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This will be a short post. I'm still recovering.
This past Sunday on July 19th, I took my teenage nephew to a mountain bike park. As we entered the park and transitioned from pavement to gravel, I yelled over my shoulder to him to be careful on the loose gravel. That's the last thing I remember before waking up in the emergency room. I had apparently crashed, hard, on our first attempt at a small jump.
I'm an active person though not young anymore. I have ridden through this park numerous times over the past five years or so and have taken a many of these jumps without issue. We are not talking about big air here. Still, an unexpected landing can take us to some interesting places. I'm still not sure what happened. I probably will never know. Such is life.
My injuries include: 7 facial fractures around my right eye; numerous cuts that required stitches in my eyebrow, ear and chin (for those that know me, no beard was lost); exposed cartilage in my ear that may require a skin graph; 5 fractured ribs, a fracture in my radius (forearm bone) at the elbow joint; two significant areas on my elbow and shoulder that are missing the top layer of skin; a small bit of collapsed lung; my two front teeth were broken off (thankfully, repaired at the dentist yesterday); and a concussion. At the moment, I qualify as disabled. There are certain accommodations I need to interact with the world.
We will all deal with disability in our lives. Some of us are healthy enough and (more importantly) lucky enough to be able to recover. I'm already well on my way there even in if staring at a computer for hours, standing up from a prone position, or eating solid foods are all painful and problematic at the moment.
I build big websites, mostly for governments, higher education, healthcare, nonprofits, and the like. I use Drupal for most of these. I'm committed to the accessibility features in Drupal because they are simply the right thing to do. I consider it a moral imperative.
I didn't sit down to write this post to get sympathy. I was shown yet again this week just how many family and friends surround me and support me. I don't need sympathy.
My temporary disability is a reminder of just how important it is to have empathy for the people for which we build software and websites. I hope this post gives you a moment to think about that as well. It is not a matter of if, but when, we will need accommodations. Remember that.