A Day in the Life: Sarah's Journey

It is essential to think about what the phrase 'barriers to education' means before talking about my own education experience.  barriers can be attitudinal, organisational or practical  Although it is important to remember that sometimes there is no way to do this due to the nature of the disability and the experienced problems. As a result, each individual should be treated differently and their needs addressed in the same way. The barriers to learning faced by students with disabilities are many and complex and differ from student to student and often daily. So, for this article, I will be only writing about my own experiences and understand that this may be very different to what others may have experienced. When looking at access, you need to think about all aspects, not just physical; these include: Access means physical access as well as access to the curriculum Awareness of the needs of disabled people and the barriers they may experience Acceptance that y...

When I was born I was diagnosed with Spina Bifida. After surviving the 3 weeks that my parents were told I wouldn't, my parents began to realise they had a fighter for a daughter.  I have also been informed that at this time my parents were asked whether they wanted to put me up for adoption. My parents expressed how horrified they were by this question and never had to question whether keeping me was the right thing to do. This brought them strength to carry on and do their best by me. Due to my ill health, the hole in my back was not closed up immediately, as a result, this led to Hydrocephalus also developing. The first 5 years of my life were challenging for the whole family not just for me. I have an older brother who also had to learn to grow up quite quickly and who also had his own health problems. My parents recall a time when I was in one hospital and my brother was in another. This led to the family being split in two for a period of time.  My shunt bein...

Over the past year I have learnt much about myself and other people and so I need to take a moment to reflect on my experiences and in essence how lucky I am to have the life that I do. So many people have to deal with so many more injustices than myself, which I can only begin to imagine the effect that this has. I have made the effort to learn about other sick and disabled peoples lives, to allow me to appreciate what others go through on a daily basis. This learning has made me realise that things are not always clean cut as they seem, leading to me having a greater empathy for people in different situations. I have done my learning through talking to people on social networking sites like Twitter, as well as through listening and taking note of the news and the media as a whole. There have been a number of different items in the media about disabled people which I feel is another reason I have learnt to question what I am told and find out the truth, as unfortunately much of w...

Disability in the media has always played an important role in shaping the lives of disabled people. For many years the only stories shown were that of sob stories and those who have achieved great things against the odds.  There are two main areas of Disability and the media that I would like to cover. Firstly that of the effect the media has on disabled sport and secondly that of the news and the limited coverage of disabled people's issues.   Media and the effect that it has on disability is a hot topic for many at the moment, due to much of the media that is portrayed being of the negative persuasion. Disability is often in the media eye for many of the wrong reasons, and if not directly wrong reasons, it is usually for something like that of Oscar Pistorius where the discussion was around his ability and whether it would be fair for him to join mainstream sport (there has also been other negative press unrelated to the sport of him but that's another story altogether...

I am writing this when there is much uncertainty in the world for disabled people. The government is making it their mission to hit disabled people with unnecessary cuts and attacks on benefits for disabled people that, contrary to the story the media feeds the general public, are not abused. Only this week, approximately 8000 people joined the Hardest Hit March to protest against the devastating attack on disabled people. Disabled people as a whole have always been some of the poorest people and this is only set to get worse. For many, every day is a fight, made worse by the fact they can't afford to live. To live with a disability means expenses that the average person can't even contemplate. I have always tried to live as 'normal' and 'full' life as possible, but unfortunately, this has always come at an extra cost, financially, emotionally and physically. I will focus on finances for now as this is a very hot issue that all disabled people can relate to. F...

Equality is a very controversial subject for many disabled people, because there is a general feeling within the disabled community that they are not treated equally. Equality will only stop being a problem when people stop having an uneducated, inaccurate opinion on what it means for people to be treated equally as this is how disabled people want to be treated. We want the same opportunities as our able bodied peers. For this to happen society needs to be educated to allow an understanding of what it means to live with a disability, as the hashtag on twitter goes, '#disabilitynormal'. For disability to become normalised we, as disabled people, need to be treated in exactly the same way as our able bodied peers, as mentioned above we need the same opportunities to live a 'normal life' without man made restrains due to accessibility needs and societies ability to hide behind the phrase 'reasonable adjustment'.   The biggest limitation of being a disabled perso...

