BADD 2015: Progress

Written for Blogging Against Disablism Day 2015.

Years ago, I participated in BADD 2009 with this post about an offensive blog comment I had received. The commenter had noticed that, participating in a Bucket List style meme that was going around at the time, I'd mentioned that having a child was among the things I would like to do. She felt it her duty to inform me in no uncertain terms that it would be "cruel" of me to inflict my "seriously broken" self on a child and instructed me to "stay on birth control and accept (my) fate" of not being a parent.

It wasn't the first time I'd had to put up with that kind of garbage. In the earlier years of my illness, in an exchange I've never quite managed to get over, my sister had somewhat triumphantly told me that now I was sick I would "just have to give up" on my lifelong hope to one day have a family. When I made a slightly stunned effort to assert that disabled people could still have children and that as long as I secured the right support it would be possible, suggesting an au pair as just one potential option, my mother joined in with the marvellous line "why have kids if someone else is going to raise them?"

After having to deal with attitudes like that from my own family, I wasn't exactly going to be left devastated by a semi-anonymous blog commenter. On the contrary, having the attack coming from someone I didn't know meant that I finally had a chance to reply without worrying about the feelings of the person who'd just insulted me. But I was still a little bit concerned about what sort of response there might be, considering how BADD posts tend to get rather more exposure.

The support from the online disability community took my breath away. People were angry right along with me. Directly and indirectly, via comments and emails, parents shared their stories - not sugar-coated success stories or bitter tragedy ones, but real stories including the hard work AND the joys and achievements involved. The BADD archive, for every year since 2006, offered a category of posts on "parenting issues", both for disabled parents and for parents of a disabled child. Not to mention all the posts in other categories, written by disabled parents but not about parenting!

I felt more encouraged, rather than less. I learned about all sorts of little tricks, suggestions, ideas, and resources (although if anyone can suggest an active non-Facebook replacement for the sadly now defunct Disabled Parents Network, it'd be a help). I was able to access publications written for disabled parents telling me what sort of support I should be able to expect from Social Services, and how to go about accessing it. Sure enough, I spoke to Social Services and got written confirmation that I would be supported in my parenting role. I'm also pleased to say that having this more concrete grasp of what I'm doing appears to have enabled me to put my family's fears and prejudices to rest.

In October 2015 Steve and I are expecting that baby. We are confident. Our baby, our so very wanted baby, will arrive and will be loved and cared for, and part of that is due to the hope and practical help that BADD unlocks.

BADD: Less hostility, please!

Could everyone please stop glaring at the people who support me?

No, seriously, knock it off. The people who support me, which encompasses friends, family, and paid employees, are absolutely invaluable to me. They increase my quality of life more than I could ever describe.

Yet all too often, when we are out in public, they are subjected to tutting, glaring, and occasionally verbal abuse. They're sick of it. So I have to put myself in the way of it. I'm sick of having to do that.

The Battle Of The Blue Badge

We're out and about. We've parked, legally and legitimately, in an accessible parking spot for blue badge holders. My blue badge is correctly displayed.

Half an hour later, we're not going home yet, but one of us needs something we've left in the car - a jacket, an umbrella, a bottle of sun cream. Or maybe we've purchased something that's a bit too bulky to carry around all day that we want to lock in the car while we continue shopping.

Fatigue is a big part of my illness. An extra few hundred metres to the car and back can make a significant difference to me. Especially if to a person using the stairs it's only fifty metres. It should be possible for me to ask my non-disabled companion to nip back to the car while I use the opportunity to sit quietly for a few minutes and gather my spoons. That would be the sensible thing, right?

Instead, I end up going with them so that the visibility of my wheelchair provides a force field to protect them from the hostility of the self-appointed parking police who believe they can assess disability and determine legitimate blue badge use at a single glance.

No companion of mine has ever reported any trouble from an actual parking attendant.

