Accessible Costumes 2025

 This year I have noticed many differences in how the geek and accessibility world have been impacted by our current political climate. One of the forms that this is taking during the Halloween shopping season is that in stores I have found no accessible costumes or things that could be easily adapted to fit accessibility needs. Even last year Target had a few things, but with their pull back on DEI/JEDI it looks like they even pulled back on support the needs of the communities that they are supposed to be serving. It feels like we have traveled back in time where people have to make their own stuff again because retailers don't acknowledge their existence.  

It looks like this year if you do need to buy things the internet is the only option you have. This kind of shopping is not always the best you can't try on things to back sure that they work for you. Also shopping online can be really bad when trying to get anything of quality. You could end up paying big bucks for thin fabric and weak seams. Most of the costumes I also saw online this year were the same offerings from past years.

One of the few new costumes that I could find for this season. Wicked is currently popular, but finding the costume to work for this set up may be difficult. For wheelchairs you need dress bottoms that won't get stuck in the wheels or drag on the ground. Picture from: https://www.target.com/p/kids-adaptive-wicked-elphaba-wheelchair-cover-costume-accessory/-/A-1005524209#lnk=sametab

List of websites to check out:

https://www.halloweencostumes.com/adaptive-costumes.html
https://www.target.com/c/adaptive-halloween-costumes/-/N-66yhm
https://www.walkinrollin.org/
https://www.halloweenexpress.com/costumes/adaptive-a1-560518+3435-1.fltr

https://www.rollingbuddies.com/collections/halloween-costumes

https://www.amazon.com/adaptive-halloween-costume-kids/s?k=adaptive+halloween+costume+kids

Additional Reading/Resources:

"MDA Ambassador Guest Blog: Helpful Tips for Accessible Halloween Costumes" https://mdaquest.org/mda-ambassador-guest-blog-helpful-tips-for-accessible-halloween-costumes/

https://www.pinterest.com/opfsn/wheelchair-halloween-costumes/

VA Targeting Employees with Accommodations and People They Don't Like

 

Now that the unions' contracts have been terminated the VA has declared open season on attacking employees. Their latest weapon of choice is the "fit-to-work" process. This process allows them to terminate anyone they see as medically unfit to work even if these employees have formal RA (reasonable accommodations in place) or FMLA paperwork. Workers are scheduled without their knowing for a medical exam on super short notice with a VA doctor/representatives for an exam to see if they are physically or mentally fit to do their job. They are told that they can have on outside doctor do the exam, but they are not given enough time to arrange outside testing and if they go outside of the VA they have to do it at their personal cost. Forcing the VA doctor/representative allows the VA to use bias to get rid of whoever they want to.

Example: I have already told you in previous articles about some of the training issues with the VA not providing good training to employees on changes to their jobs. Also, the managers tell employees to ask questions and that it is a safe space to do so, when in truth they are building 'evidence' to get rid of employees. One employee who asked 'too many' questions was submitted to this process for being mentally unfit to do their job. The complaint against the employee was that they asked too many questions and that they were having issues to log into one of the computer systems (because we all know that technology works perfectly all of the time....). This is even with proof that others were experiencing similar issues/questions and even other supervisors had issues trying to get the computer system to work like it should. As soon as the employee requested to be transferred to a different position/department the exam was canceled. This clearly shows that the department was using this process to get rid of the employee and was satisfied with the outcome. This employee has filed formal discrimination and harassment charges against this department/leadership not only for their actions around the exam but also for microaggressions both before the surprise exam and after. The department is also dragging their feet in transferring the employee even though other employees have been quickly transferred in the past. This allows them to continue to mentally abuse this employee.

The VA knew that they would be going after employees and that is why they got rid of the unions. But the joke is on them. With the unions in place cases like this could have gone through an internal process to get resolved. Now the VA is open to lawsuits and external coverage like this.

If you have a VA story you want to share either as an employee or a veteran who have been mistreated by the VA do not be afraid to tell your story out loud. I would be more than happy to help you get your story out there to be heard. Just reach out to me. The VA need to be held accountable for the abuses they have done and silence will achieve nothing.

#AFGE #union #abuse #veteransadministration #VA

VA Leaders Lie To Employees and Find Another Way to Hurt Veterans

Now that the union is gone the VA leadership team in Colorado just dropped a pile of sh*t on MSAs. The MSAs had ben repeatedly by both HR and the Director that the mandatory overtime would end in October. Yesterday in a meeting the staff were told that even though they were going to be hiring new employees that the mandatory overtime is now permanent. These workers did not sign up for this and the VA leaders are ignoring all of the medical research out there about the negative effects that over time has on workers. For leaders in a health organization they have no understanding of basic health concepts and should be fired for this lack of knowledge let alone their bad business decisions.

