Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body

Accessibility focuses on the design of buildings, environments, services, and products so people with disabilities have the same access as people without disabilities. This includes accessible housing, parking, wheelchair ramps, closed captioning, and improved website design. Accessibility intersects with inclusion because it is more inclusive of people with disabilities. It is also part of the social model of disability. Rebekah Taussig incorporates accessibility throughout Sitting Pretty: The View From My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body, especially Chapter 8—emphasizing how inaccessibility creates exclusion and devalues people with disabilities. She also reflects on how inaccessibility factors into her decisions to go places, compared to people without disabilities who may not think about this issue. She broadens discussion of accessibility to everyone, as the world has become more accessible for everyone while helping those with disabilities; this is the case with closed captioning.

Feminism is a movement and ideology that advocates for equality between women and men. It emphasizes how society centers men and advocates for women’s rights. Intersectional feminism integrates perspectives regarding race, sexuality, class, ability, and other identifiers, acknowledging that different women do not necessarily experience the same discrimination. While intersectional feminism aims to include disability, Taussig does not see her identity represented in feminism; this was the case with the panel discussed in Chapter 6.