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I can’t believe I’m asking this question again. Who the hell are the disabled?
In light of recent announcements by the Government, and darker responses from some non-disabled people, it plainly needs answering once more.
When it comes to our threatened benefits and faltering freedoms – even our right to exist – how do we respond to this increasingly bleak narrative that asks questions such as ‘it’s nothing to do with me, why should I pay for them?’ and ‘why should I be bothered about these others?’
Others.
There are more than 16 million disabled people – 24% of the population. One in four. That’s a considerable amount of others. A family unit. A group of close friends. Immediate work colleagues.
Considering we are a huge minority group, how is it that we attract such negative perceptions, right up to the cruel ‘blame-game’ rhetoric of this Government?
Why is it that we continue to be othered, oppressed, and marginalised to an extent that other minority groups may experience less, even while sharing many of the same grassroot issues?
‘Letters To My Younger Selves – And the Quiet Women Who Made Me Who I Am’
The voyage of my life could never be described as ‘easy’, writes Penny Pepper, but it has been built around friendships that brought illumination in the toughest of times
The social model of disability is relevant again when considering the Government’s inability to confront the daily barriers disabled people face.
Regarding its latest attacks on the Access to Work (ATW) scheme, here is an example: a wheelchair user needs to eliminate the barrier of inappropriate, inaccessible public transport to get to work – it is not her fault that she is a wheelchair user, is it? She’s not ‘workshy’ and has skills, but it seems the Government believes that she can manage with less ATW funding – in this case, less money for a taxi, which would circumvent transport barriers.
Another example relates to the specialist technology the ATW scheme has funded in the past. I was once supplied with voice dictation software, Dragon Professional, at a time when there were no equivalent apps to do this. Even now, not one is as sophisticated as the latest version of Dragon. Without it, I cannot write, and these days, I work in a combination of old software and support which includes actual human beings who are worth every penny I am able to pay them. Yet, the direction of ATW is to fob us off with useless free AI apps (more here). This simultaneous ‘cost-cutting drive’ to ATW is occurring as attacks to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) are also proposed.
It leaves me speechless at the inane and illogical approach the Government is taking – it wants us to work but won’t support the removing of barriers that disabled people did not create in the first place that prevent us from doing so.
Calling, as always, on my networks within the disability community to answer the question ‘what’s it got to do with me?’ brought up grave responses.
The first retort is obvious: disability occurs randomly, to anyone, at any time. And disability could easily happen to someone you know, however much people don’t want to think about it. As one person said, “don’t we all hate what we fear until we understand it?”
The Government’s policies are compounded by the lack of our presence in any balanced sense across culture, media, politics.
Non-disabled people may shrug away the statistics because there is very little out there that reflects the disability experience in all its variety. It’s easier to cancel out disability when we are hidden – and worse: pilloried, targeted, and hated.
‘Who’s Virginia Woolf Afraid Of?’
Stephen Unwin explores how the famed author’s views about disability were typical of a growing intellectual endorsement of the dangerous ideology of eugenics in the early 20th century
We are the other who is to blame, when we are not pawns used in the worst aspects of right-wing politics. Some disabled people’s long oppression is triggered further through being used in the worst divide-and-conquer rhetoric. Immigrants blamed unfairly for ‘poor pensioners and disableds’ not having benefits and housing, rather than focusing on the uber rich and the endless company tax dodgers.
The encouragement of self-interest and the increasing loss of basic humanity highlights t