Drive-By Training Sessions

Since I got the power-assisted wheels of awesomeness, I've really developed a taste for independent mobility. I know, these wacky concepts some people are into. The rule, therefore, is: unless I am losing consciousness, or I am oblivious to an imminent danger, or I have specifically requested that you do so, it is never okay to take hold of me or my wheelchair. It's pretty much the same rule that applies to physically grasping anyone to take control of their movement.

I can go up hills. I go more slowly than I do on the flat, but the wheels do the work. Sometimes passers-by ask me if I'd like any help, and - as long as they believe me when I say No Thank You - that's okay.

What's not okay is when they stare pointedly at my companion while saying "someone should be helping her," or worse, "you should be ashamed, letting her struggle like that."

On one occasion it got so bad that the friend who was with me asked for permission to just put their hands on the handles of my chair lest they be fried alive by the laser-beam eyeballs of a particularly indignant stranger. I refused - I will not reinforce the false prejudices of others by pretending to be more helpless than I am - and to my friend's credit, they respected my refusal.

It did impact the mood of the afternoon, though. If we'd been walking at that pace, no one would have batted an eyelid and we'd have been free to enjoy ourselves without intervention.

Dominion Of The Golden Throne

Yeah, you knew this was going to crop up. The accessible loo.

My companion waits outside while I'm doing what one does. The locks and indicators on the doors of accessible loos are notoriously unpredictable, so sometimes I'll ask them to let any other would-be widdlers wanting to go in know that it's occupied.

And this is the one where disabled people themselves are the prime offenders. From the other side of the door I hear them refusing to listen to my companion's explanation, barging past, rattling the handle, and launching into a rant about the facilities being for disabled people only - a statement which also includes a lot of assumptions about the "disability status" of my companion. On a less dramatic and more frequent level, there's the people who position themselves to block my exit from (and my companion's potential entry to) the cubicle. As a rule, they have the good grace to blush and get out of the way when they deduce from my wheelchair that oh, I am disabled, and maybe this person was just waiting for me, and oh gosh, what if I'd opened the door because I needed them to come help me, oops... but that doesn't help. It just makes me thankful that my wheelchair, as well as being a mobility aid, is a symbol. It makes me worry that one day when I'm walking with my stick, which has less symbolic impact, the situation won't be defused as efficiently. It makes me scared for the various people I know with leg or back impairments who can stand and walk quite well unaided but need a fixed handle to safely manage to sit down.

Situations like these make me upset that yet another everyday non-event has been turned into a battleground, and guilty that I have exposed my friend or employee to abuse, and powerless because I feel fairly certain it'll happen again.


Again and again, the barrier that is hardest to knock down is the attitudes of other people, and our own. Even when I have privileges like the blue badge, equipment like the wheels, accessible facilities like the loos, accessible environments with step-free ramped routes, and appropriate human support - the issue of disablist attitudes remains, and impacts negatively on me and on the people around me.

This is the barrier that Blogging Against Disablism seeks to overcome.



If you haven't already, please visit Diary Of A Goldfish to read more posts.

BADD 2014

The ninth annual Blogging Against Disablism day will be on Thursday, 1st May. This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination (known as disablism or ableism). In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we've made.

Due to the overwhelming everythingness of last year, I didn't participate in BADD 2013. However, I loved taking part in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. I'm thrilled that it's happening again in 2014.

BADD is not just for disabled people. If you feel like you have anything to say on the topic, then please go to Diary Of A Goldfish (Blogging Against Disablism Day) to sign up.

That's not a compliment

Written for Blogging Against Disablism Day 2012.



I try to keep my personal and professional identities separate. When people ask me what I do, and they are potential friends rather than potential clients, I tend to grin and rather flippantly tell them that I write blethers for other people's websites. That's not all of what I do, not by a long way, although it's the favourite part of my job – it's interesting, I'm good at it, and I often enjoy it. But let's face facts, the question “what do you do?” rarely means “please describe to me in detail everything you do with your day,” rather it means “tell me something that will fill this conversational gap, and possibly help me to build my mental image of you.” Telling them with a smile that I write blethers for other people's websites is a short, good-humoured and effective way of filling this hole with the image of a woman who spends her day working in an office, at a computer, the image equivalent of a Visa card, acceptable everywhere.

