Accessibility Accessories
People brought seats and wheel chairs in order to enjoy the festivities. In a society where disability is marginalized, choosing to mark yourself as disabled/elderly can draw stigma onto your person. At HONK!, people did so willingly. This is especially remarkable in a "concert" space (where people with disabilities are often physically separated from the rest of the audience into "accessible" space), and in a festival space where movement is celebrated--after all, dancing is one of the main activities at HONK! and attendees are often encouraged to dance. We see the dancing body as the canvas on which we express our appreciation of and our ability to commune with music. Yet HONK! allows people to express themselves without dance, or at least without dance as a non-disabled person might perform it, and creates a space that opens up the possibility for comfort in non-normativity beyond just wearing unusual clothes. In these photos, we see how accessibility accessories work to break down those barriers and create a space where movement is not the norm, in the process breaking down more insidious normative constructions on the streets of Somerville.
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