RYNSA: WORDS

On the August 12th episode of Filmschool — an excellent podcast/radio show out of the University of California at Irvine (KUCI 88.9 FM) — hosts Nathan Callahan and Mike Kaspar interviewed author and filmmaker Dorothy Fadiman about her new cinematic project, Stealing America: Vote By Vote. This feature length documentary explores voting fraud and the overall integrity of American democracy vis-a-vis the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004.

Beyond simply calling into question the legitimacy of the final tally, Fadiman and company (including usual leftist suspect Peter Coyote as narrator) call for widespread reform of the national democratic system. On the website for the film viewers are encouraged to “become part of the solution” and “…get active in the fight for our democracy” by registering to vote, writing letters to persons of interest, making phone calls, wearing stickers and/or buttons, and a whole slew of other tasks. In other words, exactly what you might expect from a director that recently published a book entitled, Producing with Passion: Making Films that Make a Difference.

In that I haven’t yet seen this film (or read Fadiman’s book) I won’t comment on the strength of its message. I suspect that in my case, irregardless of craft, it will be just another case of preaching to the choir. I mean, is this really still in doubt? Aren’t we already aware of the problem? And, more importantly, will placing a microscope over the many flaws of the electoral system be enough to elicit a response from what appears to be a fairly disaffected American citizenry?

God, I sure hope so…

Since starting my job lat month as a ‘computer literacy tutor’ with/for disabled adults in southeast Melbourne, I have become acutely aware of how difficult it can be for some members of our society (in this case Australia) to access certain institutions, services and cultural experiences.  These are things that individuals without disability often take for granted, and addressing them goes far beyond wheelchair ramps at the courthouse or braille consoles on public elevators.  It’s more complex than that.  Actually, it pretty much includes everything… even the web.

Last week, Xu Yan, who has been teaching herself all about CSS, discovered that my website is not particularly HTML compatible.  After the initial annoyance of this fact wore off, it got me thinking about universal access.  Right now the vast majority of people around the world who use IE (Yan says it’s around 55% now) cannot visit my blog without having to deal with some fairly obvious design flaws, issues that are not all that serious but may yet affect readability.  This then got me thinking about the small minority of global disabled internet users who probably face similar ‘compatibility’ issues all the time, whether it’s font size, color schemes, frame location, or something else that might make viewing a given website particularly difficult.

It suddenly seemed really, really unfair that this population of human beings, often the least-recognized or publicly accommadated minority in the world, couldn’t peruse the web with the same degree of care-free whimsy that I enjoy on a near daily basis.  It’s just wrong, really.  Everyone should have the privilege of reading my crappy writing, damnit!

Seriously, I am a little embarrassed that despite my technological (Web 2.0) interests over the years, in conjunction with my progressive political efforts, that I have not been more conscious about disability access until now.  In order to remedy this, then, I will be working towards redesigning my website, both the blog and the vlog.  I am therefore collecting URLs to code and design resources for making websites more accessible.  Currently my focus is on WordPress themes, and here’s what I’ve found so far:

Nice2All
Rapid Access

I’ll post more information as my research progresses.  Hopefully, time permitting, a new version of my website will be up an running within the next few months.

As part of my graduate studies I am required to design a ‘research’ project that somehow relates to the profession of Community Cultural Development (CCD).  Initially, I was hoping to actually go out into Melbourne and engage with some undefined group of people.  Potentialities included the Chinese, youth, migrant populations, and so on.  But after a more thorough look at my timeline, and a rather honest conversation with my prescribed tutor, it became clear that this goal was not really feasible.

So now I have embarked on a truncated literary review of creativity as a concept.  It is a subject I kind of stumbled into, ass-backwards, and have since taken up as one of the fruits of my graduate school labor.  Specifically, I am studying the difference between Eastern ideas around creativity and those of the West.  It’s a relatively small field, but highly intriguing, and there are potential consequences that reach into nearly every aspect of the human experience.

But don’t all academics make that claim about their work?!

Anyway, I am currently collecting books and articles about creativity.  One such book, and the foundation for my interest in this stuff, is entitled Creativity: When East Meets West, edited by Sing Lau, Ana N N Hui, and Grace Y C Ng. You can actually download a free copy of the first chapter (in PDF format) that describes the content of the book.

I’ve only read a few articles so far, but it has turned out to be especially fascinating. The perceived Chinese perspective on social responsibility as a precursor to creative expression is a relatively foregin concept in the West.  We tend more towards protecting the individual’s personal rights in creative endeavor (though not nearly as consistently as we think, I would add).

In any case, I recommend this anthology. It is weighted towards academic language, which is tedious, I know, but if you’re able to get through the science-speak and the numbers-heavy diagrams then you will surely be rewarded. The inherent optimism in each contributor’s writing is readily apparent. It makes me want to get back into the classroom–surrounded by all those emerging creative minds!