This isn't all that happened in the meeting. The leaders in the VA are also wasting money on new software. Here's the kicker, they are not giving any formal training to employees on how to use the technology. They said a email will be sent out, but an email does not replace active learning/teaching. This means that employees are just going to have to wing it with the new technology. Not only does this not support employees in doing their duties, but this lack of formal training is going to negatively impact the veterans. Without training the employees are going to be slower then they would have been with training or if they would have been allowed to just keep the systems they already know how to use. Time issues have long been plaguing the VA with veterans having to suffer in the slow downs. I personal know about how slowly the VA is with experience from what my family members have dealt with. New technology that employees are not trained on will also lead to mistakes. Mistakes in the medical field can cost lives, but the current leaders do not care about this.

Some more info on lack of training:

Jones, M. (2023, August 16). The consequences of a lack of training in the workplace. Connecteam. https://connecteam.com/e-lack-of-training/#:~:text=The%20consequences%20of%20a%20lack%20of%20training%20include%20high%20employee,engaging%2C%20accessible%2C%20and%20impactful.

   -The first paragraph alone shows the issues with no proper training.

NASA. (n.d.). Evidence report: Risk of performance errors due to training deficiencies - NASA technical reports server (NTRS). NASA. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20160003868

    -Even though this article focuses on trainings more related to working at NASA, its comments about general training still hold true.

Pearson, C. (2024, June 14). What if your employees can’t use Tech?: The hidden costs of neglecting training and change management. Your IT Department. https://www.your-itdepartment.co.uk/employees-cant-use-tech/

   -This website shows how issues about rolling out new technology without employee training are well known.

Weinstein, M. (2021, September 27). Should you force technology change on employees?. Training. https://trainingmag.com/should-you-force-technology-change-on-employees/

   -I like that this article focused on the "if it's not broke, don't fix it." If it is broke you should work with the subject matter experts (the workers) about what needs to be changed to fix things. Time and again in my career in education I say leaders become victims of tech companies selling them on the idea that their technology will solve all of their current problems and have bells and whistles that will distract leaders from issues with the new technology. An example of this is when the Colorado Community College System decided to waste millions on the new technology Navigate when the Banner/DegreeWorks systems they already had could have done much of the same things if they were just willing to turn on certain features. Leaders are taken in to just by new and roll out new technology without getting feed back from the workers that will be dealing with the technology. These leaders are also mostly cut off from the actual work and do not understand what the real issues are that cause problems. Now with the VA not doing the employee survey they will be even more cut off. This creates blind leaders that waste money and make bad decisions.

Kennedy, E. (2025, January 9). How the Lack of Training Affects Your Organization. The Training Associates. https://thetrainingassociates.com/lack-training-affects-organization/#:~:text=Training%20is%20essential%20for%20upskilling,minimizing%20legal%20and%20financial%20risks. 

VA Leaders Can't Math and Don't Care About What Workers Think

The VA Leaders are at it again, and by it, I mean showing that they can't even function as adults let alone as Health professionals. The latest is that they can't even do basic math. They decided to go back on the changes they were making to the mandatory overtime due to push back from employees and employees turning in medical letters and sharing the current research on the negative impact that mandatory overtime can have if required hours overlap with the natural sleep cycle. For more on this check our previous VA article. Now though employees need to sign up for 1.5 hour shifts in order to meet the required 4 hours of overtime....yes, think about that sentence...

1.5 + 1.5= 3 hours ...3 +1.5= 4.5.... 4.5 and 4 are different numbers. This means that the new policy of 1.5 hour shifts actually forces employees to do more then the required mandatory overtime. So these leaders in the VA need to be fired because they can't even do simple grade school math. These are the people making decisions that negatively impact both workers and veterans, because they do not even have basic skills needed to function in life let alone in the workforce.

Lets look at more math that they just don't get. The current administration in Washington don't want money wasted, but because the VA leadership doesn't understand math, they are mismanaging the money they have been given. Right now with the mandatory over time they are wasting money instead of just hiring more employees. Don't take my word for it, let's look at the math.

Let's say an employee makes $30 and hour and they work a normal 40 hour work week (this calculation will be before taxes and other things like health insurance).

30 x 40 = $1200 

Over time is time and a half for the additional hours. This means that 4 hours of overtime is an additional $180 (30 x 4 x 1.5). 

If it takes 10 employees doing over time to get to the 40 hours to equal a new employee, this means that the overtime to pay current workers would equal $1800 per week or $600 extra paid out that would not have to be paid out ($180 x 10). That extra $600 per week would more than make up for what companies pay out in benefits for an employee per month (this would be $2400 per month which is more then needed for benefits at most companies).

