Listen up IBM SPSS: How Disability Social Justice and Social Change Matters to This Legally Blind Clinical Psychology Student

Listen up IBM SPSS: How Disability Social Justice and Social Change Matters to This Legally Blind Clinical Psychology Student

I am interested in disability rights as a person that is disabled, but also in the larger context of helping people with disabilities gain access to the equal rights they deserve.  This not only extends to healthcare services but also in the social and work spheres.  Currently, for example, most people who are legally blind and of working age do not have a job (AFB, n.d.).  Disability rights can also be an issue for someone who is temporarily disabled due to having a surgery that requires a period of recovery that includes recovering and needing more bathroom breaks in the workplace.  While this may seem minor, job loss due to taking unplanned or unauthorized breaks is grounds for termination in the United States, and job loss negatively affects a person’s life.  While there are protections for bathroom breaks by the federal government, there are exceptions, unfortunately (OSHA, n.d.).

Why social change is still needed for people living with disabilities

Quality of life for people living with disabilities hinges on the fact that they are expected to supplement the low monthly disability payments (which average about $750 per month) by applying for services including food stamps, caregiver services, and transportation (USICH, 2016).  However, often, the cost of living exceeds the cash payments and food stamps, and the low-paid caregivers may not provide consistent services since they are likely to leave their jobs in a short period of time (USICH, 2016).  Worse, transportation services may exist but be so strained that errands such as grocery runs or going to the doctor’s office take much longer than necessary (USICH, 2016).  All of these factors can make it difficult to keep, find, start, or maintain employment, especially if transportation services are not reliable (USICH, 2016).  

Regardless, options such as community placement are often not offered, and not commonly offered to people with disabilities as an option  (USICH, 2016).  Placing a person in a community that is highly-functioning in services and has optimal low-budget options for people with disabilities such as no-cost, mixed-income house sets a standard on which disabled people can thrive financially and gain more independence (USICH, 2016).  However, the current state of affairs is a disconnection from highlighting communities that are working for people with disabilities (USICH, 2016).  For example, in a world of reality TV, why not have a show that focuses on people are thriving with disabilities in contrast to those who are not to show how these are often fiscal decisions at the state level as opposed to federal government level (USICH, 2016).

Why disability social justice matters to me as a disabled clinical psychology PhD student

My own experience with higher education has been one that has shown me that this was an important and transformative journey that could help other legally blind people in the future. For example, one of the main focuses within academic literature about disabled people pertains to their access to higher education (Fovet, 2018). In particular, people living with disabilities who are international students may have excessive barriers that preclude them from opportunities to advance their degrees or obtain the same level of education as non-disabled peers (Fovet, 2018).

One of the main challenges I faced as a person who is legally blind is going to agencies such as the state Department of the Blind for Illinois or Vocational Rehab Facilities and not receiving a direct and concise way to achieve a goal such as becoming a clinical psychologist. There is no advice or information given about which universities I might succeed at a little bit better than others as far as resources or accessibility for someone who is legally blind. I had to do my own research and discovered that legally blind people often need all of the work and reading to be digitized. Of course, online universities already offer this as part of the package for all of their online students with or without disabilities. Despite this, I had no way of accessing a mentor or getting advice about whether or not I would be able to do the coursework. 

Worse, when I ask these specific questions, no one was able to warn me that SPSS does not work with any screen reader programs. For this reason, I had to employ a neighbor and watch multiple SPSS videos to try to teach my helper how to help me with my homework. When I reached out to the disability services, they did offer to give me a financial grant to give to a helper to help me get through the courses and complete the work. Of course, what might be more of a solution is to get SPSS set up so that visually impaired people can use the program. 

How I imagine disability rights combining with my work as a clinical psychologist who works directly with patients

One of the ways that disabled people can get the help they need from the federal government is through applying for disability (USICH, 2016). A critical component of getting approved for disability is to see a specialist that can evaluate and give a second opinion about your diagnosis.  In this regard, it will be extremely important that I understand how important it is to work thoroughly and quickly so that I can help patients get their disability applications approved. 

For instance, not taking the application process seriously can be extremely detrimental to the short-term and long-term well-being of the patient. For example, if I am taking too long to turn in my part of the application, that could be a long enough delay for a patient to lose their housing because they are no longer working and cannot pay rent due to disability (USICH, 2016). Since homelessness is a very critical issue in the United States and typically happens when people become disabled, working as thoroughly and quickly as possible with the application process can only help the patient (USICH, 2016).

