Stephen R. Wagner's Blog, page 38

WordPress.com Favorites: Empish Thomas

Welcome back to our “WordPress.com Favorites” series! In these interviews, we’ll be highlighting bloggers about their passion project. Caution: contents guaranteed to be inspiring. This interview has been lightly edited.    

Shortly after Empish Thomas earned her journalism degree in the mid-’90s, she began experiencing severe headaches and sensitivity to light. After a visit to the eye doctor, she was diagnosed with uveitis, a generalized eye inflammation that can quickly escalate to permanent damage. Unfortunately, Empish fell into that category, losing her sight fully within a few years. 

Since then, she’s been a writer, journalist, and advocate for blindness and disability rights, telling stories and championing awareness along the way. 

Empish generously took the time to answer a few of my questions and share some ideas on how we can all be better advocates for disability rights.  

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you write about and why? How long have you been blogging?

I am a freelance writer and blogger. I started off as a writer many years ago and later started blogging in 2013. Although I have a journalism degree, I love writing for the pure pleasure of it. I launched my own blog about two years ago as a safe place to write my own thoughts and ideas about things that concerned me. I write especially about my life as a blind person because when I became disabled 20+ years ago, I rarely saw positive and interesting stories about the disabled.

2. What are some of the most common negative portrayals you see about folks with disabilities in the news or in pop culture?

Well, there are actually two things I notice. One is the “superhero crip” image. That is a disabled person overcoming these incredible challenges and doing amazing things that everyone is impressed by. It sends a message that all disabled people are supposed to or want to be that way. It communicates a false expectation. At the end of the day, we are all human beings and live lives like everyone else.

The second one is that we are not visible at all. Many times, I will read a story or watch a news segment and wonder, “Where are the blind people? What is happening to those with disabilities?” This is not necessarily a negative thing, but more [shows our] exclusion from the storyline.

3. Let’s move to the workplace. How can employers become better allies and advocates for disability rights?

First, making sure that disabled employees get their accommodations to perform their jobs. 

Then, providing the support, encouragement, and motivation to help them move upward in the company the way you would an abled-bodied person. Sometimes I think that people with disabilities are not encouraged to move up into management or higher-level positions. It is like people can’t imagine a blind person as a supervisor or director. But with the right support, they could do the job like anyone else.

A Few of Empish’s Favorite Posts:

Working and Writing in the Disability Non-Profit WorldI’ve Become My Own Tech Support When Working From HomeIt’s a White Cane Not a StickMy Laundry Isn’t Smart But I AmMy Blindness Protected Me From the Full Grief and Horror of September 11th4. You’ve mentioned podcasts in a number of blog posts. Do you have any favorite listening experiences to recommend?

Yes, some of my favorite podcasts are HISTORY This Week, LeVar Burton Reads, The Stacking Benjamins, Code Switch, and Grammar Girl. 

5. What can someone do today to be a better advocate for disability rights, especially in the online space?

For me, being a better advocate is learning as much as you can about blindness and visual impairment. Reading things written by disabled people in their own voices. Through my years of writing about the disabled, I have had people reach out to me to learn more and that is a good thing. 

Also, helping those of us with visual disabilities get access to the internet. I can’t begin to tell you the number of websites I go to with accessibility issues. It is a regular challenge. Reaching out to web developers is hard and exhausting sometimes. But having allies to help in this process would be wonderful. It could be a simple thing like bringing awareness, because people don’t think that blind people are online.

6. Do have any tips for aspiring bloggers or freelance writers? 

Depending on the type of blog you are writing, it is so important to be organized. I use an editorial calendar where I jot down blog ideas for each month. I think about things coming up, current events, trending topics, etc., and add them to the calendar. This helps me to keep a good flow of blog posts.

Once people start subscribing they expect to see posts on a regular basis, and having an editorial calendar helps me stay on track.

Want to learn more about being organized and consistent with your writing? Sign up for our free, self-guided Intro to Blogging course today: 

Get Started

Customize Your Entire Site With New Block Themes

In case you missed it, we’ve been rolling out a new set of powerful site design tools called Full Site Editing (or “FSE”) and it’s now available for all WordPress.com users!

Don’t worry if you’re just hearing about Full Site Editing for the first time. We’ve been releasing these new tools in a way that doesn’t actually require you to do anything with your existing site(s). If you are up for a change though, we’re happy to announce the launch of a brand new family of themes made specifically with Full Site Editing features in mind. As of this writing we have over two dozen themes available that support Full Site Editing.

Marl → Hari → Alonso → Stewart → Winkel → Videomaker → Barnett → Livro → Farrow → Bennett → Kingsley → Dorna → Byrne → Geologist → Arbutus → Twenty Twenty-Two → Payton → Baxter → Jackson → Ames → Attar → Russell → Calvin → Baker → Quadrat → Skivers → Zoologist →

These new themes have been designed with a wide variety of sites cases in mind. But their potential stretches well beyond their screenshots and demo sites. Because each theme is fully editable in the Site Editor, every one of these themes can be heavily customized to fit your site’s needs. You can start with theme that features single minimalist homepage, and then add as many menus and sidebars as you wish. Or, you can start with a complex business theme and strip it down to something minimal to suit your vision.