What does that have to do with disablism? Well, it's about where the conversation will go from there.

Often people feel compelled to congratulate me. Good ways of congratulating a person include phrases like “Hey, that's great!”, “it must be so rewarding to have a job you enjoy,” or even “I wish I could do something like that!”

Unfortunately all too frequently I hear something along the lines of “Great! At least you're doing something with your time, not like all those lazy benefit spongers, half of them aren't what I'd call disabled anyway, I mean if you're doing it, why aren't they?” Often this is followed by an anti-welfare rant rounded off with a baseless assertion that “most” disabled people “won't even try,” and a final verbal pat-on-the-head to me for “giving it a go.”

TOP TIP. The way to compliment me is not to disparage the entire minority group to which I belong. Treating my work, where people pay me money for my skills, as nothing more than a time-filler is also insulting. Furthermore, it would be good if you can avoid waving around the negative stereotypes and slurs which have been applied to me and my disabled friends on a regular basis for the last few years, and while we're at it, please don't attack the welfare system which quite literally saved my life by keeping a roof over my head and food on my table for the first couple of years when I got sick.

I'm one of the lucky ones, and I don't want the price of that luck to be ignoramuses trying to use me as a stick to beat down the people who have not been as lucky in similar situations.

It is possible

Today is Blogging Against Disablism Day 2011, hosted once again at Diary Of A Goldfish - and many thanks to her for this.

Last year I was in the early stages of wedding planning, and meeting with barriers, discrimination and disablism every step of the way, so my post, It's Not Bridezilla To Want Access, detailed a few of the difficulties I was running up against.

This year... well, the wedding is this month and I can't really think about much else. So this is a short, wedding-focused post. You'll forgive me for not posting the exact date, time and location online until after the fact.

I am pleased to be able to report that we have, after a great deal of time and effort, managed to find sensible, flexible suppliers for everything we needed and wanted. The registrars have agreed that it's not necessary to ask us or our guests to stand during the ceremony. The venue rep has been awesome about communicating mainly via email as this is easiest for me. We went out of area and found a couple of accessible dress shops who eagerly helped me to try and find the perfect dress. A lovely family business who deal mainly with repairs and alterations to leather motorbike clothing have created me a beautiful pair of ivory wheelchair gloves with padded leather palms, that are both practical and feminine. A terrific Folksy seller has created our flowers, including an extremely custom corsage for me to wear on my wrist for the ceremony, that is also the perfect shape and size to adorn the controls for my wheelchair during the reception.

The triumph is bittersweet. I really do feel that I should have been able to expect businesses to be accessible. I feel that, in 2011, I should be able to make my decisions based on things like cost, quality, and attractiveness of product, rather than on which businesses were willing to have me as a customer.

All that aside though - I'm getting married. I'm disabled, I'm overweight, I have bad skin, small boobs, and terrible posture, I wear glasses, I have extremely low earning potential, and later this month I am marrying a man who was entirely uninterested in the amorous advances of at least two of the non-disabled guests attending. As a couple that faces disablism (because yes, it affects him too) every day of our lives, we have managed to put together what promises to be a wonderful, enjoyable, accessible wedding ceremony and a relaxed, personal reception party. I believe as a society we CAN get past disablism.

BADD 2010 Roundup

As usual, here are my five favourite posts from BADD 2010 so far. Bear in mind that once again the total contributions are well into three figures and I have not managed to read all of them. I may have missed the best post ever.

First up, we have Angelikitten's post about Voluntary Accommodations, exploring the positive difference accommodating attitudes in the workplace can make - and thus highlighting what a barrier negative attitudes become to disabled people who are willing and able to work if they could only rely on such adjustments being made.

Heather at OhWheely posted about those people who don't seem to realise how much more difficult they are making our lives by refusing to do their jobs properly. She also raises the impossibility of fighting every battle and the balancing act of trying to say "this is unacceptable" without sounding like a whinger.

