Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have adopted social isolation as a strategy to fight and limit the spread of the global crisis of Covid-19, which has impacted organization processes and employee's relationships with one another. Several issues such as the lack of accessibility and adaptations on work routines, that were already present in people with disabilities' life in the work environment are now highlighted, bringing to light theoretical debates and practical discussions about the experience of using technological accommodations as possible strategies for promoting accessibility and inclusion. Based on narratives of people with different corporalities in this contemporary shifting reality, in this article, we aim to reflect on how accessibility issues are being managed in labor practices in Brazil. More precisely, we seek to understand the role and effects of this new use of technology on social inclusion and exclusion of people with disabilities in the times and spaces where they work remotely due to the Covid-19 pandemic.


Introduction

The article is based on the premise that the COVID-19 illustrates the need to look at access, work, and inclusion through a disability lens that prompts us to question and reimagine society's ableist-productivist excluding model. We propose a contribution that goes beyond dualisms such as inclusion and exclusion or accessible and non-accessible. Drawing on narratives of people with disabilities about their labor experiences amidst the adaptations social isolation imposed, we aim to think about the complexities of online/offline interactions for people with disabilities in the workplace. From the work of Anahi Guedes de Mello, Marco Gavério, Olívia von der Weid, and Valéria Aydos (ABA/ANPOCS, 2020), we understand accessibility as an arrangement coproduced by different informational, social, and human technologies. These arrangements produce effects that are not reducible to a simplistic conclusion about whether management models were implemented or not. We argue that reflections on inclusion must dialogue with a conception of accessibility based on universal design and focus on the barriers people face in their quest for social participation. This perspective evinces how difficult it is to recognize that we all have bodies and minds with specific and inconsistent abilities. At the same time, it encourages us to fight against the historical-political meanings evoked by simplistic binary frameworks that categorize us as disabled/non-disabled and healthy/sick.

We are inspired by Disability Justice and Crip Theory studies, or its Portuguese translation "Teoria Aleijada" (McRuer, 2006; Kafer, 2013; Mello & Gavério, 2019), which refuse such dichotomies and call for cripping 2 the theories of difference. Cripping the practices means recognizing ethical, epistemic, and political responsibilities of questioning all preexisting conditions under which we all live and knowing that this process also benefits those who are not interested in or invested in this transformation. Thus, when we ask how the remote working configurations brought about or intensified by the Covid-19 pandemic act on the production of new inclusions and exclusions, we are arguing for a further problematization of the inclusion/exclusion binarism, considering that accessibility is always relational, situational, and resulting from a feasible arrangement. In this sense, our work also questions what was at stake for including people with disabilities in the workplace before the pandemic. Hence, we address what we called the "paradoxes of supported work" as a social technique of accessibility and inclusion through an analysis of how access issues are operationalized in the everyday work practices of people with disabilities.

Disability and work in Brazil – accessibility and "supported employment."

The inclusion of people with disabilities in the Brazilian labor market is a phenomenon that relies upon consistent legislation such as the Brazilian Law of Inclusion of People with Disabilities (Lei n. 13.146, from 2015) and the Quotas Law (Lei n. 8.213, from 2013). It also relies on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) (2007) 3, a legal milestone in people with disabilities' quest for citizenship rights and the strengthening of disability studies in the Brazilian political context.

Article 2 of the UNCRPD defines "discrimination based on disability" as any "distinction, exclusion or restriction on the basis of disability which has the purposes of the effect of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal basis with others, of all human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, cultural, civil or any other field," (UNCRPD, 2006). People with Disabilities, also according to the UNCRPD, include "those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others." (UNCRPD, 2006, article 1). As authors Diniz, Barbosa, and Santos (2009) point out, both definitions reflect the Social Model of Disability premises Shakespeare (2006) outlined. With the governmental action, the model's analytical framework gained force for identifying and opposing physical, technological, and symbolic barriers that make society incapable of including everyone.

