What's New and Updated at The Shining Lamp?

Jonathan Mosen, a Blind and hard of hearing songwriter, wrote the Christmas song “A Place Beside the Fire” himself, shaped its arrangement and melody with Suno, an artificial intelligence (AI) music generator, and, because his hearing is degenerating, used AI to produce a sample of his voice. He invites Blind listeners to be glad the song exists and other listeners to learn what some Blind People hope for in a better world. We should add the song to our holiday playlists and share it far and wide.

Tolu Adegbite, a Black designer and accessibility advocate, argues that alt text, the written label that tells screen reader users what an image shows, should describe the race of each person pictured. A label that says only a woman walking ahead of a crowd, or a girl walking down school steps, removes the history that makes a photograph matter to Blind readers, and silence about race lets white become the default. Adegbite asks designers to take responsibility for the description of every image so that Blind readers receive the same story that sighted readers receive.

Four Black creators with disabilities use their platforms to remove barriers. Jillian Mercado calls for accurate images showing People with Disabilities in fashion and on the screen, Keah Brown writes about life as a Black and Disabled person in a mostly nondisabled white America, Lauren “Lolo” Spencer gives an honest view of everyday life with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Stephanie Thomas teaches the fashion industry about dignity and independence in dressing. Their work shows what happens when People with Disabilities tell their own stories, and it asks us to make room for them at our events.

Keely Cat-Wells calls Being Heumann among the most important films on disability, because it shows how a 26 day occupation won Section 504 while the integration rules that protect life at home in the community are now taken out of the federal regulations. The Black Panther Party fed the protesters, and the film asks us to gather, organize, and keep asking for the promise to be kept.

Being Heumann, directed by Siân Heder, brings the 1977 Section 504 protest to the screen, with Ruth Madeley as Judy Heumann and Actors with Disabilities playing her coalition. Four years after Section 504 was signed, the government still had not acted on it. So People who are Blind, People who are Deaf, People who use Wheelchairs, and their allies held a federal office in San Francisco for 26 days. They testified about the schooling and jobs they were denied and about people kept home and unseen. The film arrives as current federal efforts aim to weaken those protections, and it keeps the coalition itself, not its allies, at the center of the win.

Sian Heder's "Being Heumann," the opening film at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), revisits 1977, when Judy Heumann and People with Disabilities held a California government building for weeks to demand accessibility regulations. Heder says the rights they won are being reversed, and her Apple TV film shows their protest as joyful community as well as struggle. It also shows daily barriers honestly, from rising out of bed to waiting for an attendant. Ruth Madeley, who uses a wheelchair and plays Heumann, once insisted she was fine on sets with no ramp, afraid of looking like a burden, and now tells other actors they can ask. We should have access ready before anyone has to ask.

Siân Heder's "Being Heumann" casts dozens of Performers with Disabilities in the story of a four week occupation of federal health offices in San Francisco. That protest pressed for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and became a major step toward the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). On set, Actors who are Deaf, Actors who are Blind, and Actors who use Wheelchairs brought access requirements that sometimes conflicted with each other and with a tight film schedule. Many cast members found a vintage wheelchair that seemed workable became a barrier ten hours in. The people who meet a barrier know it best.

Rebekah Taussig wrote the film Being Heumann and learned how Judy Heumann led a nearly monthlong occupation that won the Rehabilitation Act's Section 504. Stories on screen once told her little about disability, and an airline losing her wheelchair showed that travel still shuts People with Disabilities out. Now a federal memo calls institutions an acceptable option under the ADA, short for Americans with Disabilities Act, even as a major festival chose the film to open its program. Taussig wants whole communities invested in carrying rights out.

Halloween leaves out Children with Disabilities when the holiday is planned without them. After his six year old daughter wondered how a boy using a wheelchair could go trick or treating at the house, Rich Padulo put a sign on his lawn, and seven other families came. That sign became Treat Accessibly, and 300,000 homes across Canada are now part of it. Steps, blocked driveways, noise, strobing lights, and jump scare displays keep children out, but a treat station at the edge of the lawn, stickers beside the candy, scarier decorations set back, and a greeting that expects no spoken reply remove those barriers. In Dartmouth, street leader Calum Sencabaugh shows neighbours how, and we can plan our own gatherings so no child is left out.

