Understanding plight of differently-abled is very vital

Eric Garcia, The Independent

On Wednesday, I delivered a speech at the College Autism Network at Vanderbilt University in Nashville about making colleges more accessible for autistic students. Incidentally, during my speech, the screens on each side of the stage had closed captioning to make my words more accessible to those with processing disorders or who might be deaf or hard of hearing.

Hence, I was surprised when I returned to my hotel and saw that right-wing provocateur Tucker Carlson posted a tweet of mine on his Fox News programme.

On Tuesday, after NBC News posted its interview with Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman and his use of closed captioning, CBS News’s Ed O’Keefe wrote a tweet wondering, “Will Pennsylvanians be comfortable with someone representing them who had to conduct an interview this way.” (Full disclosure, I am a columnist for MSNBC).

In response, I asked how this was any different from Tammy Duckworth or Madison Cawthorn having to use a wheelchair, or if it was any different from the multiple senators who use hearing aids. But Carlson — who works for a network designed to elect Republicans, hence why it has mentioned Fetterman more than any other Senate candidate, as liberal watchdog Media Matters has monitored — the larger national media’s decision to portray Fetterman’s use of closed captioning is in many ways a sign of just how unwelcome people with disabilities are in public life. And it will have a downstream effect of discouraging them from entering politics.

Roughly a quarter of Americans live with disabilities, but despite that, very few people with disabilities run for office. At the same time, the median age in the United States Senate is 64.3 years old and numerous senators need different types of assistance from hearing aids. Some senators are much older, including Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who at 89 has been the subject of numerous reports about her fading memory. Even under the Americans with Disabilities Act, asking for accomodations usually falls on the person with a disability, rather than on the various scenarios and environments to be accessible as possible.

As a result, that makes providing accomodations to people with disabilities seem like an act of charity rather than the bare minimum.

For example, Dasha Burns, the NBC reporter who interviewed Fetterman, could say, “We were happy to accommodate closed captioning” as if they were doing him a favor. (As an aside, this is why I loathe the term “special education”: it implies that educators give people with disabilities “special treatment” rather than giving them a level playing field).I can somewhat understand Burns’s concerns about offering accessibility tools. To people who are unfamiliar with disability, it could be seen as giving him an unfair advantage. In journalism, we are often taught that in-person interviews are best, over the phone is fine but emailed questions are almost taboo since we see them as allowing for politicians to create prepared statements.

But in my time interviewing people with disabilities, I have found that giving them time to process questions — especially if they have sensory processing disorders, autism, intellectual disabilities or conditions like apahasia — allows them to deliver more authentic answers. This does not mean giving them a pass and does not preclude asking a follow-up question. To the contrary, when I wrote my book, it allowed me to tell their stories more fully.

Similarly, Burns said that “our reporting did not and should not comment on fitness for office. This is for voters to decide. What we do push for as reporters is transparency.” Here, Burns and I agree: It is not our job to specifically comment on whether someone deserves to win office. Where we diverge is the idea that remarking on someone using accessibility tools is worthwhile.