Testimony Larry

My name is Larry R. and I’m an accountant blessed with two children, two sons who are autistic, or more properly, on different stages of the autistic spectrum. The two boys love to play ball as do their parents with them. But when I take the family to a park it nearly breaks our hearts.
At every one of these parks, you can see at once that there are plenty of ballplaying facilities for typical children. The average youngster or teen can wait in line to play tennis, basketball, soccer and the rest. But these are all team sports with opponents. They are not independent or individualized sports so that my boys can drop-in and participate along with everyone else in the community. This is understood as mainstreaming which does not exist apart from programs which further segregated and segment differently able populations.
Why do all the typical kids get ballplaying facilities so much so that many of them are empty like the tennis courts being built for fewer and fewer participants. The point is there are many drop-in facilities: sports courts and sports fields for everyone but not for kids who are physically and cognitively challenged or mobility impaired or in wheelchairs or have other disabilities. They too should have drop-in ball playing sports to drop in with their family to play together and interact with others. There are none. What’s the point of a ramp leading to discrimination and exclusion which characterizes the new parks designed with little thought to including the differently-able. They are neglected willfully by a kind of callous indifference on the part of the authorities.

           It’s very sad and I speak not only for my own family. I’m certain i speak also for many of our county’s differently able children and adults who would also like to play ball at a facility but not with opponents, and not with teams, “a sport that does not require offense and defense but actively move their bodies, and are presented with sports challenges that they can succeed at, that socialize and mainstream’s all populations. We need to be giving consideration to diversity and the integration of special populations into a community activity. These parks offer accessibility when they should be offering inclusion.” {THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR RECREATIONAL EQUALITY website}. 

           The only glimmer of hope is that of the Bankshot court we played at in several parks that brings a community together and includes the differently able. I wish officialdom would visit a court to experience walk-on, drop-in,  inclusion. Why so few of these and others like it? There ought to be many such affordances in the community addressing the needs of the total community rather than merely the jocks and athletes. All families blessed with all kinds of children should have drop-in facilities to play ball just like other typical children and not always aggressive and having to defeat rivals but by playing alongside one another, not against one another, where, as I heard said, “you don’t have to win to be a winner,” [NARE] Rather, it is participation alongside others in mainstreaming disabled that brings a community together. There are many of us who would like to see attention paid to those who are so underserved in our parks.  The parks from the perspective of my family and many others are sadly disappointing.

Yahoo! I spend half my time trying to X off ads and marking them as distracting only to be fed replacements that are equally as bad - if not worse! IIf your readers can't pay attention to the content then why would I stick around to play whack-an-ad? I must wear glasses to read and use the fonts every site declares at 133% with no problems EXCEPT for Yahoo. I'm not asking for an advertisement free Yahoo but having used the site for so many years I'm about ready to make an ADA case out of this.

!. I have epilepsy and the brightly flashing ads cause me too much distress. I'm only asking you to minimize that to reduce the amount of distress. Or to throw the ads out altogether. You decide, just please do something!

2 Stop making divisions and/or layers that dodge my every attempt to discharge them from the view to float across my screen, often parking themselves in the center of the body. You're shipping me 500k of javascript to perform stupid web tricks when all I have to do is click to reader view to escape out of it. So what''s the point? I have 100's of resources to get the content ad-free but II don't use those just so if I do see an ad from Musicians Friend that I want to check out, I can. Iit''s unlikely that I'm ever going to follow a link to some other site since II already own everything I need, so the whole advertising battle you're waging serves no point other than to run me away.

Finally - why can't you get the commenting and gif posting functions in order and supported, just a little biit better?

It''s horrendous in it''s current state. if you want moderators for the communities turn on a delete and report button for responsible users who have some experience and let moderation be turned around to face users, instead of hiding it in the stealth of a corporate cloak. Simply incorporate a selection scheme to elect a person to ''moderate' and add the buttons to their interface once they have 'reported' 3 valid complaints, then remove them after a certain number of actions of time of service, allowing the machine selection to continue and replace the attrition.

The three issues I've raised cost you nothing to handle.

The implementation of community moderation works better than anything else you can purchase or dream up. It won't make users angry. Build a control panel interface to extend their overview and stats if it seems like a logical extension, GIVE them strict rules and replace them at short intervals instead of letting them act like they own the place. Don't badge them in any way! That serves no purpose and only inhibits other posters.
You guys are sitting on the best internet real estate, and it's about time you started treating it as such, considering that you want some other company to buy it. Shake the dust off the blinds and clean out some of the cobwebs!. Thanks!