However, according to Débora Diniz (2012), the scholar responsible for popularizing Disability Studies in Brazilian anthropology 4, despite robust legislation on disability, there is still little visibility of people with disabilities in Brazilian academia and public debates. In part, this invisibility results from an individualized and biomedical understanding of disability that sees it as "bodies and mind in disadvantage" combined with the social exclusion of these people caused by "social environments that prevent their full participation."

Federal Law n. 8112/09 5 and the Quotas Law n. 8.213/91 6 are important tools against the barriers hindering inclusion in the Brazilian labor world. The Quotas Law, promulgated in 1991, was enacted and effectively reinforced with the Decree n. 3298 of 1999. Thus, it was only when facing possible economic sanctions of coercive legislation that the "business world" (Barbosa, 2002) became aware of new management models aimed at inclusion. The governmental and businesses' actions demanding that companies make "reasonable accessibility adjustments" to guarantee that people with disabilities can work have been essential in fighting ableism 7 in the labor market.

However, if we think of such policies through an "inclusion paradigm" 8 (Sassaki, 1997; 2002), the country is far from effective implementation of such demands. In this perspective, companies should be enabled to employ people with disabilities. Therefore, to be inclusive, they should implement new management tools and sensitize their employees for diversity. With this, they could promote adequate environmental and social conditions for people with disabilities to join the workforce. Also, there should be a concern about placing people in positions suitable to their competencies and possibilities of adapting to the job.

As part of their implementation procedures, Brazilian work inclusion policies introduce "Supported Employment" (SE) [Emprego Apoiado]. SE consists of a set of procedures companies must undertake to promote a "good inclusion" of people with disabilities in the labor market (Lobato, 2009; ITS-SECIS, 2013). 9 Among other techniques, it determines that a "support person" must be present throughout all stages of the inclusion process, from "the definition of the professional profile and competencies, and the abilities of the person with a disability" to "the choice of adequate positions and negotiations about their hiring regime within the company" (ITS-SECIS, 2013). Among these criteria, there is a need to assess each case to address any possible needs regarding adequate material setting, "assistive technology," 10 or a "person of reference." Whatever is necessary for the disabled worker to find an accessible work environment and perform their labor activities.

In Brazil, we can notice that companies still rely on integrative models, hiring people with disabilities only to make the quota required by law without promoting an effective inclusion (Aydos, 2017). During this integration, the individual is held responsible for adapting to the environment and being autonomous and independent of their labor practices. In other words, the fact they are required to rely solely on themselves, without anyone's help, to do their job is a constant barrier to implementing this inclusion technology.

"Supported employment" (Lobato, 2009; Costa, 2013) as a tool for promoting social inclusion throws light on the need for us to challenge the individualist character of autonomy in our society and its liberal modes of subjectification (Rabinow & Rose, 2006) as a requisite for citizenship 11 acquisition. This individualization is also present in the understandings of disability as an individual problem to be "fixed" (and most times eliminated), instead of recognizing that it is society, and more specifically companies and institutions, that must make work accessible to the diverse human corporalities and specificities.

If accessibility and inclusion of people with disabilities in the labor market were already a complex theoretical-practice issue in "in-person" workplaces, the new labor interactions imposed by online platforms introduced a new set of challenges. How is the new reality affecting people with disabilities' work relations and forms of working? What are the effects of work technologies on the jobs and lives of people with disabilities? What new barriers are they facing in their everyday work routine? What new exclusions and inclusions is the situation producing? Moreover what is people with disabilities' agency when facing this reality?

Covid-19 and the review of a work ethics

The Covid-19 Pandemic started in December 2019 in China, and it rapidly crossed borders, becoming a global issue and positing a unique historical and experiential time. Brazil's first registered case occurred in February 2020, and by the time this paper was written (March 31st, 2021), approximately 12,748,747 12 cases and 321,515 deaths had been accounted for. Beyond the emerging topics regarding virus management, SARS-CoV-2 exposed our century-long social injustices, revealing Brazil's fragile social structure in political, economic, and cultural contexts.

