Tag: Barriers

Interesting turn of events

Those who know me, or have spent anytime reading through my writing here, know I’m disabled. I make use of an electric wheelchair to get around. Not only that but voice communication can be difficult at times. For both myself and the person I’m talking to. Such is life. I’m OK with it. As are people who pay me the patience, respect and effort.

But every so often I run into a situation that causes me to sit back and shake my head feeling even more dumbfounded at the state of our society than usual. Me, a person who deals with these matters, every single day of my life.

Let me set the scene. I’m sitting (har!) in my office poking away and fully engaged with a new CSS framework I found today, when the doorbell rings…

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The shape of things to come?

Technically, today begins the 7th calendar year of this website’s existence. Which is abundantly surreal, actually. And, as insignificant as that first sentence may be (read: is), I’m marking this anniversary by launching the site’s 3rd official re-design. Bam (that was a not so subtle hint to those who have stumbled on my words in a feed reader, say, to get on a modern web browser and see what I’m talking about)!

And so the current iteration of this blog, rather obviously, leaves the former behind. My point, while my former “skin” was extremely stale (I’d argue, if not right out of the gates, very soon after), it served me very well. Exceptionally well, in fact. Farewell my old friend. It’s been a blast! But, if I might be frank, it didn’t really meet with as many of the design objectives as I’d have liked (way more on that than is even remotely called for in a bit).

And now we have this effort. It entailed much more than a reshuffling for appearance’s sake. It was a complete re-development from the ground up. HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, plus some neat little WordPress optimization tricks (does this site seem a tad snappier?) thrown in, for good measure. Or, in other words, I ripped it all out, and started fresh.

With more, of everything, still to come…

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Just Read The Damn Book

Book JacketNearing the end of July I saw the movie The Diving Bell And The Butterfly and subsequently wrote a piece entitled Let Your Imagination Set You Free. Since then I’ve had an opportunity to read the book, by the same name, which set this all adrift. Not to mention my interest in what he so valiantly accomplished. The authoring of some memoirs.

I seem to recall hearing a few professionals, at a rehabilitation hospital I was admitted to in March of ’97, recommend my family read a book written by a bloke who suffered from an affliction painstakingly “similar” to mine. The “affliction” being, as I’ve mentioned previously, “Locked-in Syndrome.” And “the bloke” being, I assume, Jean-Dominique Bauby. As it turns out Bauby’s book was originally published the very same week I finally began my climb out of my body. Weird.

Anyway this is a quick read. One I suggest people read in “collaboration” with the movie. The nature of both medium’s provide an important context into each other. I guess having “lived it” provides me a perspective I felt the book didn’t provide. No cut on him. And seeing it on screen I was better able to grasp what he experienced. The movie allows a person to witness difficulties he faced, the most prevalent being writing. Whereas the book, just as relevantly, tells that same person what he thought and felt.

It’s really a great story. Take my word for it…

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