A Day in the Life: Sarah's Journey

It is rude to stare but not to treat Paralympians equal.   Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash The Paralympics is over for another three years; we have had one of the most successful Paralympics ever with numerous Paralympic and world records that have been destroyed, all after two years of not competing in competitions. The athletes of the Olympics also participated under the same conditions. Still, there is one main difference, in my opinion, which makes this Paralympics even more special than ever before, and that is everything else they have had to deal with over the past two years. We have seen some emotional scenes with athletes who achieved against all odds, not letting their disability stop them from achieving their dreams. Living through the Pandemic has disproportionately affected disabled people of all abilities and backgrounds. Paralympians are no exception; not only have Paralympians had the same restrictions as the Olympians, for example, no competitive play, but they ...

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...

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...