Situating some of the issues people with disabilities face in their work lives is part of a resistance strategy in a context marked by conservative, anti-democratic, and neoliberal discourses and practices that threaten the already fragile social policies this minority group has attained. The Brazilian government has constantly been attacking the policies already mentioned in this paper, jeopardizing accessibility and the very right of being a worker. 13 Furthermore, sharing and problematizing how people with disabilities are experiencing and managing their activities in these specific circumstances poses crucial ethical implications for analyzing work inclusion processes. Especially considering that remote working, now seen as a temporary adjustment, may become the default setting after the pandemic.

In the pandemic world, social distancing has become imperative for global prevention and protection strategies. The strategy is considered the most effective against the virus, with most states across the world adopting it. However, it assumes that everyone will stay home in temporary social distancing regardless of their corporealities. Such a universalist policy is not easily enforced in countries such as Brazil, marked by deep social inequalities and political instabilities. We must emphasize that our interlocutors consist of a small parcel of the population who can keep working without being exposed to the virus.

In March 2020, the federal government issued the Temporary Order 927/2020 14 declaring a State of Emergence to fight against Covid-19. One of the measures introduced was the remote working model to stop the virus' spread. With this, companies and workers in their specificities could adopt this model of work.

The possibility of working from home can be an agent for promoting changes and sustaining health and labor rights. We understand, however, that what is at stake for this possibility to occur is the promotion of changes in work processes that are ethically oriented towards inclusion and accessibility. Here, understanding ethics from its ontological perspective. In other words, it is not a set of rules or a system of truths with a pre-determined value, which are in the order of the moral, but as a quality through which we face the differences between us and what we assert with them (Rolnik, 1993). In this direction, as a practice, inclusion would be in a constant rearrangement with the environment and its changes, being led by the Crip experience of people with disabilities. To feminist disability theorists, this experience requires a deep concern for interdependence and care relations (Kittay, 2011; Fietz, 2020).

On the other hand, the feasibility of remote working during the pandemic may solely represent a new dimension of what was already taking place in specific sectors of the job market. In this sense, it can more strongly point to how public and private spaces mix in the home, as Antunes' work (2018; 2020) had already noticed. The author argues that this work model has always created a nonregulation of time dedicated to public and private activities, specific forms of work precariousness and exploitation, and causing workers to fall ill, particularly women to whom work of care is added to their professional tasks.

This critique has been the center argument for several problematizations and analyses that are not the focus of the present paper. Still, we must acknowledge that the Schumpeterian perspective (Aghion, P.; Akcigit, U., 2017) plays a tricky role in the labor force and capitalistic innovation debate. Schumpeter's theory's most important point is that the expansion of output depends upon the history of technological development. That is to say, the growth of output is geared to the rate of innovations. Since the framework of capitalist innovation, we have a progressive cost reduction of companies' physical and technological, and social infrastructures, which can justify including or not a "supporting person" to accommodate an employee's needs. Those costs are then transferred to the worker who grasps them under the category of a "self-entrepreneur," a euphemism for the ableist idea of a working force capable of multitasking and navigating on their own through the advance in technologies, without a network of coworkers and other supports. The remarks mentioned above help to understand the ideas of an "uberization of life" and the emergence of the precariat. 15, with by far and large approach the employer on ableist foundations of work justifying lack of accessibility on an economic reason.

Thus, in a pandemic context that imposed social distancing and remote working, what are the changes we can observe in the lives of people with disabilities and their specificities? How can the approach proposed here for thinking about this change contribute to problematizing categories such as disability, accessibility, and inclusion?

