The deaf or hard of hearing artist Christine Sun Kim gives us an insight of the meaning of sound through her own experience. Since youth she was told to appropriate herself (her chewing, burping, moving) to the sound of others as if there was a ‘possession of sound’ that did not belong to her, but we see that in her today’s practice, she gives us a new perception of sound through her interesting visual and vibrational art that might have not have even been possible to create had she not been deaf (or hard of hearing). She also shows us her courage to overcome social norms by ‘playing’ with her ‘disability’.

UAL is commited to arrange adjustments and give support to people with different disabilities defined by the Equality Act (Dyslexia or another specific learning difference, sensory impairment, physical impairment, long-term health or mental health condition, autism, other long-term conditions which has an impact on day-to-day life) offering access to support, allowances and screenings. My personal take on this as a lecturer is that it is important to be aware of people’s different abilities to be able to support students with disabilities, but I would encourage less of a bureaucratic way of disclosing difficulties and more of pastoral face to face communication between tutors and students.

Vilissa Thompson speaks about the premises behind the hashtag #DisabilityTooWhite – the failure as a community to firstly speak about disability, particularly of people of colour and then acceptance that the world of white disabled or nondisabled is one of advantage. Vilissa depicts the media landscape as one lacking representation of disability which hinders an ability to belong and to feel like all lives and stories are important. As a personal insight, she shares rarely seeing disabled women or disabled black girls on TV except in the context of raising money for charity. She gives in interesting reflection of discrimination within African American organisations that do not talk about disability except as a medical model – forgetting that a disabled experience is also part of the black experience.

Khairani Barokka (Okka) speaks about her position as artist, an (Indonesian) woman (living abroad), living with what she perceives as intergenerational trauma in her body, as well that induced by healthcare abuse and neglect. She reflects on her experience of solely creating, producing and touring a performance piece ‘Deaf-accessibility for spoonies: lessons from touring Eve and Mary Are Having Coffee while chronically ill’ and the numerous ways her health was compromised by not getting enough understanding and support neither from arts organisations nor healthcare both in her native Indonesia nor internationally. With a ‘face of joy’ shared on her social media outlets she had to adapt in order to endure her performances by 98% of the time kneeling or laying down, performing poetry and performance art while refusing to stand and cause herself pain, whether seen by others or not. She wanted to make an ‘invisible disability’ visible in her piece, but also enforcing rules on how and where the piece is performed – it would be D/deaf and hearing-impaired accessible, and only performed in wheelchair-accessible venues. 

Robert Softley Gale has been the artistic director for the Scottish premier disability-led theatre company ‘Birds of Paradise’ since 2012. In the article ‘On note from Birds of Paradise’ he shares that there is a stronger sense about being able to understand and articulate what disabled people need from the world around than ever before in the past, and that the challenge is to continue communicating clearly their experiences – through intersectional elements such as considering neurodiversity with a racial context or accessible and gender-affirming fashion. He shares a personal story of overcoming the idea of hiding personal battles – ‘burdens’ – by meeting other disabled artists and forming ‘a common fight’.