Stephen at Single Lens Reflections brought some much needed comedy relief - and a valid point about two-way assumptions - with his wonderful post Flying the Red Flag of Understanding.

More Than A Mascot is a post from Bethany about the importance of proper, meaningful inclusion rather than sidelining and patronisation of disabled kids in mainstream schools.

And finally, Assiya at For A Fairer Today wrote Submissiveness, a post about having to be cautious because help and acceptance can be very conditional. This one really twanged for me - I am constantly conscious of not wanting to challenge or 'bother' doctors, social workers, etc, for fear that they will withdraw what assistance they do give.

Till next year...

It's not Bridezilla to want access

Written for Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010.

Regular readers will know that my life at present divides into two main areas:

1. Planning my forthcoming wedding.



2. Running and developing my business.

While working on these projects, I have again and again encountered two important truisms:

1. "Wedding" translates roughly as "add another zero" - there's a lot of money involved.



2. Business is about persuading other people to give you money.

Everyone happy with these starting principles? Then let's move along to the disability angle.

I am a part-time wheelchair user. At my wedding, I will be walking down the aisle (I'm hoping to get one of these gorgeous walking sticks for that bit), but I will be using a wheelchair right up to the ceremony room door and for most of the reception. There's just no other way that I will last the whole day and yet still be able to participate.

This adds a whole range of access requirements. At other people's weddings, I'm prepared to shuffle in side entrances, withdraw to the car for a nap, sit on the floor or crawl up steps if necessary. On occasion I've attended for just the ceremony or just the reception depending on the preference of the happy couple. But damned if I'll be doing that at my own wedding. It's not Bridezilla-ish to put the needs, wishes and comfort of the bride and groom directly at the top of the priority tree.

And I swear, it's like watching a bathtub emptying as the possibilities dwindle to almost nothing on the simple query "can I get in?"

Venue is the obvious one. As a small business owner, I have been repeatedly made aware that I have a duty to consider how disabled people might access my products or services, and what adjustments I might put in place to improve access, even if it is not reasonable for me to make those adjustments at this stage. Make it as easy as possible for as many people as possible to give you as much money as possible.

Some places are honest enough to simply declare on their websites that "owing to the historic nature of the property" they'd like wheelchair users to just f--k off. They don't phrase it quite like that but it's the message loud and clear - they're not allowed to say "No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish" any more but the cripples can Keep Out. Worse than that, though, are the ones who haven't given it any thought at all. And worse still was the hotel who claimed they had great access throughout, invited me to visit, and then we found out that the ceremony and reception rooms had decent access but there was no access to any of the other facilities included in their wedding package, such as the Bridal Suite or any other 'deluxe' room, the swimming pool and spa, the gardens, the bar, the restaurant...

I could go on for days about the barriers I've encountered, but suffice to say that based on physical access alone, from the 50 or so local venues in a range of styles and prices that a non-disabled bride could choose from, my pool of choice was down to about 10 (call it 8 because I am NOT getting married at a Holiday Inn) and it took a couple of hours of emails and phone calls plus several of my precious Social Care hours to find out that much.

I should not have to work so hard to try and spend a Wedding amount of money.

Wedding dresses are the same story. I need to be able to stand up and sit down in my dress (or possibly trousers, might be easier, not sure, but we'll stick with saying "dress" for now) and still look bridal. So the chair is definitely going to have to come in with me for dress shopping and fittings.

Another half hour or so on the phone reveals that there are NO wheelchair-accessible bridal shops in Leamington.

There's ONE in Warwick, the next town along. Possibly two - the person I spoke to told me something something side entrance should be wide enough because they're sure they've had "wheelchair people" in the shop before. The others were basically trying to persuade me that I should be prepared to crawl up and down the stairs (remember these people knew nothing about why or how I use a wheelchair) and that maybe I could get a friend to carry the wheelchair up the stairs for me.

I wonder, do they propose that non-disabled brides should attempt to do an assault course with a bridesmaid on hand to do weightlifting, just for the privilege of handing over a Wedding amount of money?

