The structure of the writing strongly implies that people with disabilities are exactly to whom they were referring. The subject of the preceding sentence is posters' concerns about providing assistance to "senior or handicapped residents." The next sentence is set up to address that concern: the city "already provides shoveling assistance to shut-ins and the elderly." If shut-ins were not the same as people with disabilities, why was this proposed as the answer to posters' concerns?
Now, this might have been a deft attempt to avoid the fact that the city really doesn't provide assistance to people with disabilities--only people who are, as you suggested, temporarily ill. If so, that makes the offense even worse: The fact that the city would duck the issue, and that they used a false and damaging parallelism to do so. There's zero excuse for such outdated and oppressive language in any form of city publication. (I don't really think that temporarily ill people would be thrilled about being referred to as "shut-ins," either.)
What's especially ironic here is that people with disabilities who live in Somerville often become stuck in their homes because the snow removal is so atrocious. An ADA complaint really needs to be organized.
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Date: 2009-11-21 08:16 pm (UTC)Now, this might have been a deft attempt to avoid the fact that the city really doesn't provide assistance to people with disabilities--only people who are, as you suggested, temporarily ill. If so, that makes the offense even worse: The fact that the city would duck the issue, and that they used a false and damaging parallelism to do so. There's zero excuse for such outdated and oppressive language in any form of city publication. (I don't really think that temporarily ill people would be thrilled about being referred to as "shut-ins," either.)
What's especially ironic here is that people with disabilities who live in Somerville often become stuck in their homes because the snow removal is so atrocious. An ADA complaint really needs to be organized.