Navigating through the „new normal“

People can become disabled at any point in their life.
Sometimes it’s an accident, sometimes it’s an autoimmunedisease or a genetic defect, sometimes they are disabled from the very beginning.
No matter how, why and when people become disabled, life starts to throw a lot of new challenges in a person’s way. Most of the time it takes a lot getting used to a disability, but it takes much more time to figure out how to navigate through the every-day-life with all the changes.

For some people it’s easier to get help and find out how they can still be able to enjoy their hobby fully, others have to give up on a passion and find a new one. But fortunately, not all hobbies are very strict and sometimes changing the approach and the energy spent on the activity makes it possible to still enjoy it and get involved. This goes also for cosplay. There are many ways to accomodate a disability while cosplaying. Be it just taking more breaks, taking more time making the costume or outsourcing some parts, it doesn’t really matter and it’s still cosplay.
What makes things more complicated, are the people around us. Not everyone knows what it’s like to have different needs and to simply not be able to do things like they do. Especially if a disability isn’t visible or if the disabled person used to be „healthy“, it’s hard for friends to realize what changed and that priorities shifted. This makes it so important to communicate directly, talking to friends and raising the own voice for the needs the disability comes with, might be hard but is crucial to build a bridge and find a way to navigate through life without missing out or losing a part of yourself.
Hobbies are very important to find a work-life balance nowadays and this balance becomes even more important if hospital visits get more frequently.
In this case, the times in between, where you can feel a little bit normal and just enjoy something as simple as a convention, makes you forget for a short time about problems and helps power through the next row of appointments.

And to help with this and make convention visits more enjoyable for disabled people, we started this page.
Hoping to find a way to start discussions with organizers, find common grounds and see how we all can contribute to a better convention-experience.
Let’s hope for a better tomorrow and start helping others help us. Because it’s only possible to improve, if we work together.