Socchan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
soc_puppet) wrote2023-08-27 11:01 pm
soc_puppet) wrote2023-08-27 11:01 pm
Accessibility Buu-chan for 2023
My feelings about AnimeIowa these days are still decidedly mixed. I miss a lot of the people I spent time with on staff, and I enjoyed the work and making the convention a fun place (and more accessible in general), but I'm still hurt over everything that went down. Still, I did offer my services for while I'm off staff in making art for the Accessibility Passes.
This is the art I made for this year. As prompted bychanter1944, it's Buu-chan using a white cane!
After going back and forth with the idea for a while, I decided to give Buu-chan dark glasses reflecting the Disability Pride flag instead of a t-shirt this year. I know that not many blind people wear dark glasses, but it can still be useful visual shorthand, even if it's outdated, and I don't think it's offensive. ...In retrospect, I should have actually researched that before making the art. Oh, well. Things to remember for the future. I can always make a new blind Buu in five years or so, do things better. Having multiple versions of a disability represented is better than just one, either way!
I'm not entirely sure what I'll do for next year's art; maybe I'll give Buu-chan a prosthetic? Hearing aids are an option, as well (especially since Buu-chan doesn't have enough fingers to use ASL, and I'm not sure there's a specific sign for "anime" anyway aside from spelling it out). Invisible disabilities are naturally going to be a little harder to depict, of course, but I'll also be trying to find a way to work on those! Oh, maybe I can have him cosplaying a zebra for EDS...? I wonder if other invisible disabilities have mascots like that...
This is the art I made for this year. As prompted by
chanter1944, it's Buu-chan using a white cane!
After going back and forth with the idea for a while, I decided to give Buu-chan dark glasses reflecting the Disability Pride flag instead of a t-shirt this year. I know that not many blind people wear dark glasses, but it can still be useful visual shorthand, even if it's outdated, and I don't think it's offensive. ...In retrospect, I should have actually researched that before making the art. Oh, well. Things to remember for the future. I can always make a new blind Buu in five years or so, do things better. Having multiple versions of a disability represented is better than just one, either way!
I'm not entirely sure what I'll do for next year's art; maybe I'll give Buu-chan a prosthetic? Hearing aids are an option, as well (especially since Buu-chan doesn't have enough fingers to use ASL, and I'm not sure there's a specific sign for "anime" anyway aside from spelling it out). Invisible disabilities are naturally going to be a little harder to depict, of course, but I'll also be trying to find a way to work on those! Oh, maybe I can have him cosplaying a zebra for EDS...? I wonder if other invisible disabilities have mascots like that...
Re: I love all the images
(The problem is, I thought she had. She'd tried the mask stunt previously, in 2021, but I didn't actually know how much of that was her, and she made sure to announce it to con staff via email first, which allowed us to push back and get a full mask mandate instated (with medical exceptions, like for an attendee with oxygen tubes). And then at the 2021 post-con wrap-up meet, she told me that we would definitely be having mandatory masks in 2022, because said wrap-up meet was shortly after a major anime con was suspected to be a superspreader event for Delta. So having her pull the "masks are no longer mandatory" decision, and without informing staff at large, definitely felt like a gut punch. Anyway, I certainly won't be forgetting who she really is any time soon!)
Re: I love all the images
Aiiiiieeee.
That's so painful. It undermines your trust mechanism when a colleague you believe in becomes unworthy of that trust.