Posted this earlier in the comments to the Guardian's live politics feed, pointing out the massive gap in the logic of Labour's disability benefit cuts:

Completely missing from Labour's whining about the difficulty of getting disabled people into work is any discussion of the far cat in the room - the widespread experience by disabled workers of discrimination in the workplace from management (and colleagues, but mostly management). A gag clause means I can't name the national flagship company where a very senior manager engaged in a multi-year campaign to drive me out of the company, to quote him 'your disability is a threat to my schedules' (it wasn't), and where the rest of management closed ranks around him when I challenged him on it through the grievance procedure.

The DWP's Disability Confident campaign asserts it isn't disability discrimination, managers are just 'embarrassed', which goes down about as well with disabled people as you might imagine.

Unless Labour sets about a serious campaign to drive disability discrimination out of the workplace, then the only logical conclusion is that they don't care about getting disabled people into the workplace, just off the benefits bill. And that's disability discrimination as government, as Labour Party, policy

Deeply, deeply furious with Starmer over this.

Current Mood: Angry
Current Location: Not wanted

It felt like I'd been punched last night when I read that Lisa Egan had died. Gone far too young.

If my memory isn't playing me false, Lisa, @LisyBabe in many places, is the one who first dragooned* me into writing about disability and the threat of being Austerity's chosen victims, and that so early in the Cameron years that Blair may still have been in power.

The best way to honour her life I can think of is to link to my favourite piece of her writing, one I've often pointed people at when trying to explain the importance of how you talk about disabled people, and why the Social Model of Disability matters.

I'm Not a Person With a Disability, I'm a Disabled Person

* I'm really not sure I got any choice in the matter

Current Mood: sad

Just voted.

My heart sank when I checked my polling card last night and noticed it said "Portakabin at Balfour Junior Academy", rather than "Balfour Junior Academy.

Even without the portakabin the school is a kilometre away and tucked away in a maze of narrow streets, all reduced to single track by on-street parking, off a link (Gladstone Road) from the main road that is 1 in 6 or 1 in 7, 150m of 20m down one side of a valley and up the other, so totally non-accessible if you have a mobility impairment and don't have a vehicle.

When I got there about 3:30 the gate into the school was shut with lots of 'think kids' signs. I didn't see any hope of parking on the street in front of me, already wall-to-wall cars, but had seen a few spaces about 100m behind me, so turned around at the next junction and came back. At which point the gate was open so I drove in. (I now suspect it's sensor operated, but there's nothing to tell you that, and on polling day wouldn't you just lock it open if you had any sense?)

All half-dozen parking spaces were already full, with another half a dozen cars pulled up on the pavement. So I kept driving until I got to the building, at which point the number of kids running about on the road and on scooters or bikes with mums not stopping them had me thinking the school was open for the day - I checked their website, they weren't, but seriously, not a good place to let your kid play on the road with a constant stream of drivers who don't know the layout.

So I pulled up in front of the school, to the side of the projecting island in front of the entrance, got the chair out and rolled over to the portakabin (its spur of road was blocked off by no-parking cones). The ramp (at least there was one!) wasn't bad, but I nearly stalled out on the top lip. Handed over my polling card, made them ask for photo ID rather than just handing it over, made my comment about Tory voter suppression*, got my ballot slip and went to vote. Rather than the individual booths they've had inside the school, they had a single four space carousel, about a metre across, with mini-privacy screens to your front, but nothing to stop someone peering over your shoulder as they passed. It was at least wheelchair accessible, but with barely enough space to put your ballot slip down and vote.

I pushed on the carousel to back away, and the whole thing shifted back several inches - hope I didn't spoil anyone's ballot!

So I popped the ballot in the box and rolled back out to the car, where if anything there were even more kids, including secondary school kids apparently taking a shortcut through the grounds and crossing the road without looking. *Headdesk*

At which point I realised where I'd parked was so narrow there was no way I was three-point turning, I'd have to reverse out, around that projecting island, to get to somewhere with enough space to turn, all while keeping an eye out for kids - one mum did stop her 6yo on a scooter when she realised I was about to reverse away, but stopping him at the back of my car was less than ideal. I was so busy keeping an eye out for kids I hit the kerb twice, plus one of the parking cones isolating the portakabin.

Voting shouldn't be so stressful! And adequate and easily accessible parking should be a required part of polling station selection, especially for ones not easily accessible on foot.

* Mainland UK reliably gets a grand total of 1 or 2 cases of personation** in a general election (vs about 31m voters) , so the Tories brought in a requirement for photo-ID, which many young, elderly or disabled people simply don't have. The estimate was it stopped at least 14,000 people from voting at the local elections at the polling stations, and many more who just didn't turn up, and local elections only cover about a third of the country at a time. Jacob Rees-Mogg actually admitted at the Tory Party Conference that it was a deliberate attempt to exclude non-Tory voters.

