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About the Flaneur
I walk through my blindness the way I wander down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, alert to the raw material of the senses. I am a flaneur. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm, unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, Return of the Flaneur to Galerie Vivienne. After that, try Foot Rage and the Blind Flaneur. Then stay tuned.Letting Go of Sight
I’ve canoed on Lake Superior for almost as many years as I’ve been losing eyesight. I return year after year like a migrating loon to learn the other side of a slow, uncertain process that we could call “going blind.” After 35 years with the lake as my teacher, I know what lies on the other side. I call it letting go of sight. Read Big Water. See more about the Great Lakes.Not This Pig
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in Not This Pig (2003).Media in Transition @ MiT
Disabled Americans today have to negotiate for the kinds of accommodations made for FDR, and the caveat “reasonable accommodation” is built into the law. President Franklin Roosevelt did not have to negotiate. He could summon vast resources of the federal government – money as well as brains – to accomplish the work of disability. And it was accomplished with such thoroughness and efficiency that its scale could be called the Accessibility-Industrial Complex had it been directed toward public accommodations and not solely the needs of a single man. Read FDR and the Hidden Work of Disability [MiT8 2013]
Shepard Fairey claimed that his posterization of a copyrighted AP news photo of Barack Obama was a transformative work protected by the fair use doctrine. In other words, it was a shape-shifter. I claim fair use, too, when I reproduce and transform copyrighted works into media formats that are accessible to me as a blind reader. Read Shape-Shifters in the Fair Use Lab [MiT6 2009]
The social engineers who created a system for licensing beggars in New York never imagined that a blind woman had culture or could make culture. She herself may not have imagined it, either. In the moment when Paul Strand photographed her surreptitiously on the street in 1916, he could not have expected that one day blind photographers would reverse the camera’s gaze. Read Curiosity & The Blind Photographer. [MiT5 2007]
Tag Archives: free culture
“Free” Sets New Gold Standard for Accessible Books
Bless you, Chris Anderson! In 35 years of reading by listening to talking books, this version of Free is the fastest access I’ve ever had to a newly published book. You have set the gold standard for audio book accessibility. … Continue reading
Preserving the Future’s Creative Raw Material in the Public Domain
James Boyle believes in the public domain enough to give away his new book there. You can acquire The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind in the conventional way, buying it from a book store. And you can … Continue reading
Dignity and Justice for All of Us
Today the United Nations celebrates the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, as well as the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Dignity and justice for all persons are established universal principles. Since its inception, the United … Continue reading
‘Grapes Of Wrath’ And The Politics of Book Burning
Clell Pruett burns a copy of The Grapes Of Wrath in Kern County, California in 1939. [Source: Kern County Museum/NPR] You don’t need Savonarola or Heinrich Himmler to ignite the pyre for banned books. The spark could start with a … Continue reading
Geekman vs. the Publishers: A Textbook Torrent
After I began to use my first adaptive computer some 25 years ago, I started talking to anyone who would listen about producing digital textbooks. I knew those books existed as digital files sometime in the production process. It was … Continue reading