11/13/25 - Working, voting, and learning

Good afternoon ...

Here are three more disability-related articles to take into the downslope of the week. I may be moving to rehab for my arm and hip tomorrow, so there may or may not be a Friday video. If not, have a great weekend!

We Decided Which Disabilities Justify Unemployment, and Which Are Just Excuses, You Lazy, Ungrateful Brat

Steven Verdile, The Squeaky Wheel - November 11, 2025

"... and so we at The Squeaky Wheel have decided which disabilities justify being unemployed and which are just fake excuses for your whiny little butt."

I don't often give satire top billing in this newsletter. But this Squeaky Wheel piece is particularly newsworthy. It deals with the constant battle between disability employment as a matter of equal opportunity and accessibility for some of us, and as an imposed obligation for 0thers. It also brilliantly riffs on the way different disabilities are regarded – some accepted with no thought at all, others met with a skepticism not far from open hostility. And the article is worth reading for the phrase, "Microsoft Excel autism" alone

Disability Voting News: November 12, 2025

Sarah Blahovec, The Accessible Voting Booth - November 12, 2025

"But I also know that the Administration's response to this election will be an even stronger firehose of efforts to make it more difficult for Americans to vote, and Trump has already renewed his vow that he will try to eliminate vote by mail through an Executive Order."

It's easy these days to become cynical about the actual importance of disabled people voting. In the US at least, it has become even clearer that disabled people have no truly reliable allies. We can still see that some political parties are more naturally aligned with our interests than others. But our interests almost always come second or third compared with more powerful motives like big money, political ambition, and cult-like ideologies. However, that makes it even more important that we protect our access to voting – one of the only levers of influence we still have that is even remotely fair and transparent. And it looks like a coordinated assault on mail-in voting may be the biggest threat to what little power we still have.

Burkina Faso Improving Education of Children with Disabilities

World Bank Group - October 31, 2025

"The security crisis led to the forced displacement of the population, especially students, towards safe areas including project schools. The project adapted to this context, through the establishment of reception sites and the designation of project schools as safe havens for students. To further ensure continuity in implementation, the project transferred the acquisition of specific equipment to NGOs and used Geo-enabling monitoring system (GEMS) tool and telephones to obtain project data."

This article addresses an interesting question I don't think is asked often enough in disability communities – how exactly can we effectively do disability rights and justice work in actively crumbling countries? What does it mean to fight for access, economic security, and social inclusion when literally everything is falling to pieces, for basically everyone? It's encouraging to see disability communities continue to try, and even succeed.

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