The Site Editor also includes a new feature called “Global Styles,” which allows you to edit site-wide settings for color, typography, and more. You’re free to change your theme’s default color scheme to whatever fits your mood, or even make all site text larger or smaller in a couple of clicks. To kick off this new feature, we’re also providing a few pre-built variations on some of these new themes.

All the new themes and variations can be found in the Theme Showcase. Or, if you’re starting a fresh site, they’ll be offered to you automatically in the site creation flow. This collection of themes is just the beginning, and we’re excited to continue launching a variety of diverse theme options for you. What would you like to see in the next set of themes on WordPress.com?

The Future of Plugin, Themes, and Services Purchases on WordPress.com

Recently we shared that you can now purchase six popular Automattic plugins right from your WordPress.com dashboard. We’re intentionally testing this out with our own products before opening it up to the broader community. This is the first step in our plan to make taking your site to the next level faster, easier, and more flexible than ever before.

But it’s really just the beginning.

What’s coming soon

Today, we’d like to share a vision of what’s coming for instant purchases of plugins, themes, and even services – all from right within your WordPress.com dashboard. This will help you level up your site and make any goal you bring to WordPress.com a reality – with increased ease and convenience. 

Everything you need, one click away

WordPress.com already comes with a suite of powerful, adaptable tools to bring your site, blog, or store to life. On top of those tools, our Business and eCommerce customers have the option of making use of thousands of free and paid themes and plugins from across the wider WordPress ecosystem. In the near future, this will be available for all WordPress.com customers.

The new integrated experience will take that one step further, making getting up and running one-click simple and providing customers with:

A curated selection of the best plugins for every need, saving you the hassle of searching for and comparing from the hundreds of options available.Premium themes that are designed to look beautiful the second they’re activated.Professional help to make your vision a reality – even when you don’t have time to do it yourself.Managed Plugins and Themes, giving you the peace of mind that any plugin or theme you purchase is fully managed by the team at WordPress.com. No security patches. No update nags. It just works. Leaving you to focus on the things that matter most.The knowledge that you’re supporting the ecosystem of WordPress community developers and service providers as they support you in turn with your personal or business goals.Powered by the WordPress community

WordPress isn’t the world’s most popular website builder by accident. Our roots in a huge, and hugely creative, open source community make the platform everything it is and can be.

Giving WordPress.com customers the very best tools and support to achieve their goals will take a village. We’ll be partnering with developers and service providers from across the WordPress ecosystem (and across every part of the world) to make that happen.

As Matt Mullenweg, our CEO and co-founder of the WordPress open source project said recently:

“We’ve got about 2 million people with saved payment details that we can make it one-click easy [for folks] to upgrade, so hopefully this represents a big new potential audience and customer base for people selling things in the WP ecosystem. And of course, we will prioritize working with developers and companies who participate in Five for the Future and contribute back to the WP community.”

Get on the early access list

If you’re a WordPress plugin or theme developer, or you provide professional services for WordPress users, we’d love to hear from you, today.

Drop your details in the form below, and as we work to expand the products and services we’ll bring to WordPress.com customers, you’ll be first on the list when we start reaching out to form new partnerships.

Submit a form.

We can’t wait to work with you!

I’ve never quite known what to do with this website

I’ve been thinking about it lately, and I’ve realized that I haven’t done anything with this web page in quite some time. I never really knew what do with it, even back in the beginning. Initially, I posted a few poems, along with the majority of the draft of a novel, as I was working […]

The post I’ve never quite known what to do with this website appeared first on Words to stories.

Phlebotomy Got a Hold of Me

Phlebotomy got hold of me   One of the aspects Of being chronically ill Is that you must allow The machines To constantly scan you To stay on top of developments I don’t mind the machines themselves In fact, I have become comfortable enough that I must brace myself From falling asleep inside them I […]

The post Phlebotomy Got a Hold of Me appeared first on Words to stories.

You may not be comfortable with this

  You may not be comfortable with this But it is worth discussing Despite that fact that it may be beyond This is a poem for junkies Junkies Your hearts may be broken But you can come back It will be a lot of work And it will be painful But you may do it […]

The post You may not be comfortable with this appeared first on Words to stories.

I have been Thinking

I have been thinking About Free Verse Playing tennis without nets And all that Yes Perhaps it is like playing tennis Without a net But the only thing Is that it’s not like playing tennis without a net No, it is more like Standing in the middle of the street Pumped up With your legs […]

The post I have been Thinking appeared first on Words to stories.

We’re going to start moving here.

I have been appointed to the post of Poet Laureate for The City of Amesbury. We’re going to start doing things. But it’s going to take a while to build, of course. 1. A picture of the business card is above, because we mean business. 2. I post a copy of all of my weekly […]

The post We’re going to start moving here. appeared first on Words to stories.

A photo I found today from the Audiobook Release Party

The post A photo I found today from the Audiobook Release Party appeared first on Words to stories.

The audiobook is here and we’re gonna have a party

It is done. The audiobook is live and done. You may find it now on Audible, Amazon, and in the i-Tunes store. We will be celebrating on Sunday, March 26th (the details, if you are interested, are in the attached image). Join us, if you can.

The post The audiobook is here and we’re gonna have a party appeared first on Words to stories.