We’re all just temporarily abled

I once sat on a zoom call with a vision impaired user to do some accessibility testing on our site.<p>First, it was enlightening for me to see how she navigated through our site using her screen reader.<p>Second when she landed on our booking page we got so embarrassed because she couldn’t use our date picker. A basic HTML version would have done the job. But a few weeks back we had debated over which fancy jquery date picker plugin we should use without considering the impact. It was fancy alright, yet it wasn’t usable at all for this user.<p>I learned and felt many things that day as an engineer. Thinking in depth, across many different personas is a difficult thing to do, let alone building a tool that works well.

In terms of web UX, one disability that hardly anyone considers is intellectual disability - but really many people who work in development (design, project management, programming) are outliers in terms of intellectual ability (albeit probably not as much as they think they are)<p>But we&#x27;re all just temporarily smart as well, many people are not that bright before that first cup of coffee or if they are going through lots of stress (hence crunch time often decreasing productivity)<p>One of the problems I have is encountering design decisions that I think that must be a bug, only to have it turn out to be a real thing. This quirk in my character cost me a lot of money with the Danish department of business registration, - long story short when I said I filled out what they wanted filled out and speculated maybe their site was broken they said oh you probably made this specific mistake, everybody does that - but in the end I still had to pay thousands of dollars in fines and close down the company (it was when Denmark decided you had to specify the legal owner of an LLC or face forced closure with fines, about a year later they closed down all LLCs anyway)<p>on edit: of course a lot of devs have specific intellectual differences in ability - like ADHD.

I became disabled after a music festival last year. The music was too loud and something broke in my ear.<p>Now every sound hurts me, my voice is far too painful, going for a walk outside is too painful. Basically I can&#x27;t do anything but sit in a silent room and browse the internet.<p>Pain hyperacusis sucks. I wish I&#x27;d been more careful with my hearing.

So this is how I live my life - knowing that your good health and ability can always just end at no fault of your own. It still haunts me that my father had plans we always talked about, he was very active and loved going outdoors and travelling, mountain biking, hiking etc, he spent a crazy amount of time getting a Land Rover done up as a Camel Trophy replica for a big adventure we were meant to go on, and then basically got cancer and died couple months after his 50th birthday.<p>That&#x27;s not to be gloomy and depressing - just that if you:<p>1) want to do something<p>2) have the physical health to do it<p>3) doing so won&#x27;t put your family in a difficult situation financially or otherwise<p>Just do it. When my friends say &quot;oh I&#x27;ll do that when I&#x27;m retired&quot; or even just &quot;oh I&#x27;ll start activity X maybe in a couple of years&quot; I&#x27;m like.........why. You don&#x27;t even know if you&#x27;ll be fit and healthy next year, making plans for your retirement in 20 years or even postponing simple outdoor activities like mountain biking or camping for a couple years &quot;when the time is better&quot; is.....unreasonable to me.<p>Like the article says - we&#x27;re all just temporarily abled. Maybe some of us if very lucky will remain abled for a long time. A lot of people will not. If you have the good fortune of being abled now, use it now.

Story time?<p>I worked very hard to get into a very physical job and I made it. It was the beginning of my professional career, I wanted to do this since I was a kid. I was 22.<p>A few weeks went by, still couldn&#x27;t believe they were paying me to do something I loved so much :) Of course, one regular day going to work on my motorcycle a distracted pedestrian crossed illegally and without looking. It jumped from behind a big truck, impossible to avoid.<p>Due to the collision I fell right on the corner of the curb. I was driving slowly, the height of the seat to the curb was high enough to break a vertebra and bruise my spinal cord. I became a paraplegic at that instant, for life. He got a small crack in his arm.<p>My professional career and all my dreams vanished. I watched my colleagues and friends move on enjoying life and the fruits of that effort. I was very envious, but nobody could do anything about it. I felt robbed.<p>Obviously I can&#x27;t walk but it&#x27;s so much more than that. Surveys among fellow paralyzed tend to show &quot;walking&quot; as the last &quot;feature&quot; we&#x27;d all like to have back. I can&#x27;t feel anything from the belly button down either. Simple things like going to the bathroom are no longer simple. I enjoyed sex a lot, goodbye to any of that. I get regular annoying spasms. I hava to take a bunch of pills every 8h<p>I have severe chronic pain for which I have to take morphine regularly, which does not come without major side effects. I have to have surgery from time to time for adjustments and other stuff secondary to the injury.<p>Fortunately, I am happy. I was already a person who didn&#x27;t grate at things out of my control, but learning stoicism cemented it. Just for the fact that I was born and have been able to look at the stars in our galaxy and others, I feel it has been worth it. I feel privileged.<p>I live with my amazing girldfriend, I enjoy stimulating hobbies and a day-to-day life that I don&#x27;t take for granted.

