A Day in the Life: Sarah's Journey

In 2010 the Equality Act replaced the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The Equality Act is to cover more areas of an individuals life not just employment like the Disability Discrimination Act did previously. One of my main concerns is how a number of different minority legislation's have been lumped into one and that this is meant to be sufficient, wont this make the current Act less flexible? limiting those who are seen as having a disability as not all individuals fit nicely into a category of impairment. So does the Equality Act really work? I have come to recognise that there is a mixed view on whether it really works or not depending on the individuals that are spoken to, especially with regards to reasonable adjustment within the workplace. When speaking to officials (including trade union officials who deal with case work) they can not speak highly enough of the Act and are able to state that as a result of the legislation they have been able to resolve a number of c...

The issue of Access is often a contentious one, if you talk to someone with a disability then there is always problems with not enough being done, yet if you talk to people in authority there are always excuses as to why more can not be done. I appreciate that there are times when it is not possible for there to be access to something be it the physical limitations of the person themselves (e.g. rock climbing) or through buildings being so old that they can't be adjusted enough to be fully accessible. Although this is the case, organisations will often hide behind 'reasonable adjustment', expecting disabled people to just accept that as much is being done as possible. As mentioned above, I appreciate there are some limitations with buildings that are really old and that I will not be able to get everywhere that I may want to, but I still feel that often more can be done than is currently being done so. Companies should want to do as much as they can to include everyone (at ...

I am currently in Torquay with my husband who is a teacher for the annual conference for the National Union of Teachers. Although everything seems calmer now that is not how my experience of this weekend started. It started before the weekend when I did some research into the hotel we were staying at (the room was through a block booking and so did not have the same control). I decided to look into it for my own peace of mind and glad I did. The hotel we are staying at is the Rainbow International and all information I found on-line did not fill me with confidence that it would be suitable. As a result my husband contacted the hotel for me on my behalf to ensure that it was suitable for my needs. When he rang up, he was reassured that we were to get the fully accessible room and that we would not be moved. This room was designed around a specific person and although this is the case we were guaranteed to be getting this room due to my specific needs and being more physically impaired ...

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...

Welcome to my new followers, I am looking forward to some interaction from my followers as some already have. I have had an interesting weekend and some things I have heard through twitter has made me feel the need for another blog post. Some of the main topics being discussed include how disabled people are seen as 'benefit scroungers' and that of the experiences of disabled people and transport. I have spent time in previous posts speaking about how the media shows disabled people as benefit scroungers and so am not going to try and reinvent the wheel with that one. Instead I am going to discuss my experiences of public transport. I have mentioned this topic but not at great length and so feel it is appropriate to focus a whole post to this topic. As previously mentioned I have been disabled from birth and so have experienced public transport in many different circumstances. When I was younger I was very reliant on being driven everywhere that I went. Many of the buses were...

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...

I have just been on a long weekend break to Dublin with my husband. We set off at a stupid time in the morning (left the flat at 3.15am). We decided not to book special assistance, because even when we do it does not always go smoothly. When we arrived at Bedford Station we were pleasantly surprised. We started to head to the platform that we needed, and rather than having to ask for assistance like we usually have to I was asked whether assistance was needed. This is how it always should be but, sadly, rarely it is. When the staff member helped me on the train, he said he would call through to the Luton Airport Parkway. Not surprisingly there was no one to meet us at the other end and so my husband helped me off the train (he is used to this). We then had a painless journey using the airport bus which was accessible and the bus driver was very cheerful. We completed Online Check-in as we did not have any luggage that needed to go into the hold, this meant that our first point of cal...

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 started writing today with a great need to write, but not really knowing what I was going to write about or where this blog was heading. All I know is writing my blog helps me to verbalise some of  my thoughts rather than have them stuck inside my head whizzing around at a hundred miles an hour. Sometimes I do not see this though because as we all do I get caught up in life and feel like I just don't have time for it. This makes things worse for me as I then feel guilty about not writing anything and leaving people wondering when my next blog post is going to be. Guilt is a very powerful emotion and something I suffer from a great deal. The guilt I feel about things makes me feel worse and puts extra pressure on me that I do not need. I also do not cope with stress well and so guilt and stress can become a lethal concoction. I have actually had quite a stressful day today and was glad when I got home so that I could rant and rave! Learning which situations you find stressful an...

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...