Hi Reader.
July is Disability Pride Month, which feels fitting, because this past Independence Day weekend, I visited my parents in the small northern Maine town where I grew up. Trips home have always been a mixed bag for me. It's good to see my folks, and everything is familiar, but I'm also confronted by ghosts of my childhood. I grew up hating my disability. Rather than embracing it, I did everything I could to stomp it out, driving myself to adhere to a sighted world as though I was fully sighted. The results were uneven. I excelled academically and musically, but I really struggled with athletics and social dynamics.
For many years, I've been working to integrate my blindness into my life instead of fighting it. This visit home, I took some time to go back to a few of the spaces where those old battles played out, particularly the park in front of my elementary school, the place where I got picked on for my low vision, learned to stuff those feelings down, and started passing that hurt on to others. Rather than rationalize, minimize, or rush past that pain like I used to, I just let myself feel it. There's a little boy inside me who still carries a lot of big emotions, and I let him surface as the memories flooded in and passed by. It was liberating to discover that healing for old wounds can come from simply acknowledging them, sitting with them, and honoring them.
This got me thinking about what disability pride means to me.
- Being honest about who I am and where I come from, a low vision kid from a small northern Maine town who spent years trying to outrun that instead of facing it, and about what happened there, the teasing, the isolation, the long work of learning to belong to my own story. My hometown, hard parts included, is part of who I am, and that's valid even when it isn't easy.
- Embracing the reality that things are different for me in some significant ways from the "normal" experience of most people, and that's more than okay.
- Choosing not to become bitter when my body, mind, or world don't do what they're supposed to, and finding gratitude for the rich, meaningful life I get to enjoy, like watching the longest fireworks display my little hometown has ever put on.
- Finding solidarity with others who have walked similar roads of disability. I'm looking forward to diving into this at the upcoming American Council of the Blind's National Convention.
- Being open and curious about my own perspective and needs, listening to others' stories, struggles, and triumphs, and appreciating those who walk this journey with me.
How is disability pride showing up in the hard places of your own life right now
Upcoming events
American Council of the Blind National Convention
The ACB's 65th Annual Conference and Convention, themed "Soaring to New Heights," runs July 24 through 31 in St. Louis, Missouri. I'll be there with several other members of the BSCB, demoing and offering Case for Vision for sale. If you're attending, I'd love to connect. Come find me at the marketplace or say hello between sessions.
Disabled Stories Collective: Disability Pride Celebration
Join the Disabled Stories Collective on July 25th from 6 to 9pm for an evening of storytelling, disco music, food, and celebration at Follow Your Art Community Studios in Melrose, MA. The event will run rain or shine, and we're still looking for a couple more storytellers, so if you've got a story to tell, now's the time.
Accessibility around the web
Making Emojis and Icons Screen Reader Accessible - Elle Smith, Pope Tech
Emojis and icons look like little pictures, but screen readers often announce them by their literal code name rather than the tone or meaning we intend. This article breaks down three practical fixes: visible text labels, hidden screen-reader-only text, and well-built aria-labels, so your emojis and icons say what you actually mean.
An AI script for web accessibility testing - Gen Herres, Easy A11y Guide
AI will not replace human accessibility expertise, but it can help with a first pass. Gen shares a practical Claude prompt for running a “web accessibility lightning review” across 10 high-impact checks, including contrast, links, headings, keyboard access, focus states, alt text, motion, and accessibility statements. It still needs careful review, but it can surface issues many automated tools miss. I tried this on my own website, and its results were pretty accurate.
The Case for an Accessibility Designer Vibe Coding When All His Coworkers Are Also Vibe Coding - Eric Bailey
This piece wrestles with the messy reality of doing accessibility work in an AI-shaped workplace: the ethical discomfort, the pressure to “vibe code,” and the surprising ways LLMs can help accessibility designers repair experiences that might otherwise stay broken. It is not a cheerleading piece for AI, and that’s what makes it valuable. Instead, it asks what happens when accessibility experts use imperfect tools inside imperfect systems to make technology more usable for disabled people.
Have a joyful July.!
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Simon Miner
Pedal Point Solutions |
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