How I imagine disability rights combining with my work as a clinical psychologist who is primarily a scholar and researcher

One of the key aspects of creating a better world for disabled people is the ability to obtain grants that benefit this specific community (USICH, 2016). While it may not be one of the most glamorous jobs, funding is one of the most critical components of any social justice movement (USICH, 2016). Once you have the finances in place, plans can get built upon and expanded. For example, if one of the barriers to the disability community is reliable transportation in order to obtain a job, writing a grant that specifically targets this issue can be helpful and costly (USICH, 2016). In particular, the grant writing process I have participated in in the past was over $5 million and would only serve 250 people in the local community. 

Obviously, this is a big ask, but, in our opinions, the benefits outweigh the $5 million spread out over 10 years. For instance, people complained to us about getting injured on the public bus, but were less likely to get injured in the smaller vans or paratransit taxis.  Naturally, if a disabled person is injured on city property, their medical insurance is likely (but not always) covered out of the local taxpayers’ budget.  Local businesses were benefited by the transportation grant for people disabled people because more disabled people were visiting their businesses and purchasing instead of paying for taxi fare. Local offices such as doctors offices were also dealing with fewer overhead costs because people were actually showing up for their appointments on time. The economy also benefited by gaining new employees in the local community which always creates more reliable work schedules and workflow. The local economy was also boosted by helping many of the disabled people to end their disability benefits and start paying taxes from the jobs they were able to get and keep due to the transportation budget that specifically targeted people with disabilities. 

How I can make a difference a someone who is both legally blind and a clinical psychologist

Social change is about examining the world around you and figuring out how you can help in ways that emphasize your unique skill set and provide the most benefit to others.  When a person has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, they are one of the most important people to help sign off on grants and other applications that can bring millions of dollars of services to people needing psychological help in the local community (USICH, 2016).  With this type of power, it is important to recognize how much ability you have to create social change, and how it is an obligation to create social change in the psychology community as it is encountered (USICH, 2016).

The role of psychology and disability social change

When it comes to disability rights, psychology plays a critical role in the aspects of social change in several ways (Meyers, 2007).  However, one of the ways psychology has played a role with the most frequency is with advocacy (USICH, 2016).  Over the past 30 years, disability rights advocacy has placed a focus on the agency a person with disabilities has, or can have, if given equal rights to people living without disabilities (USICH, 2016).  In other words, instead of seeing disabled people as a group to pity or “victims,” instead the idea is to look at the strengths (USICH, 2016). 

Psychology also plays an important role in the disability rights social change movement because having psychological issues is a type of disability (Meyers, 2007).  In addition to bringing awareness to mental illness, one way that social change has been popular in the recent past is replacing police officers with mental health responders (Meyers, 2007).  While this idea is still gaining ground, it will be an area of social change in the near future because it is so popular with the general public, but still needs more long-term studies before it gains the type of permanent policy changes being suggested (Meyers, 2007).

An evaluation of the ethnic inequalities on the psychological well-being of people living with disabilities

One of the worst things that can happen when you are going through a health crisis is to deal with losing a job, losing your children, and losing your home (Stano, 2020).  However, especially when someone is severely mentally ill, the transition into permanent disability is often too difficult to do well (Stano, 2020).  In other words, risk of homelessness is common with the mentally ill disability community, and this is an area that needs social change (USICH, 2016).  I would also say, in my opinion, not providing a smooth transition to permanent disability for mental illness is a social justice topic as well since many mentally ill people have issues with the law, and some of this may be due to homelessness and other stressors that could have been resolved by supporting this person with housing, supervision, and resources (USICH, 2016).

An analysis of the role of psychology in impacting historical biases and oppression and addressing social change or social justice movements for populations of people living with disabilities

One of the parts of psychology history that is related to my topic of disability is the field of Abnormal Psychology and how they posed the questions about how social class shapes access to psychiatric or psychological services (Meyers, 2007). Although there always varying aspects of social change that can affect the mentally ill in the disability community, I like the ones that get people stabilized (USICH, 2016).  Whether it is having them on the right medication, getting the right therapist, or helping them to get financial help when they lose their jobs, stability will likely reduce the longevity of their crisis periods, and also create a high quality of life for that person (USICH, 2016).  The best ways to do this is with research that focuses on getting grants and other state, private, or federal funding to help people from lower income brackets get psychological services as needed (USICH, 2016).