One even told me "well you have to make the effort." Excuse me, no, I don't. I am the customer. You are the business. You have to make the effort to get my money by making it as pleasant and easy as possible for me to hand it over. Not by treating me as an inconvenience and expecting me to work for it.

Business owners have a duty to consider how disabled people might access their products and services, and what adjustments might improve access. Failing to do that, particularly in the wedding industry, means failing to understand those two simple starting points - that "wedding" means "add another zero" and that business is about persuading other people to give you money.

I am enjoying the wedding planning; I have found a venue that meets our needs and I'm sure I'll find a dress as well, one way or another. But I certainly don't feel that my experiences are matching those of a non-disabled bride.

Blogging Against Disablism Day will be on 1st May, 2010

Once again, the esteemed Diary Of A Goldfish is hosting the blogosphere's annual Blogging Against Disablism event. As usual, this is not a carnival of previously posted material or a "best of" selection - it's a co-ordinated effort of many people all posting fresh material on the theme of disablism.

Full information is available at the Blogging Against Disablism Day signup page along with links to archives from previous years.

Remember, you don't have to be disabled to join in. Disability is not an isolated experience and it's not something that anyone is immune from. I know I link to this every year, but I'm going to do it again - Lady Bracknell's One in Seven post spells out just how relevant, and how unacceptable, disability discrimination is to all of us.

You don't need to write an essay. You don't need to write at all. You can post video, audio, artwork, any format you like. This is about making our voices heard.

You also don't need to be filled with righteous anger or have your protesting hat on. There's room in BADD for everything and that includes some nice positive examples of the change that is slowly but surely happening. And you don't need to worry about getting all the words right - as usual, we have a Language Amnesty to account for cultural differences and to allow those who aren't politically involved to post without fear of being attacked for failing to use the most 'current' terminology.

Hope to see you there!

BADD 2009 Roundup

Phew. As Blogging Against Disablism Day gets bigger, it gets harder to keep on top of it. There have been some 200 entries this year, all of which can be found here. I've read about 120 of them since yesterday morning and now I can take no more. I will make the effort to read the others over the next week or so, but the intensive effort has to stop now.

For those of you who, for some strange reason, don't want to turn your eyeballs inside out and spend your entire Bank Holiday Weekend reading 200 posts about disablism, I decided to do like I did last year and post a rather more easily-digestible handful of my favourite BADD posts.

Remember, I haven't read all the posts yet and this is my top five percent of the posts that I have read, so if yours isn't in there, please don't take it as any kind of slight... oh, and it doesn't include posts from the half-dozen or so BADD bloggers who I consider "friends" because I felt that might be somewhat biased.

Laura at Gin & Comment: "Mainstream" schooling and disablism. A peripatetic English teacher in Japan writes about the different ways schoolchildren respond to disability when different approaches to integrated schooling are applied.

Lauredhel at Hoyden About Town: Can I have a seat? Discusses practical access issues in and around shops and services, and the issues involved in trying to explain access needs that go beyond having a ramp somewhere.

Dora Raymaker at Autism - Change.org: Just Because I'm Quiet Doesn't Mean I Don't Understand. Required reading for those who assume that just because a person can't communicate verbally (or at all) and/or "looks disabled", it therefore means they can't understand what you are saying about them.

RachelCreative: When My Disability Is Invisible raises the problem of assumptions in the other direction - people assuming that you can do what they are demanding of you and that your requests for help or adjustments are merely contrariness that can be safely ignored. This post is accompanied by some of Rachel's own wonderful disability artwork.

Sanabitur Anima Mea: Mild and Severe disability. About dependence, interdependence, and 'degrees' of disability. As the writer says: "I don’t believe there’s anyone out there who has the special magical amount of severity which is enough to get your needs taken seriously but not so much you get considered worthless."

Astrid at Astrid's Journal: BADD Behavior: Disablism in Psychiatry. Raising the point that some behaviours considered undesirable by mental health professionals may not be a symptom of the patient's condition, but might be a sane and understandable response to the (wilful or incidental) dehumanising treatment imposed on patients by those professionals for their own convenience.