Presenting narratives "good to think with." 16

Bernardo, one of the authors of this paper, has Larsen Syndrome, a rare genetic disease that causes him difficulty in mobility. Talking about his first day working as a university professor in New York City, he describes how back problems left him immobilized for two days. When he asked the university for accessibility accommodations, the only alternatives they presented were reducing his workload and preparing asynchronous activities for his students. 'Remote working,' with online synchronous classes, was not a "reasonable adaptation", as it would affect teaching quality, an argument used to deny reasonable accommodations to him. Also, because being physically in the classroom was not always an option due to his conditions at that time. Fast forward to the beginning of the pandemic, a once rejecting argument became plausible. Not long after he started teaching, the university decided that "all courses should be offered remotely by the end of the semester." The usage of technology became imperative. What imperatives are we talking about when addressing accessibility, disability, and work? Bernardo is currently facing the emotional and physical effects of a pandemic. "Online time" and the body demands of spending so much time sitting in front of the computer are also taking a toll on him. Still, he can teach two courses, and at the beginning of the pandemic, the paradox of remote working started to unfold. Bernardo was producing more and being more and more "normalized" as he fulfilled institutional expectations regardless of his expectations not being met. Having worked in Brazil twice through the Quotas Law, in a multinational pharmaceutical company and a national bank, this was the first time he experienced supported employment in the USA, represented by the possibility of remote working during a pandemic.

Rodrigo, a software developer with muscular dystrophy -a genetic disease that causes progressive weakness and muscle loss. As a wheelchair user, Rodrigo has to face countless architectural barriers on his way to work and has to deal with embarrassing situations, such as asking for the help of unknown people to open doors or use the elevator. His severe back pain requires him to take breaks to lay down and rest during his shift, but he cannot do so because his office does not provide adequate space. However, when reflecting on the possibility of continuing to work remotely in a post-pandemic future, Rodrigo said that he would like to go to the office "twice or three times a week. Work was also a time-space where socialization took place while grabbing a coffee, having a collective lunch break, or playing video games. All of those were as important to him as the mobility struggles he faced or the need to find creative ways to accommodate his body when laying down was not an option.

Anahi is a deaf woman educated in oralism 17, and her accessibility request of real-time captioning in events had always been denied for being too expensive. Given the lack of access, Anahi had to rely on lip-reading to follow the talks. It was common for her to feel excluded during talks, classes, lectures, and especially during coffee breaks or happy hour gatherings with her colleagues. On these occasions, not only do people tend to speak all at once, but she could not have a clear view of everyone's face. Her specific communication needs were not taken into consideration. Things were not any different in the pre-pandemic online world, and she had to deny several invitations to participate in those events because of communication issues and the precarity of captioning technologies. When everything was suddenly moved to the virtual world, Anahi faced the real possibility of being excluded from her field. In fact, it would have happened if it had not been for her effort and the combined support of accessibility sources, such as her cochlear implant, instant captioning apps, and the chat space of meeting platforms. Speaking of two meeting platforms commonly used in Brazil, Anahi said that Skype's real-time captions present a considerable delay, and Zoom does not even have an auto-captioning option for Portuguese. The alternative to the lack of automatic option is to hire a captioning service which costs a lot.

Another issue with online events is that people still talk simultaneously and often use the chat to have parallel conversations not necessarily related to what is presented. Two examples that are also a problem for neurodivergent people, as Joana's narrative below points to. Such attitudinal barriers are even more complicated to address than technological issues. Anahi feels more "included" now than before the pandemic, but only because she can count on her colleagues' unpaid work to caption the talks. Her experience raises a crucial question: Why was a computer connected to the internet to provide live captioning during classes, lectures, and events not available before? How many people could have benefited from attending a talk with captions on a big screen? For example, Bernardo, who is not a native speaker of English, affirms that subtitles make it easier for him to understand different accents.

Joana 18 is autistic 19 and is close to earning her teaching degree. At this point in her college education, she has to, among other tasks, teach in two elementary school classes. In the classroom before the pandemics, there were never attempts to minimize her hypersensitivity to sounds and lights. Also, the hyper-responsiveness caused by several people talking at the same time caused a stimulus overload, and she had to leave the room to deal with her anxiety. Joana says that her direct way of communicating and stims 20 made her a constant target for bullying, judgments, and injustices in the classroom. The way she moves her head, for example, has been interpreted as an attempt to cheat in a test and she always feels left out from conversations that rely on metaphors, reading between the lines, and body language. The pandemic allowed Joana to work from home without being exposed to spaces that are non-inclusive to autistic people.

