Success Stories from Disabled Professionals

February Newsletter

Happy February, Uncharted subscribers!

Rare Disease Day is coming up on February 28th, 2021. It’s also Black History Month, so just as we said during Disability Employment Awareness Month in October, we hope you are paid fairly for your expertise. Author and journalist Keah Brown (creator of the hashtag #DisabledAndCute) said it best:

“Your reminder that Black people, specifically Black creatives exist before the month of February and after, too. So, you can reach out for paid work, then as well. Thank you!” - Keah Brown, @Keah_Maria

Book progress:

This newsletter exists because Skylar and Gabi are editing a book of stories from scientists with disabilities, so we’re sharing a bit about our progress in all our posts!

It’s hard to believe how quickly our book deadline is approaching! We’re editing story drafts from contributors around the world, applying for grants to pay authors more for their work, and writing our introductions for each section of the book. We may offer a paid version of this newsletter in the future to help us pay our contributors, but there will always be a free option!

For everyone, not just our book authors: if you’re interested in science storytelling, The Story Collider is offering workshops for groups and individuals with a sliding scale fee.

What we’re reading and watching:

Although Skylar and Gabi are both scientists, we still enjoy hearing the stories of disabled people in other fields and professions. Here are a few of the articles, videos, and audio stories we’ve been thinking about.

Disabled scientists excluded from the lab - Krystal Vasquez wrote a beautiful opinion piece for Chemistry World. We love the points Vasquez made, like, “In an ideal world, this would be where I say that diversity is necessary for scientific innovation and make the logical leap that it’s therefore important to include the perspectives of disabled scientists. But we’ve been making this argument for years and still haven’t successfully diversified the scientific workforce. So, instead I’ll argue that making labs more accessible is actually beneficial for everyone involved.” Format: written article with images that have alt-text.

Different: Stories about standing out in a crowd - This Story Collider episode from 2018 features a story told by Amanda Gorman, the young poet who performed at both the Super Bowl and the Presidential Inauguration. Gorman told a story about her experience with an auditory processing disorder and a speech disorder. Format: audio recording and written transcript.

Disabled Creators on TikTok Are Going Beyond "Inspiration P*rn" - This article has a great list of disabled TikTok creators to follow! Many of them also have active Instagram accounts if you’re not on TikTok. If you’re a disabled scientist making social media posts about your experience, please let us know so that we can feature you in the future. Format: written article with images that have alt-text.

The Bionic Indiana Jones Who Wants To Make Prosthetics Available To Everyone - Engineer Albert Lin has continued to do fieldwork as a National Geographic Explorer with a prosthetic limb. Format: written article with images that are missing alt-text.

If you come across more articles and videos that you think we would like, feel free to reply to this email with a link.