By Melissa Marsden
Australian journalist Amy Remeikis has missed the mark on disability.
In a post shared on social media site Bluesky, Remeikis criticised comments made by American journalist Christopher F. Ruffo to support people with disabilities.
Ruffo posted on social media site X:
“I’m sorry, but we have to stop with the ridiculous sign language interpreters, who turn serious press conferences into a farce. There are closed captions on all broadcast channels and streaming services. No wild human gesticulators necessary.”
Remeikis responded with her own thread:
“If you are lucky enough to live a long life, you’ll also experience living with a disability. It’s unbelievable that only then some people realise what they’ve taken for granted and who the world is built for,” Remeikis said.
Captions provide the dialogue and important background sounds in onscreen text for television viewers who are Deaf or hard of hearing.
However, Remeikis’ attempt at standing up for people with disabilities was supported by misguided beliefs about the universality of disability.
A variety of disabling policies and environmental barriers impact people with disabilities.
Whilst this may be true for some who are elderly, the extent to which this occurs is not layered with the same type of discrimination and bias and is less uniform than that experienced by people with disabilities.
According to Professor Bran Knowles, “conflating aging with accessibility inadvertently harms older adults” by assuming they “lack ability”.
This kind of language also reinforces the disabling conflation of impairment and disability, which suggests that people who have physical impairments also have disabilities.
Many elderly people age without experiencing disabling physical conditions.
Likewise, possible dependency on others as the result of declining physical capacity as the result of age can be reasonably likened to the dependency of babies on their parents.
Both stages of life are expected to require those experiencing them to require some form of assistance, and as such, society places a level of investment into these areas.
To frame old age as disabling minimises the physical and social struggles of people with disabilities by suggesting their experiences mean an end to their lives.
According to academics Karin Ljuslinder, Katie Ellis and Lotta Vikström:
“The ableist conflation flattens communication about disability to communication about pain, suffering, hardship, disadvantage, morbidity, and mortality.”
As such, the “possibilities and/or obstacles for people with disabilities to achieve significant events associated with a ‘normative’ life course” are inherently different for people who have reached old age and achieved these normative milestones.
In March 2021, the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety recommended that no person with a disability under the age of 65 should remain living in nursing homes from 2025.
However, recent changes to legislation that passed both houses of Parliament on 25 November 2024 to the Aged Care Act reinforce disabling perspectives of disability.
Minister for Aged Care, the Hon Anika Wells MP, said, “The Prime Minister said Labor would put the care back into aged care, and we have kept our word.”
People with disabilities can receive support under the National Disability Insurance Scheme until they are 65, after which they remain only eligible for the Disability Support Pension (DSP).
As of 31 March 2023, 769,300 people received DSP (3.7% of the population aged 16 and over). Most people receiving DSP were aged 16–64 (84% or 664,600), representing 3.9% of the population aged 16–64.
People receiving the DSP were typically in older age groups, with around 1 in 3 (33%) aged 55–64 as of 31 March 2023, or around 8.3% of all people aged 55–64.
However, whilst some people with disabilities will be moved from the DSP to the aged pension, others have disabilities that impact their lives to the extent that a ‘set and forget’ principle applies.
For those on the DSP reaching Pension age, there is an option to either remain on the DSP or transfer to the Aged Pension. This choice is a particular point of difference many people with disabilities are not in the position to make.
Conflating disability and age neglects the privilege connected to living the majority of life in an able body.
Melissa Marsden is a freelance journalist and PhD candidate at Curtin University. You can follow Melissa on Bluesky @melissamarsdenphd, LinkedIn or via Melissa’s website, Framing the Narrative.
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Signing is very helpful in live broadcasts, as closed captions are either not available or are auto-generated, with sometimes farcical results.
Auslan is a language, no different to French or Swahili. Those people who learn signing from very early on are frequently more attuned to it when dealing with accompanying video and it will be easier and more accessible for them than captions, however accurate those captions are (and, as Perry has said, auto-generated captions are frequently farcical). This is particularly important with live announcements such as those needed in emergency situations.
Remeikis’ point was not as tone-deaf as has been suggested, however. No body remains as strong, lithe and capable when elderly as it was during youth. There are all sorts of ways to become disabled, including injury and chronic illness, and the longer a person lives the more likely they are to experience such a condition.
This is a point frequently made in all the disabled spaces I visit online. Don’t mock it, don’t knock it, because you never know if/when you, or someone you care about, will join us.
Well said leefe!