On the other hand, the overload of tasks, not having any deadlines readjusted to her specific temporalities, and the need to participate with an open camera in all of her classes are extremely violent to her. If before she could look away from her colleagues' constant staring, sitting in front of a computer screen, she feels continually watched and judged. Also, the demands, sounds, and stimuli from her home and her son, who is also autistic and constantly seeks her attention, can be more exhausting to her than to most mothers.

Marco is a civil servant with a low vision. He relies on accessibility resources such as screen reader apps and on "supported employment" if needed. One of Marco's colleagues is his "support person" and assists him when technology cannot. Once everything moved online, he had to invest his own money to continue to do his job from home. Still, they were not enough. In his house, Marco did not have access to the "human resource of accessibility," which allowed him to perform under the same conditions as his colleagues. Marcos's right to count on a support person to read what the software cannot, for example, was not factored in for this new reality. There was also a need for more personal adjustments when the workplace moved to his house. Marco used to have lunch every day in a restaurant close to his work downtown and rarely cooked. Because of social distancing measures, he had to learn how to cook and organize his routine within his bodily and sensorial experience. Like Bernardo, Anahi, and Joana, Marco also has to deal with very particular temporalities and corporeal experiences during the pandemic.

A few considerations

The narratives we presented here posit several issues that have always been present in the lives of people with disabilities who enter the job market. However, the Covid-19 pandemic and the social context it imposed rendered them more visible. Social studies of work have long developed analysis for this phenomenon; the imperative of a world logic based on economic and productivist rationalities causes technological innovation to work to sustain productivity during a pandemic (Antunes, 2018; 2020). If before the pandemic, companies used the lack of suitable technology or people's resistance to them as a reason to keep people with disabilities from the workplace, the pandemic evinced that these were no more than false excuses.

Nonetheless, in Brazil, we have another factor to take into account in this analysis. The country is still feeling the effects of a political government project widely broadcasted nationally and internationally during the pandemic as having genocide and negationist characteristics. 21 The pressure of certain business groups in combination with local, state, and federal governments' conservatism grounded on neoliberal narratives that we must preserve the economy at all costs has prevented Brazil from adopting more effective "social distancing" measures and care policies for its population. We did not have much more than, if any, poorly designed policies for testing and tracing with a clear electoral motif, articulated with a small financial stimulus benefit to a few people and companies. Actions that ended up causing greater dissemination of the virus and its new variants. It is no surprise that, as we write this text, Brazil has become the country with the most daily deaths and infections of Covid-19 in the world.

The Covid-19 pandemic experiences socialize limitations at the same time that it exposes society's ableism. The narratives we presented show how the responsibility for "adapting" to the workplace still falls upon the person even if it demands significant effort. In other words, a process that should be social becomes an "individual responsibility." Making disabled workers responsible for securing the resources to continue working and framing accessibility as an individual demand is a way to weaken mobilizations on workers' rights and benefits, leading to a depoliticization of disability.

Thinking back to the narratives, we can realize that supported employment was not present in Bernardo's life before the pandemic when he was constantly excluded from the job market and had his right to accessible accommodations repeatedly denied, including the need for remote working or online classes. In this sense, during the pandemic, Bernardo had increased access (provided in a non-crip manner to a certain degree) based on the university's needs and limits and not due to his crip body. For Marco, on the contrary, the inclusion technology that enabled his work in the office was no longer available when he had to work from home.