This shows that hiring 1 new employee for every 10 workers doing overtime would not only balance out the work (helping the other employees with work life balance and mental health), but save money. The kicker here is also new employees could be brought in for less money because they are new. For example the minimum wage in Aurora, Colorado right now is $17. This would mean that the VA could save up to $13 per regular hour by hiring a new employee instead of forcing employees to do overtime. This just shows how little the VA leadership understands math.

(Checking on the usajobs.gov website it looks like the position of MSA makes around $17.51 per hour to start out with, $36,435 per year. This confirms that new employees make less and could save the VA from having to pay out overtime).

Another thing that came out today is that the VA is canceling their employee survey for this year. I wonder why....they know that workers are upset about all of the stuff they are pulling and they don't want any formal record of employee complaints. It is them trying to hide the abuse that workers are experiencing. The VA is doing everything it can to silence workers. The VA claims that they are not doing the survey to save employee time and money, but in reality they know that it will so that the VA is failing and that it is a toxic place to work.

A Quick & Easy Guide to Sex & Disability

 

A Quick & Easy Guide to Sex & Disability by A. Andrews

Sex is a complicated topic to talk about for able bodied people let alone adding in things like disabilities that may be hard for people to talk about as well. This book does an amazing job of trying to start that conversation. Mental health, sexual health, and physical health are topics that overlap and many times people may know how to address one of these topics, but not how they overlap. The book is filled with ideas that can help not only with the conservations around sex & disability, but also goes into some of the physical aspects and the different things that can impact intimacy. I would highly recommend this book to both those with disabilities and abled bodied people as well. This book is important for able bodied people because it will help them understand both their family members and partners in relation to how their lives are impacted by these topics and trying to find loving relationships. 4 stars out of 5 or a A-. The only reason why it didn't get the 5th star was because I wish the book was longer with more detail.

VA Once Again Finding Ways to Hurt Its Employees

So, not only is the VA continuing to enforce mandatory overtime that hurts employees, but now they are taking away what little flexibility there was for workers. Before workers were able to do the overtime either before or after their normal shift. This would allow them to try and pick times that would be the least invasive even though this mandatory overtime is massively invasive in the first place. Now employees, starting August 18, can only do the overtime between between 6am and 8am. The work must be completed in 2 hour increments instead of being spread out throughout the week. This means that employees that have sleep issues will have their internal clocks messed with. Sleep is very important and changes to it can have huge impacts on a person's health, let alone if they already have issues with their health. This is very basic information that people that work in health organizations should have knowledge or they shouldn't be working in the health field. All these rules are just structured abuse by an employer. 

It gets even better though. The union was in the meeting and they didn't speak up to support the workers. For those of you that don't know the VA union is AFGE. They have a history of not supporting workers which I have reported on in past posts. The will not picket even though they have pictures of picketing on their website and they won't even speak up in meetings like the one where these changes were presented. Yet they are willing to take money out of the accounts of employees to pay their own salaries while they do not actively fight for the people that they claim to fight for.

With this post I am formally calling requesting that all Colorado AFGE current leaders to step down from their positions for failure to do their jobs. This includes Bernard L. Humbles who has been aware of all of the abuse that workers have been going through and has not gone to the media or called for picketing of VA sites even though he could do this. Even if the workers themselves can not strike according to the union, their families would be more then happy to show up to a picket line in support of their loved ones. It is time that AFGE gets workers that have some backbone and will not only take a pay check, but will stand up for the workers. 

Recommended Readings

-Wong, K., Chan, A. H. S., & Ngan, S. C. (2019, June 13). The effect of long working hours and overtime on Occupational Health: A meta-analysis of evidence from 1998 to 2018. International journal of environmental research and public health. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6617405/

"The result demonstrated that employees working long hours were vulnerable to suffering from diverse types of occupational health problem."

-U.S. National Library of Medicine. (2021, June 25). Long working hours and health. The Lancet regional health. Western Pacific. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8315652/

This article is good because it acknowledges that a persons' previous/current health conditions can impact the impacts that overtime can have on them. What does this mean? It means that if a person already has health conditions that working overtime can make those conditions worse and make the impacts that even a healthy person would experience be worse for the person with preexisting conditions. This article is also interesting in how since the 8 hour work day was established, that companies have been pushing and finding loop holes to get workers to work longer hours. These tactics by companies actually pushes/breaks laws that were put into place to protect workers from abuse. This once again reinforces how companies like the VA are willing to hurt their employees in any way that they can try and get away with.

