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The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

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Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#211

Post by jnovek »

AlexandrB wrote: post #127
jnovek wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Social Model of disability The best way I’ve heard this articulated is: Under the medical model, disabled individuals are expected to change their behavior to accommodate (fit on with) society. We ask people whose lives are already more difficult than average to do additional work. Under the social model, we ask all able-bodied people to accommodate disabled individuals instead. Further, the social model says t…

> Under the social model, we ask all able-bodied people to accommodate disabled individuals instead. This sounds good in the abstract, but the devil is in the details. What specific accommodation is being asked for? What counts as a disability? For example, should I simply have to ignore angry outbursts directed at me and my coworkers from someone with oppositional defiance disorder[1]? Am I supposed to take someone'…

This is really ignorant. That’s not an insult exactly, I mean that you’re asking questions that all have answers if you cared to look them up.

The reason why people call that sort of attitude “ableist” is that you’re requiring me, the disabled person, to prove that I’m not a liar.

> What specific accommodation is being asked for?

There is a whole field of study called “Disability Theory” that includes this topic. It is well-defined with thousands of pages written on the topic. It is not nebulous, you just aren’t familiar with it.

> What counts as a disability?

Words have definitions:

“the condition of being unable to perform as a consequence of physical or mental unfitness”

> Am I supposed to take someone's word that they have ODD

Yes, but a person with ODD is still expected to be a decent human. They may make more often mistakes but they should recognize and apologize for those mistakes. They should be in therapy to help learn self-regulation techniques.

Likewise, you should give them some extra grace because, in spite of all that extremely hard work, it’s hard to ignore what your body is telling you (push back against authority) and sometimes they will slip up.

> can I request proof from a medical professional?

I dunno, can I get a video of your last colonoscopy? Can you tell the public internet if you take take viagra? Can you list your mental health disorders for me please? How’s your gut, had any diarrhea lately?

Medical information is private.

> There are real tradeoffs here.

Yes, the tradeoffs are that things are a bit less convenient for able-bodied people and disabled people get to actually have agency on their lives.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#212

Post by tetromino_ »

inigyou wrote: post #164
my123 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big chunk of the problem is planning/political: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Line_(Maryland) > A March 2025 report by the Maryland comptroller's office found that permitting and legal fees for the project, originally budgeted at $6 million, had actually consumed roughly $800 million, thanks to two lawsuits and the contract renegotiations Better tech cannot solve that on its own, the problem is not even ther…

That's still only 3% of the money per track length that we're talking about here.

My guess is that the indirect impact might have been in the tens of %. One of the biggest (if not the biggest) reasons for enormous construction costs is delays which make an efficient construction timetable impossible, and two lawsuits of course result in a long and enormously unpredictable delay.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#213

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

jnovek wrote: post #207
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My intended implication is that pressure from the social model has achieved as much as it can, and the left over problems must be resolved through other means. The vast majority of doorknobs I personally interact with, including 100% of the ones at my house and workplace, are lever-style.

As a disabled person, my experience indicates that we’re not even close to what the social model could achieve. Example: I have a chronic pain disorder. I have substantial difficulty working in an office. WFH was an absolute blessing, and RTO has been a curse. RTO is a regressive policy for disabled people who found they were finally able to participate in their industry for the first time in ages. Now they are expec…

I'm sympathetic to your problems, but I don't think this has anything to do with the social model or medical model. Even the strongest advocates of the social model of disability wouldn't argue, I don't think, that construction site supervisors must be allowed to work from home after setting up some cameras and microphones to monitor what's happening. The dispute here is that RTO employers think working together in an office is similarly important, but you think they're wrong and WFH is just as good.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#214

Post by jnovek »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #213
jnovek wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a disabled person, my experience indicates that we’re not even close to what the social model could achieve. Example: I have a chronic pain disorder. I have substantial difficulty working in an office. WFH was an absolute blessing, and RTO has been a curse. RTO is a regressive policy for disabled people who found they were finally able to participate in their industry for the first time in ages. Now they are expec…

I'm sympathetic to your problems, but I don't think this has anything to do with the social model or medical model. Even the strongest advocates of the social model of disability wouldn't argue, I don't think, that construction site supervisors must be allowed to work from home after setting up some cameras and microphones to monitor what's happening. The dispute here is that RTO employers think working together in a…

> Even the strongest advocates of the social model of disability wouldn't argue, I don't think, that construction site supervisors must be allowed to work from home after setting up some cameras and microphones to monitor what's happening.

