Or is the new information surprising to you? What issues do you feel are most controversial at the intersection of Covid-19 and disability? Defend your argument. Assignment Format Requirements Microsoft Word ONLY 12-point font Double-spaced 2-page minimum Definition of 3 topics or concepts for searching 3 online resources 1. 2. 3. • • • • Disabilities Etiquette is the actions and words that affirm that the dignity and life quality of people with disabilities are worth my time, attention, and energy. The universal design approach focuses on the desires of the users from the very beginning, versus an afterthought. The goal of universal design is to develop a barrier-free design for as many people as possible, which positively impacts the community of people with disabilities. Why is this so important? The impact of universal design, access, and inclusion far exceeds what most of us, disabled or not, can imagine. Having access and being included looks completely different from one person to another, given each person’s unique body-mind-environment connection. But as a whole, the experience of having access and being included makes for a smoother ride in life. The Social Model a person with a disability is not broken. Society is broken. Society is what disables people. In other words, the barriers preventing people with disabilities from participating in activities that nondisabled people participate in are what truly disables them, social model: Focuses on societal attitudes and barriers and how to fix them. Views societal attitudes and barriers as the disabling factor Places the responsibility of access for all on society, Paves the way for an inclusive society that acknowledges differences, fosters opportunities for 1-assistive technology Leverage assistive technology Now more than ever, accessibility is not option – it’s imperative. Online content, conference calls and virtual forums have replaced in person meetings and events for immediate future, and ‘in person’ accommodations that empower people with disabilities to consume that content have understandably reduced or stopped. However, if you embed accessibility into design of virtual or online content, you remove or reduce the potential of exclusion. You have the power to include, and accessibility is the key. Here are a few tools at your disposal to assist you: • • • • Use Accessibility Insights to check your website, Windows, or Android app for accessibility with quick easy guides on how to make them more accessible. Do this before you post content. Caption your videos. There are lots of ways to do this, I upload videos into Microsoft Stream (available as part of Microsoft 365) and auto captioning/editing feature prior to sharing within my organization. Use Accessibility Checker on any Microsoft 365 document to catch simple gotchas. Add alt-text to all images and ensure the format is screen reader friendly. Microsoft Teams is a one stop shop for conference calls, meetings, collaboration. If you’re looking for the simple answer to ‘is it accessible’ – yes – we’ve worked hard to making this an accessible platform for online meetings. Turn on live captions in any call or webinar, use ‘pin’ feature to keep one speaker (or in my case, my ASL interpreter) on the screen to avoid distractions, use Immersive Reader in the chat window or my favorite feature ‘background blur’ which was specifically designed by one of our deaf engineers to power up lipreading, great example of how an accessibility feature has powered up millions. What the disability community can teach us about working remotely - Microsoft Accessibility Blog Remember the accessibility needs of applicants and retirees (2-access, and inclusion) Digital accessibility is important throughout the employment lifecycle. During this pandemic, with its significant economic impacts, retirees may have urgent questions about retirement plans and health benefits. With rising unemployment, applicants are scouring online work opportunities. • Be sure all job portals have been designed, coded, and tested for accessibility. • Have processes in place to provide accommodations to employees and include that information on job-related applicant websites. For example, Wells Fargo’s hiring process web page includes a section titled “Job seekers with a disability.” • Understand and share accessibility information impacting employee retirement accounts. Find public accessibility information and share it with employees and retirees. An example of financial services public accessibility information is Fidelity’s Accessibility Page. https://disabilityin.org/resources2/covid-19-response-accessible-tools-and-content/ Disability, Isolation, and the Internet 3-(A social model) PWD are more likely to live alone and less likely to work than those without disabilities (Ofcom, 2015; Taylor, 2018), thus making even incidental contact with others more difficult. For those with chronic conditions, impairments accompanying illness can lead to changes in the nature of social relationships, reducing shared activities and increasing embarrassment (Burholt et al., 2017; Bury, 1982; Charmaz, 1983; Deacon et al., 2020; Wendell, 2001). Due to anticipated stigma or experiences of being a burden