“The thing that I have found most striking…about the experience of coming into disability community is realizing and questioning the way in which we do life.” ~ Qudsiya Naqui

What if we chose to be curious about how our bodies and minds experience our vulnerabilities and strengths and the world around us?

How might understanding the experiences of disability help us be more curious about our own and others’ minds and bodies?

And, most importantly, how might any of that help us be kinder and more patient with ourselves and each other?

I’m profoundly grateful to legal scholar and disability media-maker Qudsiya Naqui for proposing today’s topic.

We explore visual description as a curiosity practice, how we think about “disability,” the joys and community of adaptive sports, reflecting on our vulnerabilities and strengths, COVID’s impact on the number of people experiencing disability, listening rather than assuming, what interdependence looks and feels like — and what we might wish for our children.

It was a really good experience for me because it helped me to embrace new ways of doing things in other aspects of my life too, particularly because it exposed me to other blind folks… and learning from them….It really opened up this whole other world for me and made me realize: there is nothing holding me back from anything I want to do, if I get creative.

Listen to Ep. #304: Curious in Body & Mind, with Qudsiya Naqui

Qudsiya Naqui is a blind law professor and media-maker based in Washington, DC. She serves as Assistant Professor at the University of the District of Columbia’s David A. Clark School of Law, and is the creator and host of Down to the Struts, a podcast about disability, design, and intersectionality dedicated to uncovering the building blocks for a more just, inclusive, and accessible world. Her media work and legal scholarship seek to reimagine the design of laws, policies, and the digital and built environments by harnessing the wisdom of the disabled experience.

When she’s not teaching law or podcasting, Qudsiya enjoys participating in adaptive sports like tandem cycling with the Metro Washington Association of Blind Athletes.

Qudsiya reminds us that we spent a long time trying to define “disability” legally. Read the Americans with Disability Act (ADA), which protects people with disabilities from discrimination.

We offer visual descriptions at the start of this episode. This is an interesting article making the case for this practice.

Special thanks to Maria-Elena Montero of DC Bird Alliance for introducing me to Qudsiya. Maria-Elena’s enthusiasms are infectious, as you’ll hear in my conversation with her: We Are All Birders.

Want to dig into how we think about dis/ability more? You might enjoy these C2BC Classics: Empathy, with Brandon Charles; Sanity, with Tanmoy; Seeing Differently: Curiosity, Creativity & Dyslexia, with Rebecca Kamen; and Birdability: Making Curiosity Accessible, with Cat Fribley.

Theme music by Sean Balick. ”Mind Body Mind” by BodyTonic, via Blue Dot Sessions.

You can subscribe to Choose to Be Curious on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.