Date:         Thu, 29 May 1997 10:34:45 -0400
From: Bob Mauro - PeopleNet <mauro@IDT.NET>

    AN ELECTRONIC COFFEE HOUSE FOR PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES
                     Mobility@maelstrom.stjohns.edu

Here's what we use the Mobility list for:

1. We can discuss what mobility is.  It is not just access to
public transportation.  It is also our ability to get around using
wheelchairs, and our own cars or vans.  It is also about
integrating into society -- finding equal access and changing
attitudes and stereotypes.

2. Mobility also means communications.  Sharing ideas and feelings.
What are your feelings about disability and being disabled?

3. We can also use Mobility to inform each other about helpful
adaptive software, speech synthesizers --  anything that will help
persons with disabilities live more independently.

4. Mobility will also be discussed as it relates to socializing and
dating.

5. And we will also be discussing education and employment and how
it relates to mobility.

6. Finally, on Mobility you will have the opportunity to help us
with your views and news on mobility and any aspects of disability.

I hope you will tell everyone you know about our Mobility List, and
tell them to subscribe to it today.  Please help spread the word
about the Mobility List.  Post in on other Internet Lists and on
other BBSs.  We have hundreds of subscribers in over a dozen
countries!

To Join Mobility, send e-mail to:

listserv@maelstrom.stjohns.edu

Send the message:

sub Mobility yourfname lname

The following article I posted in May 1995:


     MOBILITY: AN ELECTRONIC COFFEE HOUSE OF VIEWS AND IDEAS

     As the person who originally set Mobility up with Dr. Robert
Zenhausern of St. Johns University, I want to say a few words about
the many diverse views on this list.  I see this list as an "electronic
coffee house" for those of us who enjoy a good debate.  In my original
meeting at Grumman Aerospace on Long Island in 1992 with Dr. Z of
St. Johns and representatives from Newsday Online, the Henry
Viscardi School for the disabled, and Grumman's electronic
information services, I said then and there that persons with
disabilities needed a sort of electronic community center where,
despite our mobility problems, we could gather electronically and
meet and socialize...just like in a neighborhood coffee house or
in a community center.
     In that sense, Mobility is a unique list.  It DOES NOT focus
SPECIFICALLY on ONE issue like the ADA or Polio, or CP, or Adaptive
Devices or Advocacy.  Rather, the original intent of Mobility was
to give men and women with disabilities "a place to share ideas and
feelings."
     As disabled men and women, we are not solely "disabled."  We
are men and women first.  As such, we have just as much right and
need to toss our ideas into the ring.  And that is what Mobility
was set up for and is here for.  Some of us cannot go to political
meetings, coffee houses, or community centers.  We are too rural,
too busy, too fatigued (after work), or just too homebound.
Therefore, many of us enjoy coming to Mobility each day to "talk."
To vent.  To look for others to discuss issues with.  And it is
here on Mobility where we find intelligent debate.
     Never feel you can't disagree or debate an issue on Mobility,
even if it is not specifically connect to disability.  At the same
time, don't say this or that shouldn't be on this list.  As the
former Mobility list owner (and STILL Mobility list lover!), I
would hope we would discuss anything and everything that we feel
is important to us as men and women, who happen to be disabled.
That includes politics, the Olympics, disability, or even sexuality.
After all, each of those topics effects us.
     Finally, I absolutely enjoy learning what interests persons who
happen to be disabled.  I am happy to know some of us are not obsessed
with our disability.


                   Bob Mauro, Mauro@Idt.Net
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