To say that we are all different is fundamentally another way of saying we are the same. However, looking out into the world through this perspective collectively allows us to start to think about disability as something that is a part of everyone’s life within our society.

Shades of Noir continually strives to achieve accessibility, always looking at new and intersectional ways to be more inclusive and accessible across our platforms. However, in order to do that, we all – as a team – need to understand not only who we are trying to be accessible for, but our motivations for doing so. This often takes us on a journey of learning and reinventing how we see ourselves within the institution as a collective of individuals. In this respect, one of the biggest challenges in building this document and supporting accessible content as a media developer undoubtedly feels to be the subjective nature of the terminology, language and the positionality that disabled practitioners choose to identify from. This was tricky for me to gauge not only due to the huge spectrum of neurodivergence/neurodiversity has to be accounted for when we open up a conversation about disability, but as someone who does not identify as such, finding the right – or at least the most effective – way to allow the space for a variety of perspectives and self-identifications that we have been introduced to whilst building this document over the past few months.

Due to the several models and theories that currently exist trying to define and navigate disability within Disability Rights Movement(s) developing over the last decade alone, alongside my own positionality as one of the leads of this publication, ultimately we decided to follow a different approach other than an academic one. Within this conversation – examining discourse emerging within the current socio-political environment – to us this felt to be the perfect moment to give voice to the experiences behind the theories; to the individuals who hold within them powerful testimonies of their experiences within this evolving conversation, in which their voice is the shade and light that creates the portrait of who we are not only as a community but as a society.

Our contributors reflect on a variety of different experiences, interests and perspectives across intersections to allow audiences to contemplate how the term ‘disability’ has impacted upon their lives: from inaccessible architectural spaces, childhood tales of ‘deficit’ that dilutes personhood, artwork that showcases how blindness can be viewed as a tool for painting, reflections on the lifelong ‘sport’ of living with a disability, all the way to the way in which music helps to expose a relentless form of freedom within an individual.

But, what binds them all, we had to ask ourselves? All are trying to connect and give voice to different understandings of ‘self’ and push us forward to a better, more inclusive understanding of our world.

This ToR is the beginning of a new chapter for SoN – of striving to be more accessible and we are overjoyed that the thoughts of our collaborators within this publication can now be shared with you all

Salute.

Jorge Aguilar Rojo and Patricia Petersen.