How many people I know got hit by a car and had their life ruined horribly. Or a bad surgery. Things totally out of their control.<p>We need to see disability as a cost to society we must pay, not a failure of individuals which is more or less what were treating it.<p>The American disability system is basically proving (very painfully) that life is barely livable to get scraps of help. Like below poverty levels.<p>I really wish that we moved away from pain oriented policy - - how much pain are you willing to tolerate so we can get you basic assistance and into some sort of way to guarantee that people live an okay life as a default. My dream is to see this sometime in my lifetime.

My dad went from someone I can chat with every day about something or build something together to partially disabled due to first stroke and now unable to communicate fully or easily due to the second stroke at 65.<p>He lost his job and sadly there are few things to help with those who are unable to communicate.<p>This all happened over a single weekend.

Indeed. And we are all born disabled (in that we are unable to sustain our own independence and wellbeing without assistance), and will likely all be disabled at the door of death. For such a universal experience, you’d think healthcare was more central a tenet of civilisation… As available and freely usable as the roads we drive on. Not just that, but our very way of work. 40+ hours a week is plainly ableist yet it persists as an almost unshakable norm. If my brain can only handle a couple hours a day, finding regular employment is nigh impossible.

&gt; it’s easy to misunderstand ability as a binary thing.<p>Yes. And also the notion of ability&#x2F;disability has too many connotations, it makes it really hard to discuss the subject.<p>One could posit that having less than perfect vision is a disability (for whatever value of &quot;perfect&quot;). But people will fight tooth and nail to not fall into that category, they&#x27;ll explain how much they still can do without correction, or straight refuse the definition because glasses compensate their vision.<p>I think at the very basis, accepting that there isn&#x27;t a &quot;norm&quot; in the first place could help a lot. If there&#x27;s no normal people, we can start discussion how we&#x27;re all different and will be good or bad at different things.<p>Another funny lens: people entering a foreign culture where they can&#x27;t read nor speak should also fall into the (temporary?) disabled bucket. And same for so many other mindane situations.

This article really struck a chord in me.<p>At the end of May, I started suffering from Achilles tendonitis in one of my feet. Because I was exercising too vigorously too early in the morning while my body was not properly warmed up. Never a problem when I was younger.<p>It has been a long, slow recovery. With a few relapses into tightness because I tried to walk too fast or carry too much weight. Even now, almost 3 months later, I can just glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel.<p>I definitely took my health and my able-ness for granted when I was younger. Don&#x27;t know how to teach my kids not to do the same.

We are born totally helpless and die in various states of disrepair but the bulk of our moral disposition as expressed during our temporary window of &quot;ability&quot; does not at all reflect this fundamental truth.<p>This contradiction is at the heart of social and political frictions. How much does an individual at their peak owe to the collective that &quot;abled&quot; them. Why should anyone take care of them during decline?<p>Its not a trivial problem. The feeling of invincibility in our youth, ignoring - if not despising - the weak and adulating the strong and capable is probably an evolutionary adaptation.<p>Yet our predicament as an intelligent and moral species is to understand this core reality and find the right balance. Use the various forms of invented technology to push the limits of ability (augment) without forgeting how it is all bootstraped and held together.

I&#x27;m really big on accessibility support. The demographic that I Serve tends to have a statistically higher level of challenges than your average audience.<p>One trick that I&#x27;m doing, in the app that I&#x27;m working on now, is that I have a &quot;long-press help&quot; feature.<p>I have a long-press gesture recognizer attached to the main view, and, when a long-press event is received, I find the shallowest view under that press, and examine it for the accessibility label and hint support. If it does not have any, I back up to its parent, etc.<p>If I find a label and hint, I use them to populate a popover, pointing at the target, and trigger a haptic. This popover has whatever is in the label (the popover title), and hint (detailed popover body).<p>This encourages me to make sure that as many items as possible, have accessibility support. It also is a lot easier to test, than running voiceover (which I need to do anyway, as sometimes, text does not speak the way we think).<p>I also localize my accessibility[0].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;RiftValleySoftware&#x2F;RVS_Generic_Swift_Toolbox&#x2F;blob&#x2F;92e773b4ea8dfde00e3da564162df3f98c58f801&#x2F;Sources&#x2F;RVS_Generic_Swift_Toolbox&#x2F;RVS_Generic_Swift_Toolbox_Extensions&#x2F;RVS_Foundation_Extensions.swift#L192">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;RiftValleySoftware&#x2F;RVS_Generic_Swift_Tool...</a>

Before my 30s all my injuries took a week or two to heal.<p>Now, I&#x27;m running around months with a pulled muscle.<p>I don&#x27;t even get them from lifting too heavy in the gym, I usually get them when I rotate in the dumbest possible way, grabbing some paper in the office.

