COVID-19: an opportunity to create a more accessible world for the housebound
While every news outlet is bursting with articles about methods to combat loneliness during the lockdown, I have to admit: I’ve actually felt less lonely these past few weeks.
See: due to the energy deficiency that comes with my disability, it’s perfectly normal for me to only leave the house for essential outings. Phone calls, texts, and facetime already make up the majority of my social interactions.
So to have everyone home, itching to call and text each other? Frankly, I’ve felt more connected now than I have for a while.
According to a 2018 study conducted by the US Department of Transportation, “25.5 million Americans have disabilities that make traveling outside the home difficult, and 3.6 million do not leave their homes because they are disabled or housebound.”
This is a minority too easily forgotten — we are literally not present out in the world to be remembered — but, for the next few months (if our leaders are responsible), the majority of Americans will be thrust into this lifestyle.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy you have to join the ranks. But I do see some opportunities here:
The opportunity to gain empathy for those who are housebound
I saw a post in a facebook group the other day:
“One of my… brothers… messaged to let me know that he’s sending me a care package because he started working from home this week & realized how isolating it is!!”
If there is something that I hope that we can gain during this time, it is that: a full appreciation of what being housebound is like.
Remember that, for at least a good deal of us, isolation is not a choice. We very much want to be part of the world.
For some reason this fact gets forgotten when the forced isolation becomes chronic or permanent. Over time, a housebound person begins to be seen as having voluntarily chosen their lifestyle; or, alternately, to have become immune to the stress of being isolated.
But the feelings you are having right now? Believe me, we still have them. We may have, over time, built strategies to manage them better (we may be great sources of wisdom worth consulting, even…), but being isolated by no choice of your own never becomes painless.
The opportunity to build tools that will enrich the lives of people who are housebound
The tools and services we build to maintain our sanity during the lockdown over the next few months (again, if we are responsible about it), these tools will continue to help people who are housebound long after the epidemic has passed.
I mean, even just Netflix Party. Finally gone are the days when I had to text 3…2…1…GO! to sync a movie viewing with a friend online. The horrific days when pausing for a bathroom break was out of the question because it required restarting the whole process.
Of course, this is only a small example of the possibilities here: building tools and strategies that make virtual gatherings easier to manage, making virtual classes more immersive and rewarding, and making being social via the internet simpler and more accessible … these will benefit us all, and not just during the crisis.
The opportunity to normalize working from home
And even for those of us who aren’t programmers: this time is a chance for all of us to become more comfortable with the tools and processes that already exist. Having comfort around these technologies and ways of functioning could be life-changing for people who are housebound.
This is especially true when it comes to making a living.
Often, becoming housebound means you have to stop working, and for no other reason except that you are housebound. From the same 2018 study:
“Only one-fifth of people age 18 to 64 work full- or part-time if they have travel-limiting disabilities…. Slightly over half of people age 18 to 64 with disabilities live in households with annual household incomes under $25,000 versus 15 percent of people without disabilities.”
This is an opportunity for us all to get better at teleconferencing or to become comfortable with interviewing and hiring via online tools. Most of all, it is an opportunity to gain (and hopefully retain) the understanding that, for many of us, it is only our mobility holds us back from being valuable members of the workforce.
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It is sad that it took this disaster to make these tools available. Stories abound of people who are disabled finding out now that the company they work for or the school they go to already had these tools in place, they just wouldn’t use them until now.
So let’s not waste the chance we have now to correct this. It’s difficult to see how anything good could come out of this disaster — perhaps making ourselves slightly more inclusive and tolerant can be one.
At the very least, it’s something we can think about to keep ourselves sane for a few minutes longer.