Tony at Cynical Chatter From The Underworld: Fear and Loathing in the UK. Cynical indeed, a dark post about the negative portrayal and poor treatment of disabled people in our society, and the lack of meaningful protections against the consequences of this.


Enjoy. I'm going to go remind myself what natural light is all about.

Well-meaning Insults

For Blogging Against Disablism Day 2009.



On April 13th, I posted to alert my readers to the annual Blogging Against Disablism Day event. I was umm-ing and aah-ing over what particular topic I should write about - and then, like a gift from the gods, came this comment:

hi mary--
have been reading your blog for a bit, & this is sort of a response to your wanting to have a kid with steve.

it makes me sad to read your struggles, but i would beg you to leave that idea (or even adoption or fostering behind.)

how on earth could you take care of a child when you spend most of your time seriously broken? you seem like a lovely person & to put a child in that position would be cruel no matter how much you craved being a mommy.

please be careful, stay on birth control & accept that your fate is to not be able to go down a maternal road.

best to you. sandy

My first thought was to write a blogpost (or fifty) explaining exactly how Steve and I intend to deal with some of the challenges posed by parenthood, the potential solutions we've discussed about logistics, equipment, safety, human support and so on. But why? This isn't a parenting blog, and until such time as Steve and I decide to take active steps to make a family, there's no good reason for it to become one. Justifying my life choices to internet strangers seems like a poor way to spend my time and energy.

That's when I started to become angry. Of all the topics covered on my blog, from knitting to job interviews, from Social Services to fun days out, how is it that a stranger feels the need to "respond" solely to the idea of Steve and I having a family together - an issue last mentioned several months previously and in the context of a 99 things blog meme?

Simple answer: Disablism.

This wasn't a personal attack on me, or even a well-meant but blundering remark on my life as an individual. It had very little to do with Mary, Batsgirl, aged 27 and living with a boyfriend and a robot vacuum cleaner.

Sandy wasn't thinking about my personal capabilities, or my personal circumstances, or my personal motivations - how could she? I'm hardly the world's most regular blogger and only a fraction of my life is displayed on here. She was writing about a stereotype of a disabled person, or as she put it, someone "seriously broken". When that stereotype was challenged by my offhand mention of a one-day ambition to have a family, she was so shocked by it that she felt the need to "beg" me not to do it.

Sandy was assuming that, as a couple which includes a disabled person, Steve and I would be unable to raise a child.

Sandy was assuming that Steve and I would be unable to consider our own circumstances and resources and make a sensible decision for ourselves, and that it was therefore perfectly okay for her to tell us what we should and should not do with our lives.

Sandy asked "how on earth could you take care of a child?" as a rhetorical question - she wasn't interested in waiting for (let alone listening to) any response before moving straight on to dictating my "fate" because she had already made up her mind that a disabled person such as myself cannot take care of a child.

Sandy cannot open her mind enough to consider that a child who has a disabled parent could be happy, comfortable, loved and well looked after. She considers disabled parents to be "cruel" for inflicting their horrible crippled selves on an innocent kiddie. I suspect she's thinking of the telethon image of a melancholy 'young carer' gazing soulfully out of the window and begging for their childhood back. This article by Lucy Scholl offers a different perspective, as does this one by Laurence Clark.

Sandy was writing about her own prejudices, her own unsubstantiated views, and her own baseless assumptions. Sandy was writing about her fears, her closed-mindedness, and her negative mental picture of disabled people - and then superimposing all that onto me to pre-emptively accuse me of child abuse.

That's disablism.

What's encouraging, though, is that the tide is turning. After responding to Sandy's horrendous comment, I tweeted about how gobsmacked I was, and within minutes support was arriving in the form of blog comments, tweets, emails and suchlike, much of it from friends who aren't politically- or disability-minded. More and more 'ordinary people' are becoming more and more accepting of the idea that a disabled person is every bit as much a person as one who is not yet disabled. As a civilisation we have a lot of that journey still ahead of us, but I take heart from the knowledge that significant steps have been and will continue to be made.