Communicational and sensory barriers marked Anahi's and Joana's lives. Anahi's because of the non-inclusion of her mode of communication through lip-reading, and Joana's due to the incomprehension regarding her different temporalities in public spaces and her particular, more straightforward way of communicating and forging relationships. Anahi's experiences also speak of "urgent business adaptations" similar to Bernardo's story, even if, in her case, they were driven not by the market but by moral and ethical stances. If before her access needs were restricted to the small number of people present in a room or reduced to an individualized "on-demand access" situation that could cause no more than a discomfort to those present when not met, the online world opened the windows to the world of academics from different states and countries. Accessibility is no longer a restricted matter, and it became immediate and urgent to the communication platforms.

What is still absent from most discussions about remote working and inclusion is how an accessible society must not be thought of for people with disabilities only, even if they are the leading population in this claim for rights. Enabling remote work benefits several bodies and subjectivities when activities are made possible or facilitated by more flexible hours or having access to video captions. If we think of accessibility in public spaces as something that promotes the inclusion of people's various corporealities and sensoralities, we may start to look at it positively and not as individual problems companies have to solve. If it were so, we would have had a greater chance of Bernardo having the right to work remotely before the pandemic, Joana having an adapted classroom, and Anahi counting on real-time captioning for live events also.

When we start seeing the world through a disability lens, it becomes clear how we can observe the often-hidden inequalities and production characteristics of our society's structural ableism, even in apparently positive contexts. As Gavério (2019) states in a video 22 produced as part of an accessibility resource to academic events in Brazil, "the notions of barrier, access, and inclusion have been thought about through ethical, political, and sociocultural dimensions for several years now. Still, in practical terms, they are presented as individual, factual, and circumscribed to disabled bodies."

Gender inequalities that have been for decades the subject of discussions about flexible hours and remote working have been amplified during this pandemic. We know that working from home has been the default mode for several professional fields, generating different labor precarities and exploitation and acting to transform work relations and worker's subjectivities. Similarly, social inequalities have become more evident since a large part of the population experiences barriers in access to technology for economic reasons. The need to buy new computers and have a reliable internet network to participate in this new reality evinced how our society excludes many social groups. Joana, a working-class woman, had to invest more money than she could afford on noise-canceling headphones, and Marco had to purchase several apps he did not have.

We believe that the narratives we presented are telling of the many gray areas that exist when it comes to accessibility and inclusion since analyzed based on the binarism inclusion/exclusion say little about particular experiences of people with disabilities. Returning to our main argument, we once again emphasize that thinking about disability as an empiric, analytical, and methodological category contributes to the expansion and deepening of this debate. We have argued that thinking about accessibility as structure and in terms of universal access can promote the inclusion of not only people with disabilities but also of a variety of corporalities and sensorialities. However, we create new exclusions and precariousness when we don't attend to people with disabilities' body and sensorial specificities.

Our interlocutors' experiences also reveal the shortcomings and flaws of a capitalist system with a neoliberal and liberal approach to differences. If people without disabilities feel exhausted and sick because of an over-exposition to online platforms, diverse corporalities such as that of our interlocutors experience this new reality quite violently. In a society structured by ableism, people with disabilities show us how urgent it is to talk about the injustices their bodies face and how incapable society is to rapidly and easily respond to them.

Our interlocutors' situatedness illustrates how technological resources have been used in remote working to normalize a situation prior to the pandemic. In this sense, they act as "technological fixes" that "cure, heal, and domesticate" bodies for working. In a pandemic context, under the allegations that the situation imposed the need for technology, it becomes clear that what is at stake here is not promoting accessibility to be inclusive but to be productive.

However, from a Crip ethics perspective, a much more complex point of view establishes the experiences between technological resources and subjects. Rodrigo's experience, for example, reveals that workplace inclusion cannot be limited to the architectural adjustments needed for wheelchair users. On the contrary, having control over his own bodily experience and participating in socializing spaces beyond the labor activity is as important as the architectural changes. To feel included, Rodrigo has to experience the totality of his workplace including the coffee breaks and lunches with colleagues, lay down to rest during work hours, and play video games. Remote working, in this sense, is both an accessibility resource to deal with architectural barriers and bodily needs and an exclusion mechanism. Another paradox of ableism appears when the accommodations that make a workplace accessible" to non-normative bodies hardly ever consider leisure and pleasure activities.