This reminded me of 5 daily remembrances from Buddhist cannon.<p>1. I am sure to become old; I cannot avoid ageing.<p>2. I am sure to become ill; I cannot avoid illness.<p>3. I am sure to die; I cannot avoid death.<p>4. I must be separated and parted from all that is dear and beloved to me.<p>5. I am the owner of my actions, heir of my actions, actions are the womb (from which I have sprung), actions are my relations, actions are my protection. Whatever actions I do, good or bad, of these I shall become the heir.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Upajjhatthana_Sutta" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Upajjhatthana_Sutta</a>

I had a less traumatic experience at the beach. I lost my glasses to the waves.<p>Working on a laptop for the few weeks while my new glasses that I ordered online arrived was painful. At least something good came off of it. I&#x27;m all for building more accessible websites now.

This is enormously true. You know it&#x27;s true, intellectually. So did I, before it happened to me. But after November 2014, I knew it MUCH MORE INTIMATELY.<p>I broke my hip cycling, at 44. This is not an easy thing to do at 44, apparently, short of car crashes or explosions, but we were going (too) fast in the rain, and the person in front of me lost their line and went down, and I swerved to avoid running over them, and lost control and went down hard without being able to shed any speed first.<p>I say &quot;broken hip&quot; but they were pretty consistent about noting that what <i>I</i> had was a &quot;high energy fracture of the femoral neck.&quot; Apparently, a &quot;broken hip&quot; is what happens if you&#x27;re 75 and slip in the shower, but it&#x27;s the same bone either way. A plate and several pins put me back together, but I couldn&#x27;t put any weight on the leg for THREE MONTHS, using a walker. Even after PT, I used a cane well into the following summer -- ironically, because of atrophy, not the actual injury.<p>It was a life-changing period of time for me. I was already pretty aware of accessibility needs -- my mom was a physical therapist in her working life -- but you don&#x27;t notice the little things until it&#x27;s YOUR skin in the game.<p>The two best weeks of my recovery period were actually weeks we were out of town. See, we live in a three-story townhouse in an urban area. It&#x27;s not big; it&#x27;s just tall. That&#x27;s no bueno if you can&#x27;t really walk.<p>However, at Christmas we spent a week with my mother and stepfather in the home they had modified years before intending to live there until they died. The main hallway was wide enough to maneuver with my walker. The master bath was 100% accessible. And it was all on one level.<p>Then, towards the end, we took a cruise. We&#x27;d thought we were going to have to bail on it, but my surgeon pointing out &quot;you know, you can rent wheelchairs on cruise ships, and it&#x27;s really cheap.&quot; He was right; it cost me like $120 for the week, and I could GO ANYWHERE AND DO ANYTHING all on my own for the first time since before the accident. Think about it; what&#x27;s more accessible than a vacation mode traditionally popular with older people?

Everything should be designed with accessibility in mind, not only because one day we might be permanently disabled, but also because everyday we might be temporarily disabled.<p>For example, you might be carrying something in one hand, and only have 1 hand free.<p>Or your wrist might be sore from a tough sportsball game and you can’t squeeze a grip at all.<p>Or you don’t want to turn on the light and wake up baby so you are trying to read in the dark. Or you don’t have your reading glasses at the moment.

I think about this a lot as I get older. what I&#x27;ve realized is that being young (like under 30) is a pretty big deviation as far as physiology goes. the rest of life is a long slow decline, so you gotta set yourself up to manage it.