Blogging Against Disablism Day will be on 1st May, 2009

Once again, the excellent Goldfish is hosting Blogging Against Disablism Day on May 1st 2009.

This will be the fourth year running for BADD (see archives of 2006, 2007, and 2008) and the second year I am participating. Well, I say second. My 2008 post is here. Technically I was around for 2007 but I wasn't in a fit state to write anything, and that could happen again, we'll see (currently I am drafting posts and then deciding they're rubbish, it'll be a minor miracle if I even publish this BADD reminder). Of course if anybody wanted to suggest a particular topic or news story for me to pull to bits, get me started, that might help. But better yet would be writing your own post and joining in - you don't have to be disabled and it's fun to be a part of the whole shebang.

I know, I know

I already did my BADD roundup. But that was before I had read this. Go. Read. Now. Wet yourself giggling. Come back later.

Myself, I am spinning a few too many plates in my head at the moment, lots of Stuff and Thing that is other people's business and thus not so bloggable. I'm sure you know how it is. I will apply myself to making a proper blogpost soon but right now it's not a priority. If anyone wants to suggest topics, that'd be nice.

BADD Blogs Of Note

Following on from Blogging Against Disablism Day 2008, I thought I'd post a list of links to the posts I thought were particularly good, for all those people who for some unfathomable reason might not wish to dedicate several hours to reading each and every one of the huge number of posts submitted to the event. I've read about 70 so far, and despite already having an interest in the event and the issues surrounding it, I'm reaching saturation point.

Having realised, about ten posts in, that I was considering most if not all the posts to be really quite good and making really quite important points - even if I didn't entirely agree with everything being said - I got snippety and have ruthlessly cut this list down to my absolute favourites.

Starting off gently, Rudy at Coping With Disability makes a good, and often overlooked, point in this succinct post about the importance of communication.

Ruth at WheelieCatholic writes interestingly about enabling the ableists.

David at Growing Up With A Disability has written a very engaging post about mistaken identity.

Jeanie at Midlife and Treachery has done a darkly humourous post about the bad habits of ableists.

Cherylberyl at Disaboom has posted her well-researched paper explaining about the Tiny Tim and Supercrips views of disabled people.

And finally (for now), in No Quarter Asked Or Given, Jade Lennox explains how even people who think about how to provide accessibility don't always understand how it is applicable to their world...


I'd also like to quickly say, thank you to everyone who has commented or linked to this blog. I appreciate each and every one. Unfortunately the much-requested t-shirts are currently beyond my competence, but anyone who has iron-on transfers should feel free to go ahead.

Different but Equal

Written for Blogging Against Disablism Day 2008.



Equal does not mean identical for the same reason that different does not mean inferior, or, for that matter, superior.

Equality, therefore, does not mean giving everyone exactly the same thing, or desperately trying to force one size to fit all. It means giving everyone the same standards (of service, of access, of respect, of quality of life) while recognising the different methods needed to achieve those standards.

Public transport is a good example of this - it's not the only example, but it's one which allows me to make my point. You may have recently read in the news about how all elderly and disabled people in the UK are to get free bus passes. Along with quite a few other disabled people I have spoken to, I'm quite bemused about this.

For starters, there's a load of ifs and buts - little things like No Being Crippled In Public Before 9:30am (they phrase it differently but that's the precis), which is little short of ridiculous to anyone who's ever been told to attend an 8.30am appointment at a hospital twenty miles away.

More importantly though, the bus system is inaccessible to many people. Some, like myself, are completely out - I can't walk or self-propel a wheelchair as far as the nearest bus stop, and although on my better days I could ride my mobility scooter to the bus stop, I wouldn't then be able to put it onto the bus. Others, who can get to the bus stop, then find that there's no space - or more accurately, that there is ONE space that disabled people and parents with prams can fight over amongst themselves. Quite rightly, the bus drivers won't simply have wheelies "squeezing on" because it's dangerous to everyone concerned, so the losers (be they parents, babies, toddlers, children or disabled people of any age), just have to wait at the bus stop, regardless of cold, rain, appointments, feeding or medication schedules, and hope that the single precious space on the next bus will be available.

