accessibility
- Throwing a bowling ball backwards, not in the Nintendo Wii game.
- At the same bowling alley, I took out the bumper and got a gutter ball. We called it getting a gutter ball in a lane with no gutters.
- Tagging the barbecue grill in a game of horseshoes.
- Start and end in the same spot: I usually have my smartphone playing music and I set it on the corner of the pool. The distance of the sound tells me where I am. I also use markers along the length of the pool such as jets, steps and ladders for orientation. Finally, if the sun is out, I can use its position on my face to keep me on track.
- Empty Pool: I’m introverted and blind, making me an object of curiosity to people (another topic, etc., etc., etc.). My favorite thing about the pool in my apartment is I can hit the pool at 7 in the morning and be finished long before the children are out of school. This also makes it less of a problem if I veer.
- The same place for my things every time: My place is just inside the door against the fence. I know how far the pool is from there and I’m most comfortable starting from that spot. I also know how to get from the steps when I get out to my things.
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Start the motor: Skip the stairs, take the plunge. My body deals with the shock of the cold all at the same time and I can get down to business. This is especially helpful on mornings are in the low ‘50’s.
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Warm-up; Move my legs and arms like Gymnast Barbie for the verse and chorus of a song. I like to move everything at the same time so my body doesn’t feel like it has a lot of extra parts coming out of it that I don’t know what to do with, but there are a few ways to go about warming up. Also, to move like Gymnast Barbie, get to a place in the pool that is shallow enough that I can touch if I need to, but deep enough so I don’t stub my toes. Then, move my arms and legs in a dog-paddle motion. I know when my body’s ready to go, another benefit of regular activity.
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Free-style: I prefer to dog-paddle. I do this for a song and a half, or five plus however many laps I can take before I get tired if it’s raining and my phone is safe and dry in my apartment. My pool’s a rectangle with an elbow for the stairs. I estimate it at about four yards long.
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The Big five: I do five of each of the following.
a. Ghost arm: Move around the pool using both legs and one arm in a forward motion. The total number of laps is 10. I alternate arms for a more comfortable workout, or use each arm 5 times consecutively for a more challenging session. My ghost arm, arm I’m not using, can either stay curled against my torso, or it can be used as a makeshift feeler to find walls.
b. T-Rex: Propel myself forward around the pool using only my arms. It gives my legs a chance to rest before the next set of exercises. If I’m not feeling it, I put my feet out behind me and just keep them stationary and remind myself I’m longer than normal when I make the turns. If I want to work my belly muscles (reminder: Not fitness oriented), I point my feet straight down and lift my legs in shallow areas. Another advantage here is my legs aren’t completely stationary durning the time it takes me to do this exercise.
c. I forgot my kick board!: Fold my hands in front of me and use only my legs to go around the pool in a forward motion. Easier for me to write than to do.
d. Bizarro-cycle: Pretend I’m sitting upright on a bicycle, facing my feet out in front of me and use just them to move myself around the pool in a backward motion. If I’m having a hard day, I pretend I’m on an exercise bike and use my arms to help me move. If my back starts to spasm, the bicycle becomes a manually operated crotch rocket that also goes in reverse.
e. Flying chair: Sit in an upright position with my feet in front of me so my toes point up, and my soles are facing out. Then, move my arms in concentric circles to move around the pool in a forward motion. I use this one when my legs have giving up their grumbling about having to go through this routine agin in favor of an outcry to please stop what I’m doing. The extra challenge is to maintain the upright position. If my legs only grumble, this exercise usually stays on the bench as it is very time consuming.
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Cool-down: Return to Gymnast barbie position until my body doesn’t feel like a coiled spring, then a shower.
Swimming or Whatever
Why?
I’m live in the blind community, and one of the things that comes up is trouble accessing physical activity. Reasons for this include but are not limited to access to transportation, accessing the gym, following visual cues in group classes, etc. This means that any time a blind person appears to be getting regular exercise, other blind people want details. That’s why I’m posting this. It’s not an exercise video, just a blog post by someone stuck on the idea that even written casual information needs some structure.
Disclosure I Hope Makes Me less Intimidating
I’m not particularly fitness oriented. I call any sporting event Sportsball, and some of my highlights in this portion of human existence include:
I’m also the one ordering the supersized order of fries This is why anyone who knows me is saying, An exercise routine? You? It’s also why this is not a training material
The fact of the matter is endorphins help manage my chronic pain and are cheap, comparatively speaking. Exercise is also good for helping to manage circadian rhythm disorders, from my own research to deal with my stuff. The existence of necessity combined with my general contempt for gym memberships, exercise videos, etc. (a completely different story) allow me to go into this with the understanding that I have no reason to be attempting physical activity. I don’t care what I look like. I’m there to meet a need. I have, however, included a screenshot of a recent tracking session(https://starshipchangeling.net/uploads/2024/image.jpg) recorded by my Apple watch to show the results for myself.
I bring this up to tell you that if you are a blind person and if you want to be successful at something like this, you’ll have to get comfortable with the idea that, when it comes to your exercise, you’ll tell someone what their opinion is when you want it as long as you’re not in any danger. You may even need to say so out loud. If you can get comfortable with that, you can own your exercise and are more likely to stick with it/return to it following a break. This is an underlying principle of fitness in general, I believe. The turning the not worrying about what I look like long enough to do the exercise is my personal struggle as a congenitally blind, fitness disoriented person.
Considerations
I live in Florida. My pool is outdoors, useable most of the year and appears to be open 24/7, though the earliest I have been out there is 7 in the morning. I based these adaptations on my own comfort and needs.