I have a lot of experience of pain, which is a direct result of my disability. I regularly feel that people just don't understand, so I am qualified to share my opinion on this. I have been a wheelchair user all my life, and my body, to put it politely, has taken a battering and is a mess. This has meant that as I get older, I have suffered from more pain, especially regarding my back going into spasms. I perhaps haven't looked after my body but have I had a choice? Not really; if I chose not to do something due to the risk of hurting myself, I wouldn't do anything. This is not a life worth living! So I make the only choice possible to put myself at risk daily to live as normal as possible. Expectations of other people put pressure on me to do things that I know could potentially harm you. Since I have been driving, I have had to get my wheelchair in my car independently. As I can't stand at all, it means I have to drag my wheelchair over me to place it on the passeng...

I would like to discuss experiences through my life when someone has said or done something that was inappropriate to disabled people. I would first like to thank those who commented on my previous post, especially as some of these comments about how disabled people are made to feel were what gave me the idea for this post. How many of you have come across someone who says something that irritates you? How many of you are disabled and it has been an able bodied person who has said something that irritates you? I am guessing many of you have had one or two of these experiences. It isn't a nice experience in either situation but there is a bigger problem with what some able bodied people say to disabled people because this shows a small glimpse of what they believe to be true about disability. The media doesn't help this perception, because their opinion is listened to whether it is right or wrong. I specify adults as my subject, because in theory they should know better. Chi...

I was in my local pub when I started to think about my last blog post as a result of how some of the non-locals made me feel. On the most part I have become a well known face and am treated with respect that I feel I deserve. I am not treated any differently to anyone else in the pub, by all those that know me there. It is the people who don't know me who seem to have no respect for me or my feelings and have made me feel unwelcome or different at times and as my blog post title suggests I am made to feel invisible by some able bodied people. A regular occurrence that irritates me, is when people knock into me without a second thought. I hate it because it feels like the only reason they knock into me is because I am invisible to them. People go past me and will knock into me even though the 10 people before have managed fine to get past me without it being a problem.  Some people are very apologetic, others barge past without a second glance as though they just knocked into ...

After my gap in writing I have decided to write about how I found my voice in a mainstream world. To do this I am going to write about what I have been up to. Right . . . so what has been going on that is more important? I hear you ask. Unfortunately this is a time of much uncertainty for many people, not least disabled people. Which has led myself and many other people to show their passion and want their voices to be heard. So this is what I have been trying to do. As part of this I have become more involved in union based activities, going to different conferences, meetings and generally asking many questions. I have also learnt some of the joys of social media and how they can help to put my point across and learn more about what interests me so I am better informed, these include twitter and blogging as I am doing now. For many years I never shared my opinion no matter how small because I was scared of what people would think. My family have always had strong opinions which if I...

I have spoke about some of my struggles of attending mainstream school, which were always made more difficult due to the continual health problems that I experienced but in this post I want to focus my attention to how I coped with the adjustment required to go through mainstream schooling and cope in mainstream society. Living with a disability no matter how 'normal' you are treated by people around you will always provide challenges that many able bodied people will not ever have to think about. Throughout my schooling I experienced some high points but I also experienced some low points. Many of my low points were as a direct result of other people and their attitudes towards me and my disability. The low points when bullied which made me feel all alone. Outside of the times I was bullied I always loved going to school but when I was bullied my school life became miserable. Now I am older I can see its because people did not understand me, cliché as it sounds I was bullied...

I am back in the present for time being due to what this day meant to me, it was a day of firsts. It was to be the first time I had travelled on the Train to London before on my own and the first time I had been to an event like this on my own. I have had many a bad experience on the train even with someone there to support me.So how did I cope with this experience? A couple of days before I rang up Special Assistance for East Midlands Train Service, the person I spoke to was very helpful and reassuring which put me at ease. She gave me telephone numbers to contact people, if for some reason the travelling did not go to plan. I approached my day with apprehension, as I said earlier it was a day for firsts so wasn't sure what to expect. The morning came and I got myself ready to go out. My husband dropped me at the station and ensured that the first part of my experiences went without a hitch (which it didn't). When I arrived at St. Pancreas International, I looked out for s...

On the back of my health problems, life continued as normally as possible. My brother and I went to school, my mum and dad went to work. My school life started at the age of 2 and a half when I started to go to nursery which was part of a special needs school where 5-18 year olds attended. I started as most children do, going once or twice a week for a few hours here and there. I then progressed through the years and stayed at the school until I was 9 yrs old. During my time at the school, my parents were always keen to get me in mainstream education, although they were cautious for the first few years of my life as they were unsure of my cognitive ability and whether I was going to have a learning difficulty making it difficult for me to learn due to the complications of my shunt.  I will discuss my school experiences in more detail in a future post. As the years progressed and my health became more stable, I began to lead a more 'normal' life. I was finally allowed to go ...