Or the next one.

Or the next one.

Even once you've got a seat, the problems don't end. For instance, many of the more modern buses have a scrolling display telling you what route you are on and which is the next stop. Very handy. Then someone realised that blind and visually impaired people couldn't read that, so they had the bright idea of an audio announcement for each stop. This, in turn, is causing problems for people who, for various reasons, have difficulty processing an overload of information - it's even stressing out plenty of neurotypical people on routes that have frequent stops.

Bus passes are issued by the local council, and different local councils deal with the issues differently. Where I live, the approach is that if you are eligible for a bus pass, but cannot use the buses, then instead of a bus pass, you get 'tokens' for local community transport. You get twenty trips per year at the special price of 65p per mile. Assuming that every time you go somewhere, you need to get back again, that's TEN local outings per year. As long as it's Monday-Friday, between 9am and 9pm, you book two days or more in advance, and subject to availability of course... oh, and you can't have a bus pass AND tokens, so no getting transport at 65p/mile to the bus stop and freebie-ing from there.

This does not really compare well to Christine and Manju, who are taking a 700-mile tour round the UK for free using their bus-passes. Don't get me wrong, I hope they have a wonderful journey and I think it's great that they're exercising the freedom to travel and explore without worrying about the cost of transport. I just think there's a bit of an illusion that ALL elderly and disabled people could do this if only we were a bit more determined, a bit more spirited. It's simply not the case.

I can't help feeling we'd be a step closer to equality if none of us got free transport, but by the same token, none of us found transport around the local area so expensive that we have to stay at home. Equality isn't one person on a free jaunt around the country while another can't even go to the shops once a week. Equality would be all of us having reasonable and regular access to basic amenities.

Detangling

Another bit of benefit tangle is a step closer to being untangled.

Long-time readers will recall how, back in November last year, I got a job. A month later, I found that despite having formally and officially told everyone and their dog, as soon as I found out, that I was starting paid employment, I was still being paid Incapacity Benefit. Eventually I got them to stop it, but no one could tell me what would happen to the erroneously-paid money sitting in my bank account.

Well, today - several months on - I finally got a letter about it. The letter stops short of actually accusing me of wilful fraud, but I was less than amused by the weasel phrase "too much Incapacity Benefit has been paid. This is because of your work."

No. My entitlement to Incapacity Benefit stopped because of my work. The issue of too much Incapacity Benefit being paid was because of the failure of the DWP to act on the information about my change in circumstances, which I had gone to all reasonable lengths to convey to several of their departments, both over the phone and in writing.

I am reminded that I must pay it back because it is THE LAW. Gosh.

I'm perfectly happy to pay it back, as it's not money that I was entitled to receive in the first place. But would it kill them to apologise for their mistake? Or for taking four months after I spotted and told them about their mistake to decide what to do about it?

Anyway, I have to phone up and arrange to set up a method of repayment. Annoyingly, I can't do this today as their phone number is Monday-Friday only, which I wouldn't mind, except for some reason DWP postal communications via Business Post UK Mail only ever arrive on a Saturday when the helplines are all shut. I am sure this isn't just to spoil people's weekend with news of a stressful issue they can't take action or advice about for 48 hours, but I have to admit, I do wonder why.


And Now For Something Completely Different...

...a quick reminder about Blogging Against Disablism Day 2008.

Blogging Against Disablism Day

Today is Blogging Against Disablism Day. I wanted to write something for it, unfortunately I just haven't been able to. Even when my mind's been clear, I've been seriously lacking in ideas.

But, if you go and have a look, there are posts coming in about all sorts of disability issues.

I also really, really recommend that if you only click one link today it is this one, a post from last year by Lady Bracknell's Editor. It's not very long but explains something very important.