The Routine
Before we begin, one final disclosure. The names of the moves are what I call them in my head. That’s all. I didn’t invent the moves, and please don’t spend your energy replying to me with corrections. I really had to do some personal rewiring to get here, so on my starship, I call the moves what I call them. If you’re reading this and yelling, “That’s not what that’s called!” At your computer, please relax. You can call these exercises whatever you like in your house of no imagination.
Conclusion
When I first sat down to write this, I hadn’t intended for it to be a long-form post. I also hadn’t intended for it to be all about me. However, as I was reviewing the first draft, the part about not being fitness oriented, it hit me that the only way to write this in a way appropriate to my station was to make it personal. I’m not an exercise instructor, but a troubleshooter. In this case, the thing I needed to fix was my own personal attitudes toward exercise.
I’ve enjoyed the water since forever, so I’ve figured out ways to enjoy pools independently. There’s also just something about the smell of a swimming pool, the mix of chlorine and sun lotion, that I find invigorating. Combine that with changing what I was doing according to how my body felt before, during and after, and that’s how I found what worked for me. And the music, of course. That works for me more than trying to keep time.
All I wanted was a link I could give people that ask what I’m doing so I don’t have to keep repeating myself. I need a way to count words because based on the length of this, I’m the only one who read it. :P
This is an accessibility nightmare. How would you feel if you ivested thousands of dollars into an ecosystem and it suddenly became unuseable and maybe locked you out?
It appears Sonos is about to become less useable by screen reader users. The CEO should stop it now, but here’s how to protect your investment if he doesn’t mosen.org/sonos2024
I would also find the accessibility annoyances in this article frustrating. The advice given here applies not just to banking sites, but all websites. #A11y
Why Changeling? (CW for mentions of discrimination, child abuse)
Changeling and some Numbers
I’ve been on the Internet for many years, and I’ve seen many strange handles—even used some of them. In my early twenties, I signed up for my first Gmail account. Because my name is fairly common, it was impossible to get an address without a lot of rearranged letters, numbers and punctuation marks. I put “changeling” into the box and a few numbers later, I had a new email address.
At the same time, Twitter was becoming more and more popular, and so I took “changeling”, added some numbers and had a fairly easy twitter handle. This handle went on to get me an AIM name, a Skype account and other services. These days, some for of changeling is my Internet handle.It only stands to reason that someone is going to ask why, and they have. I am writing this to give those people a place to go when they ask. They can read it or not on their own time. My answer is not so different from when other people identify with words that are generally seen as negative.
What is a changeling?
Before we can fully see the significance of this name for me, we must first answer the question. I’ll be including the necessary information to do that, but since this is a post about personal experiences and how I’ve decided to deal with them, I’m not going to be linking to outside sources. I’m talking to you and I want your attention. When you’ve finished here, you can look up changelings on the internet and verify everything I tell you. I will forewarn you that some of the details you’ll find on other sites are a bit graphic and disturbing, so proceed with caution.
Ready? Okay. Here it is.
A changeling is the creature that results when a human child is stolen and a fairy is left in its place. There is much speculation about the motives of the Fae (I personally believe it’s because the Fae were trolling humans even before there was an Internet), but the TLDR of the whole mess is that parents lived in fear of their child being replaced with a being of Faery. This superstition, according to first books and then the Internet, this superstition was part of the Middle Ages.
Since people have a natural fear of anyone who doesn’t look like them, since the Middle Ages was not known for its higher thinking in regard to people with disabilities, anyone who had physical or behavioral differences that set them apart from the group were thought to be changelings. The parents of such a creature were shunned, and so parents did any number of unpleasant things to try and (a) cure the child of its affliction, or (b) rid themselves of the changeling.
In one memorable example, a woman who believed her son was a changeling strapped her son to a board and through him in the river. At her murder trial, she stated that if the child had floated, she would have known it was a changeling and that it had to be killed. This must have been logical to everyone involved because she was acquitted.
And how is This Still Relevant?
We like to think people know better today. Disabled people are usually seen as people with differences. I’ve been prayed over, but nobody has attempted an exorcism on me. I’ve never been strapped to a board and thrown in the river, either. This does not mean that people aren’t intolerant, nor does it mean that the human race as a whole doesn’t have room to grow when it comes to dealing with people who are different, or even that people with differences are made to feel welcome in many situations.
I’m totally blind, and this is a well-understood phenomenon in 2023. It’s well-established that blind people are people with a difference, and I still live in a world where accessibility is an after-thought, assuming it’s even thought of at all. In other words, I’m still living in a world where I’m only independent when I’ve been society has made allowances for it. I can’t imagine that this is a favorite truth of anyone who is disabled, but there it is. I won’t let it rule me, but it has to be acknowledged. Therefore, the Internet knows me as Changeling.
Is there a precedent?
Of course there is. One of my favorite examples is found in one of the Vagina Monologues, where the speaker is justifying reclamation of the C-word. There are racial groups who embrace some of the epithets inflicted upon them by others. And no discussion about being known as Changeling would be complete without pointing out that many LGBTQIA+ folks refer to themselves as queer (a thing that I do not do even though I am Ace).
Did you get What you Came for?
I sure hope so. There’s not much left to say here. TLDR: I’m Changeling because I’m acknowledging the fact that the world sucks sometimes. There might come a day when I don’t need it, but I think it’ll always be there. It can be a kind of historical artifact or something. We could all do with a look back these days.