Intro
Topical Julian of Norwich quote in a TweetHye Sung (@HyeSungFrancis) tweeted at 5:52 AM on Thu, Jul 09, 2020:
“If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.”
— Julian of Norwich
That six weeks of virtual worship-sharing has been a great blessing.
The book of Mark is a kickass way to think about disability and the Wednesday Night Bible Study group are grand adventurers in the text.
Now, RantWoman is packing her invisible knapsack (Earth to RantWoman, Invisible?: #DigitalEquity anyone?). RantWoman is lining up her hashtags (#DisabilityPrideMonth #ADA30 #ADAInColor #DisabilityVisibility #DisabilityTooWhite #AbledsAreWeird #CripTheVote #A11y #Accessibility . RantWoman is gathering memes together. RantWoman is dancing with the calendar and the schedule. And RantWoman is loading up her Quaker Zoom Machine with "Oh, my Gawd, Who AM I worshipping with?" But first, some checkins.
The first iterations of RantWoman's TWO interest groups have gone where they needed to if not where RantWoman first thought they would go. There is a wonderful little girl and her family to hold in the Light. There is also RantWoman to hold in the Light for round two. RantWoman WILL post outlines and connection info separately.
Business Sessions
Documents to be presented at Business Session already have their own link. Now it is RantWoman's responsibility to read them, ask in advance if there are any accessibility hiccups. ... And if RantWoman does not get everything read, it is still her responsibility to take good care of the Meeting for Business time and space. RantWoman humbly and gratefully notes how much opportunity to prepare in advance makes events more accessible for RantWoman.Here is topical comment, exhortation and relevant link from the Clerk:
We approach Annual Session with months of preparation already completed by our committees. We will receive committee reports. In most cases we will have an opportunity to ask questions of the committees about the progress of their work. In some cases we will be asked to approve the committees’ recommendations. If we come to plenary prepared, we can do the work of plenaries more efficiently, reduce the strain of excessive Zoom time, and soak longer and more comfortably in the abundance of Spirit that fills our meetings. Some Friends will want to study committee reports in detail, others will prefer to release personal control and trust in the hard work of our committees. All the documents for our plenaries are collected on the web page Pre-Annual Session Reports found at <https://as.npym.org/pre-
Accessibility Twitches
In terms of playing well with accessibility tools and wide variety of options, Zoom is by far the most accessible video conferencing tool RantWoman has dealt with. That does not mean things are perfect by a long shot.RantWoman thanks one interest group presenter for asking whether Google slides will work with RantWoman's most-used browser screen reader pair. NOTHING in the screen share window works in Zoom with screen readers, so it's time for charm, teamwork, and alternate methods. RantWoman can be, um, a little charm-challenged. Hold that problem in the Light. RantWoman also noticed teamwork coming up for others in the many pre-event Zoom practice sessions. Finally, RantWoman notes that probably people connecting by phone will appreciate brief summaries of key points as agenda items are addressed.
Readers dying for a peek at RantWoman's video conferencing accessibility world tour are invited to check out her non-Quaker blog. What generally works for RantWoman is to have a file or a link in the chat. RantWoman needs her own machine to be able to do certain things, details of which RantWoman is glad to have had time to figure out. RantWoman is also happy to go on at length or in tedious detail with anyone interested. RantWoman also appreciates if presenters offer names and contact info out loud. For one thing both in Zoom and in #MeatSpace it can be hard for RantWoman to find and connect with a person who has said something which as attracted RantWoman's attention.
RantWoman thinks she will post more meditations on accessibility separately. RantWoman considers it a great good thing to INVITE people to speak up about needs. Here RantWoman trips over multiple awkward realities: if one invites people to speak up, the no fairy godmothers rule may still stumble into the picture. Consistent results may or may not occur even in the best circumstances. It is all very well not to ask an oppressed person to do all the work of educating the community RantWoman can cite MULTIPLE moments where if someone would just ASK RANTWOMAN what is or is not working, sometimes people could save themselves a whole lot of stress and agony, even before thinking about easing the workload by working on ways to LEARN APPROPRIATE TERMINOLOGY and to share burdens(Sorry. RantWoman is still on a post-birthday high and overflowing with Dial-a-Tirade motivations).
The Zoom Machine: Rename ourselves
Pretend the lineup below is a Zoom screen. Check the alt text for commentary, and pretend the Alt Text is like the Rename Function in Zoom. Well sometimes the Alt Text is like Rename. For some of the pictures the Alt text is someone's unholy judgmental thought bubbles needing to be purified in the cleansing torrents of Meeting for Worship. Sometimes the Alt Text is grocery lists or obsessive fixations or lust charged mental meanderings. The point: It's Meeting for WORSHIP and belongs to God, even before we do the land acknowledgements.Speaking of "belongs to God," Friends upset that RantWoman would never promise to do as asked and always promised to be faithful to her Light could have CONSIDERED asking RantWoman about her considerations. Friends COULD have asked. But back to the Zoom machine.
Stay tuned for MORE RantWoman meditations on different aspects of accessibility, including when RantWoman can see and hear better in Zoom than in many other worship settings, when it can be easier or harder for RantWoman to connect by Zoom than in person.
To get started, the lineup, with special blindness tourism elements:
--Most of the dolls were made by RantWoman's next door neighbor who is almost totally blind. RantWoman finds the dolls interesting both because their faces are very idiosyncratic and because the dolls and their clothing represent all kinds of textures and tactile elements such as jewelry. Some of the dolls also excel at a blind person in meetings behavior one observant Friend has commented on: sighted people expect the people they are conversing with to look at them. Blind people look all over the place and can neither provide nor interact with the visual feedback sighted people are used to. None of that means blind people are not paying attention. RantWoman gets that this reality is daunting for sighted people. RantWoman has NO patience with a variety of sighted people who have not so far been able or willing to try to work through this reality. Continuing revelation anyone?Anyway, Next Door Neighbor can see enough color, when she comes over to ask for help, to know generally what colors she is dealing with. RantWoman is VERY grateful to have enough color perception in between a whole bunch of eyeball wonkiness to be able to help her.
--Please imagine phone number or random drawbridge avatars in the white spaces. Please scroll past the "Zoom screen" for more comments.
One more Live vs Zoom comparison and invitation to share comparable moments no matter how weird.
RantWoman is certain the world is aware it needs... scratch that: RantWoman is called to deliver further meditations on RantWoman experience at live events and the RantWoman Zoom experience. In particular, a retreat from quite awhile ago came up recently in conversation. RantWoman called the many organizer contact to ask about hearing issues and got blown off as in hung up on. So much for thought about whether people can hear during the experience?
Apparently at this same retreat there also was another exercise that would have sent RantWoman around the bend if she had arrived in time to be subjected to it. According to RantWoman's informant, there was some kind of exercise where people were invited to touch each other's faces. YUCK. GROSS, not even counting COVID! SOME blind people like to do that touch faces thing. Around strangers RantWoman is more likely to be in a zone of "Keep your grubby mitts off my glasses!"
Interestingly though, in screen land with touch screen or settings, RantWoman can delight in touching people's faces with her finger or the cursor and the screen reader will read the person's name.RantWoman finds this SO helpful, SO MUCH nicer than paws all over faces in person.
But the how to feel connected over Zoom theme...? Anyone else?
Link stashed here FYI though not necessarily because RantWoman expects this framework will feel like a fit for RantWoman.
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