The narratives we presented in this paper show how having a single normative on accessibility is not a fruitful path to effectively address human diversity. More than that, the paradox of remote working during pandemic times and its alternatives that include some while excluding others revealed the structural ableism that permeates an "accessibility for productivity" that qualifies bodies for work while excluding them from other sociabilities.

As Gavério (2016) points out when writing about Kafer's (2013) Crip Theory, "a Crip (aleijada) political position depends on an analysis of collective and social futures we imagine as desirable when it comes to disability." Perhaps the pandemic context we are all experiencing can stretch the social fabric until it breaks the usual forms of living. Looking at things through a crip lens reveals a "crooked" walk that shows how ableism can no longer be the model to follow if we want other ways of walking to be possible and more bodies to be rendered visible.

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Endnotes

  1. A much first short version of this paper was published at Oliveira, Navarini and Aydos (2020).
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  2. Crip (short for cripple) is an analogy to the reclaiming of the word queer by the queer community of activists and academics. Crip, or its Portuguese equivalent "aleijado," has been mobilized by several disabled activists as an attempt to break from rigid and objective definitions which categorize and specify bodies, disabilities, and behaviors under a pre-determined norm (Gavério, 2015).
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  3. Following Article 5th, Paragraph 3rd, of the Brazilian Federal Constitution, the Brazilian Congress approved the UNCRPD and its facultative protocol, signed in New York City on March 20, 2007, through the legislative Decree n 186 on July 9, 2008. It is important to stress that the UNCRPD results from a long trajectory of activism and oppression people with disabilities faced commonly erased from official documents. We suggest Lilia Ferreira Lobo's book "Os Infames da História: pobres, escravos e deficientes no Brasil" (2008) to those interested on an historical account of such events. Lobo's work addresses those whose histories had been erased and voices were silenced throughout Brazil's history: children, enslaved people, and the disabled.
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  4. The first Open Panel on disability studies at a Brazilian Anthropological Association Annual Meeting only occurred in 2014 (GT 83 – Etnografias da Deficiência).
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  5. Civil servant positions are highly pursued in Brazil due to their high pay and work stability and are filled through contests with several candidates per opening. Federal Law n. 8112/09 determines that 20% of the positions in civil servant exams are reserved for people with disabilities.
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  6. The 8.213/91 Federal Law states that "companies with 100 (a hundred) employees or more must reserve 2% to 5% of their positions to rehabilitated beneficiaries or people with disabilities."
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  7. Ableism is here understood as both discriminatory actions against people with disabilities and a structure of oppression that produces the exclusion of people with disabilities (Ware, Ruzsa, Dias, 2014; Gesser, Block & Mello, 2020).
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  8. We can analyze work conditions for people with disabilities from four models – exclusion, segregation, integration, and inclusion. However, it is important to stress that, given histories of nonlinear/genealogical character, the models coexist and influence the practices and discourses that shape different understandings of what disability is. Through this logic, we can problematize the idea of inclusion itself. We understand inclusion as a movement forged within a trajectory of political and social struggles to eliminate barriers that exclude people with disabilities. From a context of absolute social exclusion with people with disabilities kept in their houses without accessing any citizenship rights, they gradually conquered more spaces. These spaces provided access to healthcare and education but were still segregated and linked to charitable institutions. As an example, we have the APAES, the Special Education Schools, and Residential Institutions. As time passed, they began to be integrated into society as services like support classrooms in regular schools.
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  9. The Ethos Institute and the Social Technology Institute (ITS) are referenced as information and support resources for human resources managers. Besides these institutes, the most popular private consultant and advisory companies in Brazil are www.RH.com.br, www.administradores.com, and www.catho.com.br. In Rio Grande do Sul, the two most well-known consultant companies for the inclusion of people with disabilities are Egalite and Desenvolver.