The article hit home for me, since I injured my left knee in June. I was rehabbing pretty good, to the point where I could do exercise bike and leg work, including light squats. I was set to try a fast walk or slow run in a week, and I could still do yard work. Then last week I reinjured the knee mowing the lawn (if the mower sticks on turf, don&#x27;t try to force it), and tweaked it again over the weekend (just reaching down to pull a damn weed!). It feels like the meniscus tear I had years ago in the other knee, or it might be an MCL sprain. No instability, just discomfort walking. I&#x27;ve concluded that yard work is more dangerous than strength training or running, particularly if you&#x27;re stupid.<p>I saw a lot of comments about squats. I gave up power lifting after college, and just do higher reps&#x2F;lower resistance stuff, and a lot of variety. But when I had a meniscus tear in my other knee, the orthopedist told me I didn&#x27;t need to go all the way down to parallel to get the strength benefits for the quads - just 45 degrees was enough. Since I&#x27;m in my late 60s, I probably should be a little careful anyway. Suggestions are welcome.<p>The point of the original article about disability hitting everyone was the big takeaway. Suddenly I have to think about hiring someone to mow the lawn and do yard work for a while. I can still get to the grocery store, but what if the injury had been worse and I couldn&#x27;t? For me this will probably resolve itself in a while, but for some people disabilities are permanent. Injuries are humbling, and an opportunity for us to gain empathy for others.<p>Sometimes when you <i>can&#x27;t</i> do some things it helps you appreciate the things you <i>can</i> do. So the time I would have spent running or working in the yard gets spent reading or doing math, or doing different kinds of strength work. Doors close, doors open - do what you can.

&gt; I injured my knee.<p>Now imagine if your job wasn&#x27;t sitting at a desk all day!<p>Actually let&#x27;s be honest, a sedentary lifestyle makes injuries like this more likely.

I have a genetic degenerative joint condition. Ever since I had COVID, I&#x27;ve been on a speedrun to decrepitude. I have my leg braces and a cane, and I can still do my job. BUT IT&#x27;S EXHAUSTING. And Frustrating.<p>80% is my new 100%, and it&#x27;s been a real struggle to adjust my current reality to my former expectations. I keep having to temper my ambitions for what I can reasonably accomplish. My geneticist says that as long as I keep doing my exercises, I should avoid a wheelchair, so that&#x27;s nice.

I had major surgery a bit over six months ago. Here&#x27;s a fun trick: try using a mobile phone. The high-grade opioids keeping the pain in check blunt your thinking. Post-op anesthesia cognitive disfunction on top of that makes things even more confusing. Oh yeah, there&#x27;s also loss of fine motor control. Don&#x27;t even try going without your reading glasses if you use them.<p>It takes days to weeks to return to function well enough to begin rehab. After that it can be weeks to months for full function to return.<p>Yeah, accessibility matters all the time, it&#x27;s not just a special thing to slap on after your MVP. It <i>is</i> your MVP for many people.

&gt; Through all of it, I’ve found myself noticing “accessibility” helpers more than ever before: that railing on the stairs, that ramp off to the side of the building, that elevator tucked away in the back.<p>The title got me because I was fortunate to have this revelation too. I&#x27;d sprained a foot joint jumping off a small staircase. A day later I could barely limp into a med supply place to buy crutches. My &quot;outdoors&quot; vacation changed completely.<p>Suddenly I&#x27;m worried about people judging me, and I&#x27;m intensely grateful for ramps, I care about parking spots, and it dawned on me that I&#x27;d ignored all this infrastructure that I now needed.<p>Thanks.

Same. at twenty something i sprained my ankle playing basketball. it&#x27;s unbelievable how hard concrete sidewalks feel to a tender recovering bag of flesh. i sought out dirt and grass for relief. And getting up and down stairs hugging the rail, the world in slow motion as the youth rushed by.<p>i&#x27;m grateful that such a small experience helped me see so much.

Peter Attia explores the same notion in his recent book called &quot;Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity&quot;. I haven&#x27;t finished the book yet, but the key point so far is that our modern medicine, as he calls it &quot;Medicine v2&quot;, is in need of an upgrade to v3. Most people expect to become frail or senile in their late years, but it doesn&#x27;t need to be that way.<p>This new type medicine will focus on preventing injuries like that of Jim Nielsen&#x27;s knee, as well as illnesses. For example, blood sugar levels considered normal have increased over the years as the general population got fatter. If your levels are measured 125 mg&#x2F;dL, maybe you&#x27;ll get a suggestion to change your diet. But if they&#x27;re 126 mg&#x2F;dL, suddenly this is viewed as serious and you&#x27;re prescribed medications.<p>Attia argues that there&#x27;s too much focus on putting out fires like treating a stroke, but not nearly enough prevention and almost no individual long-term course correction for patients. He also argues that we have all the tools to collect the data and to make it possible. The book also delves into the science of &quot;the 4 horsemen of death&quot; as he calls them: atherosclerotic disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease and the type 2 diabetes with the related metabolic dysfunction.

Theres a great guide from Microsoft on this (mentioned in the reply to this HN comment <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=30062178">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=30062178</a>)<p>We’ve all had to open a door with our hands full and thanked the wheelchair button by the door, or tried to watch a movie with the flu and a stuffed head so we snapped on CC.

