📚 Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism by Elsa Sjunneson

2/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

You should read this. Memoir, societal and media criticism, and a lot of often-footnoted humor in this examination of persistent and pervasive ableism. I ordered this after seeing the author give the keynote address at Accessing Higher Ground, an academic conference on accessible technology in higher education, which was an excellent keynote and introduced me to the phrase “disability is a multiverse”. Though I’ve been making an effort at broadening my awareness of the ableism around me, as someone who isn’t (currently) disabled, I know that there’s a lot I miss, and there was a lot in this book that I hadn’t thought of. However obvious it is in retrospect, unless you live within these circumstances, they’re often all too easy to not be aware of, and it’s very worthwhile to be exposed to situations outside of our experience.

Michael holding Being Seen