We Can Erase It For You Wholesale

[davidgillon]

 A company that does school photographs offered two versions of the class pictures taken for a primary class in Aberdeenshire, one with the disabled kids included, one without. Including splitting a pair of twins.
 

Aberdeenshire pupils with complex needs* ‘erased’ from school photo

The council's apology and claim the school didn't know two sets of photos had been taken doesn't ring true, the only way that could have happened would have been for the staff to leave the kids alone with the photographer. Much more likely is they didn't think it through. Two different versions of what happened are in the reports across various TV and newspaper sources, one saying the set without the disabled kids was taken first, before they arrived, and the second saying afterwards. In either case the staff would have known.

The company's tweeted media response - "one of our photographers took additional images of the class group which omitted some members of the class photograph" - is a good example of how to turn a crisis into a disaster, being unable to bring itself to admit it was the disabled kids excluded, and also being an inaccessible gif of text, without, as far as I can see, any alt text. And while the apology is also on their website, the only way to get to it there is via a link in the tweet.

The Daily Mail's version of the story is particularly 'special', making the story about the company's owner, not the kids.

* C'mon Guardian, you can say the damned d-word!

 

Comments

[vass]

I was not aware "being in the class photo" was a complex need. It doesn't seem to have been complex for the rest of the class.

[vass]

And now I've read the article, and wow:
children with additional support needs
children with additional needs
the child who uses a wheelchair
a wheelchair user
complex needs provision pupils
children who have complex needs

This isn't even the euphemism treadmill, this is "calling them disabled might risk humanising them in the eyes of the reader, who may have at one point met a disabled person."

"wheelchair user" or "who uses a wheelchair" would be fine when her wheelchair is the point, but I'm not convinced it is the point here.

The others... the focus is all on how needy they are, how they have more needs than anyone else, and it's ~so complicated~ to meet these kids' needs... the implication is that these kids are a burden on society. I am not saying that's always the case with "complex needs" as a term, but that's the effect it's giving in this context, in which the kids' needs have nothing to do with the situation and the problem is the adults' prejudices. "kids with marginalised or stigmatised conditions" would be closer to the point.

"Me and the other parents just feel devastated beyond belief."
"leaving the nine-year-old’s twin sister devastated"
"the distress and hurt this has caused some parents and carers"

...
Gosh, who's missing from this picture? So to speak.

I can only hope that what they're saying there is that Erin Pinnell and Lily Boyd's and the other excluded kids' disabilities affect their communication so severely that they were unable to express an opinion at all, and not that their exclusion was significant chiefly in its effect on their non-disabled mother and sister and other parents and carers respectively.

[davidgillon]

It's a very peculiar term, the usual one would be SEND, Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, I don't think I've ever seen 'complex needs' before.

....

[jesse_the_k]

horrifying