That is a man of straw! I’m talking about desk jobs, here, and I think that’s pretty clear from my comment above.

I don’t know how RTO could be seen as anything but the medical model —

Medical model: it is the disabled person’s responsibility to figure out how to function in society.

Social model: it is society’s responsibility to accommodate people with disabilities.

In any case, I’m actively involved in the disability community and this is one of the biggest — if not the biggest — conversations in the community recent years. WFH/RTO has become the poster-child for the conflict between the medical and social model. This is why I chose it as an example.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#215

Post by jnovek »

snapplebobapple wrote: post #210
jnovek wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disabled person pays isnt correct either because there are many near zero cost things we could do if we just thought about it at design phase. ??? This is the social model on a nutshell.

No it isn't because it isn't cast in cost/opportunity cost/etc. The reality of implementation is top down dictation without apparent consideration of cost (For example, I redid the front door of our office and I now have two buttons to open the automatic door that look like crap and are at waist height and at the floor. This was dictated in the code in my region as a new concession that I never would have done becaus…

Are you the disabled person using these automatic door buttons? If not, have you asked someone with a mobility-related disability what they think of it?

It’s absolutely possible for laws around accommodations to be stupid. Once again, that’s the medical model, when able-bodied people write policy for disabled people, there are stupid outcomes. The social model says that there should always be a person with a relevant disability involved with designing accommodations unless it’s absolutely impossible to do. The saying commonly used in the community is “nothing about us without us.”

So perhaps your implementation sucks, but if it does, there’s a good chance it’s because of the medical model.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#216

Post by snapplebobapple »

jnovek wrote: post #215
snapplebobapple wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't because it isn't cast in cost/opportunity cost/etc. The reality of implementation is top down dictation without apparent consideration of cost (For example, I redid the front door of our office and I now have two buttons to open the automatic door that look like crap and are at waist height and at the floor. This was dictated in the code in my region as a new concession that I never would have done becaus…

Are you the disabled person using these automatic door buttons? If not, have you asked someone with a mobility-related disability what they think of it? It’s absolutely possible for laws around accommodations to be stupid. Once again, that’s the medical model, when able-bodied people write policy for disabled people, there are stupid outcomes. The social model says that there should always be a person with a relevant…

lets say I think the correct model is the social model which then has every change priced vs the cost of not changing it (cost incurred changing it > cost incurred to disabled persons). That's probably a reasonable approximation you can internalize. I am also skeptical of your second paragraph. I think that's just how government works except in a very few spots with some characteristic that drives better behaviour (I think social cohesion or very limited government being the main qualities that can drive better outcomes but I'm not willing to outline why because this is already too long) Everybody ass covers and you get an explosion of stuff in favour of the loud people that harm the majority more than the loud people benefit, which is deadweight loss to society and everyone is worse off. Loud people being the place holder for people complaining, of which disabled people are a tiny minority.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#217

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

jnovek wrote: post #214
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic to your problems, but I don't think this has anything to do with the social model or medical model. Even the strongest advocates of the social model of disability wouldn't argue, I don't think, that construction site supervisors must be allowed to work from home after setting up some cameras and microphones to monitor what's happening. The dispute here is that RTO employers think working together in a…

> Even the strongest advocates of the social model of disability wouldn't argue, I don't think, that construction site supervisors must be allowed to work from home after setting up some cameras and microphones to monitor what's happening. That is a man of straw! I’m talking about desk jobs, here, and I think that’s pretty clear from my comment above. I don’t know how RTO could be seen as anything but the medical mod…

You think (and I do acknowledge that this perspective is very common in the disability community) that desk work is completely different and can be done remotely with no loss. There are many businesses in the US who agree with you; the numbers I've seen are that at least 10-15% of Americans (some sources say 22%) work fully remote jobs. It's good that these opportunities exist, and I would support creating them if they didn't.

Other businesses don't agree. Managers at these businesses want people chitchatting with each other, grabbing lunch together, having hallway talks, etc. They think that desk work is at its best when it's a social activity, and often have specific points where they feel their business didn't work as well when Covid forced everyone to stay home.

Why does the social model of disability imply that the second group of businesses is wrong, or that we have to override their judgment?

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