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  10. According to several web pages consulted, "Assistive Technology" is a new term in Brazil. It is used to refer to all resources and services that contribute by allowing for or expanding functioning abilities of people with disabilities and, therefore, promoting independent living and inclusion." It is interesting to note how most definitions emphasize how such technologies aim for promotion "independence" and inclusion. See also, http://www.assistiva.com.br/tassistiva.html.
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  11. For a reflection on Autonomy and Citizenship from a reflection of interdependence as a paradigm for social relations, see Aydos & Fietz, 2017.
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  12. As informed by the federal government through their official website site https://covid.saude.gov.br/ and retrieved on March 2021.
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  13. The constant budget cuts and attacks on acquired rights have been broadly publicized in Brazilian media. Here we have a few examples of how Bolsonaro's fascist and genocide politics, often entangled on a neoliberal narrative, acts to favor the dismantling of public policies: https://www.cartacapital.com.br/politica/bolsonaro-extingue-o-conselho-dos-direitos-da-pessoa-com-deficiencia/; https://congressoemfoco.uol.com.br/governo/governo-quer-economizar-r-10-bi-com-cortes-em-beneficios-de-prestacao-continuada/; e https://politica.estadao.com.br/blogs/fausto-macedo/advogadas-alertam-que-projeto-que-desobriga-cota-para-deficientes-em-empresas-e-inconstitucional/
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  14. Available at <https://www.in.gov.br/en/web/dou/-/medida-provisoria-n-927-de-22-de-marco-de-2020-249098775>.
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  15. The notion of a precariat emerged in the 1980s as a combination of the adjective precarious with the noun proletariat. It refers to an emergent class formed by a growing number of people whose working lives are based on insecurity and going from temporary jobs to temporary jobs that add little meaning and a feeling of belonging and accomplishment to their lives. The book "The Precariat – New Dangerous Class" (Standing, 2011) presents a concise analysis of this groups' characteristics combined with a political and socioeconomic reflection about the new social order heighten by the flexibilization of labor law. An example of such a change is the convenience and agility of food delivery apps that exploit the delivery person workforce.
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  16. Rodrigo, Joana, and Marcos are fictional names. Bernardo, one of the authors of this text, and Anahi Guedes de Mello, a well-known disability scholar in Brazil, chose to disclose their identities. To further discussions, see Oliveira (2017) and Mello & Alves (2021).
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  17. Oralism it is a system to teach people to communicate by the use of speech and lip-reading rather than sign language.
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  18. Joana's narrative focuses on her experience as a student. However, in academia, the experiences of professors and students as researchers often overlap. In the context of remote learning, the relationality, interdependence, and similarity of these experiences became even more evident. Despite not being representative of a labor experience per se, the narratives told here are significant to this paper's argument and complement each other. Furthermore, similar to Anahi and Bernardo, Joana dealt with deadlines, an overload of tasks, and institutional demands as a student teacher at an elementary school.
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  19. For more about new modes of communication for neurodivergent people in online settings, see Aydos & Costa, 2020.
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  20. Stimming or stim are bodily movements, repetitive or not, that autistics use to self-stimulate one or more senses to self-regulate and/or communicate and express themselves. It stands for the term "self-stimulating movements." Without a Portuguese translation, the term stim appears in several texts in Brazil. Source: Autism in Translation- https://autismoemtraducao.com/terminologia-e-outras-consideracoes/stimstimming/
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  21. See 1) International press emphasizes Bolsonaro's negacionism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8RyDoD89N8&ab_channel=JornalismoTVCultura; e 2) "Coronavirus: Bolsonaro's image abroad": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOE9BfJcMf0&ab_channel=BBCNewsBrasil.
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  22. The video in question is part of much broader material produced by the Disability and Accessibility Committees of the Brazilian Anthropology Association (ABA) and the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Social Sciences (ANPOCS). To access the material, see http://anpocs.com/images/stories/Acessibilidade/2020-11_Contracartilha_acessibilidade.pdf. For Gaverio's video, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgvWotKSxw8&feature=youtu.be
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