Her name is Sara[1] not Sarah.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sarasoueidan.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sarasoueidan.com&#x2F;</a>

This is very timely for this post to appear on the front page because I just suffered a pretty bad injury. I broke my clavicle in a cycling race. I can hardly move, my sleep is constantly disturbed by pain, and I am only able to type this with two keyboards – one resting on my right shoulder so I can use my left hand in the sling, and one for my right hand on the desk.<p>I&#x27;m only able to function because my partner is taking such great care of me. I would otherwise be toast. I can&#x27;t drive like this. I can hardly walk due to road rash on my legs.<p>Take your health seriously. You can only truly realize how lucky you are once it is gone.

i had a similar realization when i shattered my humerus, one arm completely out of commission for a month then a year of recovery. The only things i could do were TV&#x2F;video games with a controller, ive always been a gamer but struggled with the idea: is gaming net positive on peoples lives or society? Lots of people &quot;waste&quot; tons of time gaming when they could be improving their situations. Having no ability to work&#x2F;cook&#x2F;exercise i noticed that gaming is a MASSIVE boon to disabled people. Im not sure how well id have managed without to be honest.

My first introduction to this concept was Tobin Sieber&#x27;s book Disability Theory[0].<p>He referred to able-bodied people as TABs, Temporarily Able-Bodied. You are born a helpless infant and, if lucky, die a helpless elder.<p>&gt; The cycle of life runs in actuality from disability to temporary ability back to disability, and that only if you are among the most fortunate.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;press.umich.edu&#x2F;Books&#x2F;D&#x2F;Disability-Theory2" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;press.umich.edu&#x2F;Books&#x2F;D&#x2F;Disability-Theory2</a>

More people should read Disability Visibility.

&gt;100% of people will have some form of disability in their lifetime.<p>Wrong. You could die suddenly in peak condition without ever having a disability.

I had a bout of gout recently for the first time in my life.<p>The pain in my foot was beyond anything I&#x27;ve experienced. I couldn&#x27;t drive, I bought a cane and hobbled with the side of my foot. I was miserable every hour I was awake, and was even woken up by it a few times. Thankfully it only lasted 10 days but it was incredibly eye opening.

His privilege is showing more than he knows. Some people are born with disabilities. If you are <i>lucky</i>, you get to be <i>temporarily abled.</i><p>And oblivious to how fortunate you are until it leaves you. And then you get to gripe about &quot;getting old&quot; or whatever and kvetch about what you lost.<p>Some people never had it. And never will.

We are all also temporarily alive

Knees are such an interestingly fragile joint. You&#x27;d think evolution woukd have selected for something that at least heals on its own.<p>Wish the article went into more detail about what happened.

Any solutions to this will be demonized as socialism, communism, Marxism, or disruptive to the economy by elected Republicans, their top corporate&#x2F;rich donors,and a good chunk of Corporate Democrats. Popular news sources will largely nod along and keep being a carrier of a dishonest narrative.

&gt; <i>1 in 5 people currently have a disability.</i><p>Considering that 15-20% of people have dyslexia, this is undoubtedly an underestimate.

I find the verified blue mark referring to the 10$&#x2F;yr for the domain to be both hilarious and legit.

So true.<p>If you can watch a blind person use a iphone to call an uber, it&#x27;ll etch in your mind how hard we make it.

P90X

One of the best things I ever did was get strong through a basic barbell training program called Starting Strength.<p>Squat, deadlift, overhead press, bench press, chinups, eat, sleep. It really is that easy.<p>Highly recommend it for anyone interested.<p>1. Any back pain I had disappeared completely.<p>2. When I have to lift something awkward (eg, furniture), I don&#x27;t injure myself. If you can deadlift 200KG, awkwardly leaning over your lawn mower to grab a 20KG bag of concrete is pretty easy.<p>3. It is really really handy being able to move heavy things.<p>4. Basically everything else improves. Going for a tough hike uphill? Your legs will be a lot less sore if you can squat 150KG. Need to hold your screaming baby for 40 minutes? Easy!

&gt; 1 in 5 people currently have a disability. 100% of people will have some form of disability in their lifetime.<p>That would mean no one will ever die in their best abilities. I think that is a claim that can easily proven wrong, for any reasonable definition of best abilities.

We&#x27;re all just temporarily alive also. What&#x27;s the point of this article?

It&#x27;s more accurate to say: we&#x27;re disabled in various ways because big medicine and pharma gatekeeps useful treatments. Regenokine and anabolic agents like Deca-Durabolin can completely reverse joint damage. But your doctor will not allow you to take them, even if you insist upon it. In fact they will often report you to insurance and classify you as a drug abuser.