Voting: ‘Participation is Powerful’

Did you know that if people with disabilities had voted at the same rate as those without in the 2018 election, 2.3 million more disabled voters would have cast their votes? That’s one of the many eye-opening facts disability advocate and writer Imani Barbarin shares in Vote for Access. The new five-part video series seeks to jump-start a national conversation that goes far beyond mail-in ballots to describe the multiplicity of barrier-breaking innovations needed to make sure every vote counts.

As the host of the series, Barbarin takes a broad, cross-disability approach, covering inaccessible polling places (only 17% nationwide are fully accessible), lack of transportation options, non-functioning electronic voting units and more in five-minute episodes that are engaging and empowering. As Barbarin says in the first episode, “Voting is participating, and in a country that so often relegates disabled people to institutions, isolation and stereotypes, participation is powerful.”

The series was produced by Rooted in Rights and Block by Block Creative, and is available at VoteForAccess.us.

Eye Control

Thanks to innovations from across the computer industry, using a tablet hands-free is easier than ever. But if you still haven’t found the right solution, you may want to check out Eyetell, a free eye-controlled augmentative and alternative communication app for iPad. Eyetell uses the FaceID sensor on newer iPad models to track the movement of the user’s eyes in response to a circle of rotating letters. When you look at one of the rotating letters, it indicates that it has registered the gaze. If you keep following the letter with your eyes, it will be selected. Combined with a powerful, customizable word predictor, this allows the app to offer quick, easy, accurate control.

For more info, visit eyetell.io, or visit the AppStore to download apps.apple.com/us/app/eyetell/id1481070509?ls=1.

Aisle Take That

Unwieldy and uncomfortable, airplane aisle chairs occupy one of the lowest rungs of design hell. Thankfully, innovators are trying to devise a better solution to help people with mobility disabilities enjoy air travel more. With an ergonomic design and an integrated mechanism for fitting into existing airplane seating, the Row-1 Wheelchair System won the Discovery of the Year Award as well as a Platinum Winner Award at the European Product Design Awards in 2019.

Colorado-based company Molon Labe Seating is hoping to do away with the aisle chair all together with its new Freedom Seat. The novel design comes out of the company’s larger offering of adjustable-width and customizable seats. The Freedom Seat solves the longstanding issue of allowing airlines to easily adapt their seating configuration when a wheelchair user is flying, without having to permanently lose seats and profits by removing a seat. The Freedom Seat simply slides over the adjoining seat, leaving a space for a wheelchair user to sit in their chair and lock down using a Q’Straint docking system. See it in action at airlineseats.biz/how-it-works.

Impossible Yoga

We could all benefit from a little rest and relaxation these days, and any way to safely escape the confines of our quarantine comes as a welcome surprise. Thanks to the internet and the people of the Impossible Dream, you can now do both in one fell swoop with chair yoga classes on board a 60-foot wheelchair-accessible catamaran. The nonprofit has teamed with yoga teacher Natalie Morales to broadcast yoga classes for wheelchair users twice a week from sunny Biscayne Bay, Florida. The one-hour virtual sessions begin at 4 p.m. EST every Monday and Thursday, can be accessed via Facebook Live and are uploaded to YouTube after the conclusion of the class. Each session focuses on breathing, range of motion, balance, community and overall care. All classes are free, but donations are welcome.

For more information, visit theimpossibledream.org or email info@theimpossibledream.org. To participate in the class, visit facebook.com/impossibledreamcatamaran or YouTube at bit.ly/3dccX3G.

Kiss and Tell

When NEW MOBILITY contributor Gary Karp wrote and self-published Disability and the Art of Kissing in 2006, it served as a compendium of all the things he’d learned over a long career as an educator, speaker and writer. Each chapter tackled a different topic — from whether sex is still possible after disability, to self-pleasure, to finding a partner — with a short, punchy essay.

Over the next 13 years, Karp married, divorced and returned to single life — experiences that fueled his desire to update the book with new chapters and a new cover. Late last year that desire became a reality when he published the second edition of the book, which is now available through his web site, garykarpspeaks.com/aok2. “It’s a topic that I’m passionate about, and I wanted the book to have a fresh life,” says Karp.

Karp, a T12 paraplegic who lives in Phoenix, could never have anticipated the current pandemic or its impact on dating or relationships, but was quick to suggest a chapter on phone sex might be a good addendum. “It’s one of my favorite topics. It’s very, very undervalued,” he says. “It’s an art.”

He has no doubt people will find a way to stoke the flames of love despite quarantines and social distancing. “I think when there’s real intimacy between two people and real attraction and real desire to enjoy, that people find a way to get creative and any way that you can do it is healthy, and I encourage it whole heartedly,” he says.

Everybody loves a fun road trip movie, and right before Covid-19 shut down movie the­aters, Come as You Are was generating good buzz for its portrayal of three friends with different disabilities on a journey of dis­covery. You can be the critic if you rent the movie on Amazon, Google or Youtube.

Let’s Explore With Cor Cor, from the authors of the travel site Curb Free With Cory Lee, invites young readers on a fun trip around the world, high­lighting accessibility and resource­fulness. Preorder at amazon.com for a child in your life.