My ongoing struggle as a legally blind psychology student: The screen-reader-inaccessible program called IBM SPSS

For many years, I worked with adult refugees coming to the United States for the first time, and although I was teaching them English, what I was really doing was trying to figure out which jobs they could do with the English skills they had. When I myself became disabled with vision disabilities, I found myself examining the workplace once again. After all, many of the agencies that are there to help disabled people in the workplace are actually only there to help with tools and construction needed to help disabled people in a workplace they have already found by themselves. 

In other words, there are very few ways for young disabled people with sight disabilities of working-age to find stable, and long-term employment opportunities (McDonnall & Sui, 2019). After attempting several jobs as a legally blind person, I began to find that the skill said I had was very compatible to the field of psychology. However, there are a few unnecessary limitations that I would like to see addressed in social justice situations in the future. 

An explanation of the relevance of this topic to the field of psychology and the role and responsibilities of psychology with regard to the issue

I have found that being legally blind and going to graduate-level courses for psychology online has been a welcome opportunity for other people who are legally blind and seeking a job that will exemplify the positive qualities a legally blind person has. For example, I have worked in customer service successfully as a legally blind person for almost five years. I also know a gentleman who has been completely blind since birth who works as a lawyer. There are also opportunities to work with adaptive equipment at places like the industries for the blind. Many legally blind people work in food preparation, or factory work where there is a lot of repetition and adaptive equipment.  

As far as schooling goes, there is often a disability resource center for blind students to access and their goal is to make sure all legally blind students have an opportunity to graduate from any level of schooling they choose. Of course, legally blind students went to choose a career where they will actually have success, and often the disability resource centers provide services too late to keep up in class. Online courses create a situation where everything is online, and if you're legally blind you just need a screen reader to get through your classes (even though you can’t do much skimming and spend way more time “reading” than other students).

However, there is one hindrance that holds back legally blind students who have no working vision at all and that is the SPSS program. Unfortunately, if you cannot see at all, (which is rare for legally blind people who usually have some remaining vision), SPSS by IBM is going to be a challenge because this program does not use any screen readers. This seems really strange because a lot of niche computer programs still use screen readers.

This means that a legally blind psychologist will need another person to help them crunch any data related to their research. Or, unfortunately, legally blind psychologists may take themselves out of the research aspect of being a scholar-practitioner altogether. Of course, having a successful career as a practitioner of clinical psychology would be a good way to ameliorate the situation, but what if you were born to be a researcher but you just so happen to be legally blind? Addressing this screen reader issue for SPSS by IBM should be put on the forefront as an issue in the psychology field because it is not providing equal access for legally blind people. 

How I see the theoretical frameworks shaping the disability social justice movement in psychology

The theoretical framework of creating equal access for legally blind people in the field of clinical psychology is very much a Marxist one (Stoian, 2014). In essence, the ideals of Marx for social justice are that distribution of wealth should not be fair or just based on political or legal reasons, but instead because that asset should be distributed based on merit (Stoian, 2014). In this case, the merit would be that all people (regardless of disability) should have the right to work without unnecessary barriers to create a truly class-less society, and, in today’s technologically friendly (and therefore disability-friendly) world, the final barriers that keep legally blind people from work in the world of psychology should be removed without hesitation. This is especially true for transportation-free options such as working from home.

Why one blind clinical psychologist should be enough to get IBM SPSS to fund screen reader research

When screen readers are not a focus of the IBM SPSS program, this means that there is a limitation to the available voices that should be heard in the field of psychology. If legally blind students knew there was a clear path to getting a PhD in clinical psychology online, there would definitely be an increase in the number of legally blind clinical psychologists, and a turn in research could be expected. 

For example, legally blind clinical psychologist may conduct research in a more thorough way that was not previously expected. There could also be an increase in client satisfaction from receiving services from a legally blind clinical psychologist. There could also be other perspectives that only a legally blind person can have that will trigger a thought or idea that leads to a breakthrough in the field of clinical psychology. After all, online technology has basically open many fields previous link closed to legally blind people, and there is no reason that a focus could not be placed on IBM SPSS taking the final steps to make the idea of being a scholar-practitioner in clinical psychology an easy choice for any legally blind student.

References

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