Dolores Huerta died at 96 on Oct. 28. She shared leadership of the farm worker struggles with César Chávez, kept workers' spirits high on the picket line, drew more women into the strike, and led the table grape boycott outside California. As chief negotiator for the farm workers' union, United Farm Workers (UFW), Huerta would not be intimidated, and her tenacity won signed contracts, a first in U.S. history for agricultural workers. Later she spearheaded a foundation in her own name, the Dolores Huerta Foundation, to build a new generation of Latino community leaders. Her mantra, "Si se puede," means it can be done, and it asks us to plan so that people who face a barrier lead the work of removing it.

Journalist Saba Salman wrote Double Discrimination for her youngest sister Raana, who is British, South Asian, and has a Learning Disability, and whom people rarely picture as both disabled and a Person of Colour. Her reporting shows that people facing racism and ableism together are skipped by the social justice ideas meant to counter bias, and that inequalities in housing, work, health and schooling are shocking in scale. The book closes on the defiance and optimism found among public sector organisations, charities, activists and families. We should plan every program, service, event, and communication with someone like Raana in view.

On her 29th birthday, Antonia Sinibaldi was served a dessert with “Happy Birthday Wheelchair!” written where her name belonged. Staff had used the word on a ticket to find her table, and the restaurant said no disrespect was meant, yet the ticket had already reduced a guest to a wheelchair. Sinibaldi writes publicly about accessibility and her own spinal cord injury, and she will not go back. We should lead with a person’s name on any notation we write, and keep a detail about a wheelchair beside the name, never in its place.

Ableism rates People with Disabilities as worth less than nondisabled people, even though they are the largest marginalized group, roughly 15% of the world's people. People learn it, often without seeing it, and it works through ableism built into institutions such as medicine and health policy, between people, and inside people who turn its messages on themselves. It shows up as hostility, as rescuing, and as a mix of both, and in health care it puts care out of reach and contributes to illness and deaths that never had to happen. Countering ableism means admitting the harm, hearing People with Disabilities, passing the mic, and pushing for access and representation. We should start with the next program, service, event, or communication in planning.

Tiffany Yu was nine when a car crash took her father's life and left her with a permanently paralyzed arm. Back at school, classmates chose her last for teams, and she spent years hiding her disability. Ableism followed her into adulthood through hesitant handshakes, questions about her wrist splint, dates who were not comfortable with a disabled partner, a pottery class unsure it could fit her, and praise that treated her life as extraordinary. Screens showed disabled people only as objects of pity or villains. She chose to advocate and founded Diversability, now a global community for disability pride and storytelling. Countering ableism starts with planning rooms where nobody waits to be chosen. We should start with the next activity we plan.

A teenage wheelchair user emailed a store about product displays blocking the aisles and got a shoplifting accusation back, tied to a branch the teen had never visited, with a wheelchair seen that week as the only evidence. The apology was a ten dollar credit, and the employee lost her job. With about 27 percent of American adults having a disability, treating one wheelchair as a description of a person is ableist logic, not evidence. A person who reports a barrier is showing us what to remove, and the barrier is what should go. We should start with the next program, service, event, or communication in planning.

Ableism is woven into how we talk about disability. Stories that treat disabled people as props for nondisabled viewers hide the barriers, and one voice never speaks for a whole community. Infantilization shows up as raised voices, parents heard first, and conservatorships for 1.3 million adults, all resting on assumptions about what disabled people can do. Disability is both a culture and an identity, so the blame belongs on the barrier, not on the person. We should start with the next program, service, event, or communication we plan.

A boy of about ten used the R word, an ableist slur, to ask about 16 month old Oliver Herring, who has ReNU Syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disability. His father, Chris, answered calmly, told the boy who Oliver is, and asked him to use another word. The slur still cut deep, and Chris asks parents to talk openly with their children about difference and to let kids ask hard questions. When adults explain disability openly to children, curiosity can grow into welcome. We should answer the next curious child with a calm reply and a better word.

Kathryn Bromwich, who loves horror and has a disability, shows how films such as Frankenstein use scarring, prosthetics, wheelchairs, and amputation as signs of a corrupt character, and how celebrated art films drop disabled actors into scenes to deepen the unease. Horror has no use for it: Bring Her Back casts Sora Wong, who has limited vision, as a funny, smart character the audience stands with. Disabled people hold just 2% of the film and television workforce, so she calls for disabled creators telling their own stories. We would start with the stories in our next program, service, event, or communication.