on others, people may choose to self-isolate in the best of times (Charmaz, 1983; Link & Phelan, 2017) and social connections can contract (Charmaz, 1983; Deacon et al., 2020; Perry & Pescosolido, 2012). A social model perspective highlights the importance of shifting the view from individual impairments to an inaccessible environment surrounding the person with impairments (Oliver, 2009; Shakespeare, 2014). MacDonald et al. (2018) take this approach, arguing that social isolation and loneliness are experienced most starkly in a context with inadequate resources facilitating community access, employment, and social interaction for PWD (see also Cross, 2013). That is, rather than putting the blame on PWD for their predicament of social isolation, they highlight the contextual factors that result in said isolation. One means PWD use to deal with such isolation and loneliness is information and communication technologies (ICTs; Goggin, 2015). The internet allows PWD to form and maintain relationships and community in ways that may not be possible offline. Going online, PWD have more control over whether and how to disclose disabilities that might be readily apparent in face-to-face interaction, thus managing stigma (Saltes, 2013; Soderstrom, 2009; Tsatsou, 2020). At other times, PWD can put their impairments or health conditions in the forefront of interactions online, using ICTs to join communities of others who share their condition (Goggin & Noonan, 2006). In such forums, people can engage in peer support, mutual aid, and advocacy, challenging dominant cultural conceptions of themselves and their impairments, and offering alternatives (Barker, 2008; Chadwick & Fullwood, 2017; Ellcessor, 2016; Obst & Stafurik, 2010; Trevisan, 2017). Dobransky and Hargittai (2016) found that, controlling for sociodemographics, internet experiences, and internet skills, PWD exceed those without disabilities in some active online engagement such as sharing their own content, submitting reviews of products and services, and posting to blogs. Additionally, PWD have consistently shown more interest in health information online than those without disabilities (Andreassen et al., 2007; Dobransky & Hargittai, 2006; Fox, 2007). Social media increasingly play a central role in interactions online and have been shown to have played an important role during the COVID-19 pandemic in particular (Nguyen et al.,2021). However, using social media to one’s benefit requires that such platforms be accessible for people of different backgrounds—including PWD – and there is a history of accessibility problems in social media. Boudreau (2012) evaluated five common social media platforms in 2012, testing the accessibility of eight different components including keyboard shortcuts, color contrasts, and alt text for images. No platform scored over 33%, which was LinkedIn’s score. Facebook scored 10%, while Twitter scored zero, meaning that it met none of the accessibility criteria. Such problems led PWD to develop their own workarounds, such as Accessible YouTube, Easy Chirp, and You Describe to make the platforms accessible (Hollier, 2017; Kent, 2020). Since then, things have improved. As Hollier (2017) explains, Twitter, Facebook, Google, and YouTube have all devoted much more attention to issues of accessibility—with Facebook partnering with the American Federation for the Blind. Barriers nonetheless remain. For instance, as we write this, Twitter is testing a feature that records a person’s voice and posts the recording as an (audio) tweet (Twitter Support, 2020a). Immediately after Twitter made this new option public, commenters raised questions about the accessibility of the feature for those with hearing impairments. Twitter responded with the disclaimer that “this is an early version of the feature,” but that they were “exploring ways” to make the feature accessible to all (Twitter Support, 2020b). Overall, however, social media are much more accessible than in the past, making it easier for PWD to take advantage of this form of online interaction. PWD are not a unitary population, and the internet does not pose uniform challenges or benefits for people with all types of impairments (Dobransky & Hargittai, 2006, 2016). For instance, people with communicative disabilities were shown to be more concerned about their internet access early in the pandemic than those with other types of disabilities (Dobransky & Hargittai, 2020). Given existing experiences dealing with social isolation through online options, PWD may be a few steps ahead of those without disabilities who confronted isolation for the first time due to the pandemic. Has the COVID-19 crisis simply led to a leveling of differences between those with disabilities and those without regarding isolation and internet use? In what follows, we examine social media use in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, comparing people with a range of disabilities to those without. After presenting some distinctions among people with different types of disabilities and comparing them to those without in their general experience of the pandemic, we compare these groups’ social media uses, focusing on more active uses versus more passive uses.