Easy News - No Ramps Here!
On Wednesday we went to the House of Commons for the launch of 'Easy News' published by United Response and hosted by Eleanor Laing MP. It was very positive to see representatives from all three main parties in attendance, including both the Minister and Shadow Minister for Disabled People.Amusingly in contrast to all the claims of access being everywhere there was no ramp provided for the speaker's podium and when asked about one Commons staff seemed to think there wasn't one available. So instead we had a podium and a speaker's sit on table!
There's an article here about the idea behind Easy News and a great interview with Nick and John, two of the consultant's who worked on Easy News
They say, the past is another
country, they do things differently there. The implication being that we are
somehow better now than then, better here than elsewhere. But are we?
Once upon a time all people lived
in small communities, with disabled people at their hearts. Communities that
through the arrogance of time, we look back upon and consider less civilised
than ourselves. But were they? Or have we just misunderstood the message in the
adage? Skeletal remains teach us that tens of thousands of years ago people
with severe disabilities were cared for, loved and if necessary, the entire
tribe would adapt to the pace of their disabled member, fully understanding
what we today seem to have forgotten – that any society is only as strong as
its most vulnerable member.
In another past we lived in
villages, accountable to a Lord and Master. Disabled people no longer
cherished, but barely tolerated. A
different past again tells us that disabled people were considered lucky by
leaders, and kept as fools at court. In another, disabled people were unlucky,
locked away so as not to contaminate the general population. A closer past
tells us how disabled people were demeaned and dehumanised, labelled as
financial burdens worth nothing more than an opportunity for those in power to
learn the skills of mass extermination.
There is fiction in the space
between these pasts, these countries, but also truths of change. The biggest of
these truths for all people was the invention of printing, the benefit of mass
literacy and freedom to disseminate information. Without the power to access
and produce their own information, people without sufficient riches to own land
and later women would never have won the battle to gain their right to vote.
Whilst the information revolution effected
lasting political and social change for most people, disabled people were
excluded from society and refused the freedoms gained by others. Only in the
much more recent past were disabled people able to begin our own, long march
towards freedom.
The contemporary revolution is once
again based upon information and a battle to balance the freedom of citizens to
educate and inform against the controls imposed upon people by their
governments. Here, the now is many countries, and they all do things
differently there.
For some disabled people technology
breaks down barriers and provides us with the freedoms to participate in
politics, policy and democracy. We can educate ourselves by circumventing a
physically inaccessible world to enter one based within the virtual. We can
write things down, articulate our own truths and counter the challenge from the
powerful that perhaps we’re just telling stories.
The abuse of power is intertwined
in the history of disabled people - modern Britain considers herself far more
developed than the peoples of the past, the peoples of countries far from here.
But contemporary Britain continues to treat her most vulnerable citizens with a
callous disregard – imprisoning those convicted of no crime in places paid to
care, but that care is just a cover for the facilitation of torture. The bill
for that torture is footed by us all, and equally the responsibility to prevent
it, to demonstrate we are better, more human than that lies with us all.
Without the freedom to record the
stories of those locked away, the platform to pass on these shameful truths of
how our society disregards those it perceives as lacking contributory worth
progress can never be made. Those without power can be blamed, targeted, made
less human by those who sip from the cup of success, whilst those with power
are not held accountable for the consequences of their own words.
Today we are gathered in the heart
of power, the seat of democracy to celebrate how far disabled people have come,
and attempt to speed up the pace of travel to full equality. The right to vote
is insufficient on its own, without the provision of non-partisan news and
information in a format everyone can understand, voting remains a token gesture
based upon empty words.
As disabled people we can never be
satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with fatigue cannot gain access to the
transport, to the workplaces, to the leisure spaces of our cities. But as
humans, as people, we can never be satisfied until we all have, not just the
right to participate, but the appropriate and individual tools to enable us to
do so.
Then, perhaps one day, future
people will look back upon our past and know that this was when we learnt to do
things differently. When we began to understand that the right to do something
would never be enough without the communally provided support to do so.
3 comments:
Thankyou Kaliya. This is a brilliant speech. The mainstream media (Daily Mail and Daily Express) makes me feel like crap for having been born with a physical disability. Your speech helps offset some of that damage. :-)
This is so good, moving and hard-hitting. I hope it will have provoked some serious soul-searching in those politicians responsible for the attacks on disabled peoples' rights to a decent life. Thank you.
And to Anonymous above: well done for coping every day with the challenges your condition brings. Hold your head high in the knowledge that many fit and able people would crumple faced with such difficulties. Yes, the Mail and Express are crap; you are brilliant.
Great speech, just in case any sceptics ask - am I right that your reference source for "Skeletal remains teach us that tens of thousands of years ago people with severe disabilities were cared for, loved and if necessary, the entire tribe would adapt to the pace of their disabled member..." is here:
The Prehistory of Compassion
P. A. Spikins, H. E. Rutherford, A. P. Needham - University of York
http://www.york.ac.uk/media/archaeology/documents/staff/staffpersonalfiles/Compassion7.pdf
(page 10 onwards)
Best Wishes
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