-Harknett, K., & Schneider, D. (2020, February 12). Precarious work schedules and Population Health . Health Affairs Brief. Health Affairs. Accessed July 30, 2025. https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hpb20200206.806111/ 

          Even though this article focuses on hourly and service workers its points around 'erosion of job quality' where employers will make negative changes after people start working for them. Employees agree to work for companies with certain expectations in place and when companies do things like the VA is doing it breaks this agreement and could be seen as possible contract (verbal or written) breakage. Companies that do this need to be held accountable for doing these types of underhanded things. It is said that there is a term for this because of companies doing it. It is even sadder that in order to hold these companies accountable that the only thing that works today is taking these issues public to embarrass them. Our culture has moved away from one of accountability. 

If the VA leadership wanted to even take the smallest time to educate themselves on these topics a basic Google search would bring up for them:

and more. I could only catch so much in my picture. Picture From: https://www.google.com/search?q=Mandatory+overtime+impacts+on+health&sca_esv=d0444d30016ff5d8&sxsrf=AE3TifOkQX_Vjn1JjlL-VhVVr-2AjkENOQ%3A1753917910917&ei=1qmKaOTTN5HGkPIP6ry56Ag&ved=0ahUKEwjklq6w3eWOAxURI0QIHWpeDo0Q4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=Mandatory+overtime+impacts+on+health&gs_lp=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-TrAbIHBjQuMjcuNbgHpirCBwkwLjE0LjIwLjLIB5cB&sclient=gws-wiz-serp

Even though this is a very basic search it would hold more information then the current VA leadership seems to know. They then could do more research and read all of the research studies, but they don't want to take the time only to find out that what they are doing is wrong and hurtful. We need actually educated people to be leading and not wannabes.  

-De Raeve, Lore, Nicole WH Jansen, and IJmert Kant. “Health Effects of Transitions in Work Schedule, Workhours and Overtime in a Prospective Cohort Study.” Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health 33, no. 2 (2007): 105–13. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40967632.

This article is good because it points out how overtime impacts different genders. Women have more general and psychological distress then men (P 6). "Moreover, it is important to pay substantial attention to employees' expressed requests for changing their worktime arrangements, as they can be an antecedent of a future change in health, as well as an effect of already changed health" (P 8).

-Baek, S.-U., Won, J.-U., & Yoon, J.-H. (2025). Gender differences in the association between long work hours, weekend work, and insomnia symptoms in a nationally representative sample of workers in Korea. Sleep Health: Journal of the National Sleep Foundation, 11(2), 191–197. https://doi-org.ccco.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2024.11.002

"Previous studies have consistently shown that long work hours and weekend work are associated with short sleep duration" (introduction section). Also points out that it is known that long hours can cause depression. One of the key findings "showed that long work hours and weekend work were significantly associated with insomnia symptoms in workers" ( In Discussion Section). The article also acknowledges 'work-life conflicts'. Another key point of this article is giving workers control of their overtime so that they can do it in ways that would impact them the least. This would confirm that the limited way that the VA wants workers to do overtime is too restrictive and will actively hurt people since what little control workers used to have over the mandatory overtime has been stripped away.

-Pisljar, T., van der Lippe, T., & den Dulk, L. (2011). Health among hospital employees in Europe: A cross-national study of the impact of work stress and work control. Social Science & Medicine, 72(6), 899–906. https://doi-org.ccco.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.12.017

This study looks specifically at healthcare workers an points out that overtime leads to poor health in workers and that this study's finding reenforces findings in other studies. This is not new information and is well known. What was interesting about this article is that it also thinks about the impact that other factors like culture and politics can have. This is super important in the US right now considering all of the craziness coming out of the White House and how leaders can be using those positions to make work life worse for employees instead of focusing on doing the right things for employees and the people they serve.

Conquering Negative Body Image

Conquering Negative Body Image By Viola Jones and Edward Willett

This book was designed to help teens with topics around body image. I actually decided to read this book right after my abnormal psychology class to see how good it was. For teen and preteen readers I felt like it still did not go into the topic deep enough. It felt more like an elementary book. It also mostly focused on trying to get kids to talk to an adult and the role peer pressure can play. I think it would have been much better if it would have made negative body image something that anyone could have issues with and not just teens. I see this book making teens think that it is something that they could just grow out of instead of being a lifelong issue and that it's the larger society that is putting pressure on us and not just peers. I know my college level research showed that sometimes parents can actually be a massive driving force behind a lot of mental health issues including concepts around body image and this book should have went more into that as well. I think the book just needed expanded a lot more to actually be meaningful for its target audience. 2 stars out of 5 or a D+.

Picture from: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27113569-conquering-negative-body-image