THREAD: I hope this mistake can be used as an opportunity to learn why this kind of language is bad.

The Minister isn't the only person to say things like this- I've even heard parents of kids with autism refer to other children as "normal" & have had to rearrange my face. (1/n)

The hard thing for those of us working in/ living with disability is that this is a mistake we'd NEVER make.

For others (who don't live and breathe disability), saying "normal children" is probably a slip of the tongue- not a betrayal of them secretly being awful people. (2/n)
Given her portfolio this is a bad gaffe for the Minister which has upset people. Rather than piling on, it would be better to use this as a rare opportunity for other people to learn why language matters so deeply in disability and why this kind of thing is so wounding. (3/n)
Children with disabilities or special educational needs have the same rights to education and participation as everyone else. The support they need to achieve this is not "extra help" it's the bare minimum responsibility of State to allow them participate in their own lives(4/n)
By separating children out based on disability and not guaranteeing their rights, we state that their rights only apply when it's convenient for us to meet their needs. Whether we like it or not, this is what we say when we abide appallingly underfunded services. (5/n)
Language which emphasizes division ("normal") furthers an unconscious bias that children w/ disabilities have a lower level of entitlement which isn't integral to them, but related to State ability to provide for their rights i.e. the opposite of a rights-based approach. (6/n)
No-one says it out loud (and most probably don't even consciously think it) but the notion that children with disabilities are not actually equal is very pervasive. It's baked into society. We expect disabled children to wait for essentials that others get automatically. (7/n)
As I've said elsewhere (on a bumper day for disability language issues!): medical conditions are not disabilities in and of themselves.

https://t.co/OgFGRpoYsy

(8/n)
Anyone can experience disability- it's not something you "have"- and as such we ought to avoid othering and the consequent reduction of rights which comes with it. Disability is everyone's business. (9/9)

#disability #rehabilitation #paediatrics #ABI

https://t.co/sjQ3wPLrcr
@AnneRabbitte @josephamadigan @DonnellyStephen @rodericogorman @naiireland @GarNob @psychpolis

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Imagine if Christians actually had to live according to their Bibles.


Imagine if Christians actually sacrificed themselves for the good of those they considered their enemies, with no thought of any recompense or reward, but only to honor the essential humanity of all people.

Imagine if Christians sold all their possessions and gave it to the poor.

Imagine if they relentlessly stood up for the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner.

Imagine if they worshipped a God whose response to political power was to reject it.

Or cancelled all debt owed them?

Imagine if the primary orientation of Christians was what others needed, not what they deserved.

Imagine Christians with no interest in protecting what they had.

Imagine Christians who made room for other beliefs, and honored the truths they found there.

Imagine Christians who saved their forgiveness and mercy for others, rather than saving it for themselves.

Whose empathy went first to the abused, not the abuser.

Who didn't see tax as theft; who didn't need to control distribution of public good to the deserving.

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A brief analysis and comparison of the CSS for Twitter's PWA vs Twitter's legacy desktop website. The difference is dramatic and I'll touch on some reasons why.

Legacy site *downloads* ~630 KB CSS per theme and writing direction.

6,769 rules
9,252 selectors
16.7k declarations
3,370 unique declarations
44 media queries
36 unique colors
50 unique background colors
46 unique font sizes
39 unique z-indices

https://t.co/qyl4Bt1i5x


PWA *incrementally generates* ~30 KB CSS that handles all themes and writing directions.

735 rules
740 selectors
757 declarations
730 unique declarations
0 media queries
11 unique colors
32 unique background colors
15 unique font sizes
7 unique z-indices

https://t.co/w7oNG5KUkJ


The legacy site's CSS is what happens when hundreds of people directly write CSS over many years. Specificity wars, redundancy, a house of cards that can't be fixed. The result is extremely inefficient and error-prone styling that punishes users and developers.

The PWA's CSS is generated on-demand by a JS framework that manages styles and outputs "atomic CSS". The framework can enforce strict constraints and perform optimisations, which is why the CSS is so much smaller and safer. Style conflicts and unbounded CSS growth are avoided.