** Pretending to be someone else to vote, contrary to Section 60 of The Representation Of The People Act, 1983.

Current Mood: Stressed
Current Location: You can't park here (not easily, anyway)

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!

Current Mood: Erased
Current Location: Rekal Inc

The Scottish Parliament is considering a bill to legalise assisted suicide.

Bill's author: "It only covers people with terminal illnesses, not disability"

Hidden in the small print:

"For the purposes of this Act, a person is terminally ill if they have an advanced and progressive disease, illness or condition from which they are unable to recover and that can reasonably be expected to cause their premature death."

A huge percentage of disabilities come with a reduced life-expectancy for one reason for another, so the bill that supposedly doesn't include people with disability covers:

Anyone with an intellectual disability

Anyone with a spinal injury

Anyone with epilepsy

Anyone with continence issues

Anyone with swallowing issues

Anyone whose disability, or medication, results in weight gain.

And for a really disturbing twist, it's potentially going to be affected by socio-economic status, both individually and regionally.

Current Mood: Shudder
Current Location: Soylent Green Medical Annex

Medway Council: "Have your say regarding Medway's Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan" - which proposes about a dozen 'priority walking and cycling routes'

Also Medway Council: "This survey is not currently available Please try again later."

*Headdesk*

Dropped some comments in the FB thread announcing this instead, but saving them in a couple of places so I can find them to throw them in the survey if I remember to check back for a time when it is available:

"The report notes: "Some challenging and steep gradients" (with an illustration of cyclists)

If you think they're challenging for cyclists, try them as a wheelchair user. A point non-wheelchair users frequently don't understand is that anything over 1 in 10 is unsafe for a wheelchair. There's at least one priority route I can't safely wheel down - Chatham Maidstone Road as its steepness outweighs my ability to brake - and as wheelchair users go I'm fitter and in a better chair than most. As for getting up it, yeah, not happening. There's a reason I only go out by car, and my street exiting onto the steep section of the Maidstone Road is that reason.

Very surprised to see that Chatham Maidstone Road Priority route without a spur to the train station, which would seem obvious if not essential, but which for accessibility would raise the point that the kerb-cut on the station side is impossible to navigate safely in a wheelchair if you're not trying to cross the road as it's set on a fairly significant slope cross-ways and sloped down towards the road without a level area to pass to the side of it due to the narrow footpath, which means the only path across it is up and down the angled side ramps, which can't be used safely by wheelchair users. Had to use it last week and was saved from tipping over backwards or being thrown out into the road by passing pedestrians going both ways. The entire crossing needs shifting several yards uphill so that the kerb cut is 1) on the level, 2) has space to pass behind it.

In general the maps were utterly useless, because they don't show gradient or kerb-cuts, the two things I need to know as a wheelchair user to know if a route is accessible. And as the interactive maps appear to have spot heights, gradient was clearly do-able.

This doesn't fill me with confidence that the planning is being done with any understanding of accessibility, which makes the likelihood of improving it as a result fairly remote."

It's not entirely abled short-sightedness here, they really are stuffed WRT accessible routes into town. The Maidstone Road is the main road into town and runs down a steep ridge, the only alternatives are almost as steep and funnel into the Maidstone Road, and can only be reached down even steeper roads (steep enough my car struggles, never mind my chair!). None of the 15 minute city theorists have ever really accounted for cities that aren't remotely flat and how disabled people are meant to manage them.

Current Mood: Eye-rolling
Current Location: Left Off the Map

Anger as Sunak scraps dedicated minister for disabled people.

TLDR: previous Minister of State swapped over to Immigration (he was already clearly a law enforcement wannabee) and not replaced, disability role given to an existing Under Secretary of State).

(kaberett, check out the chair pictured, looks familiar!)

Disabled people don't need a minister, thinks Sunak - they just need to try harder (caution, may contain sarcasm)

I actually wish they'd axed it entirely, because then we could make the case for reinstating it in the Government Equalities Office, rather than the Department of Work and Pensions where it is now, and separate it from the benefits enforcement role. Obviously we'd first want rid of Kemi Badenough from GEO so it can actually start working for equality instead of against it.

Current Mood: *snarl*
Current Location: Unwanted

23 years on from the debacle of not having a ramp up to the stage when Tanni Grey-Thompson placed Third in Sports Personality of the Year, the Beeb is still forgetting to provide access for disabled people. One of the University Challenge Christmas Specials had one blind team member and another with what sounds like Auditory Processing Disorder. The blind team member was told as the show was about to start that the agreed audio description of the visual questions would not be provided, and the team member with APD had a point blank refusal to provide subtitling to let them process the questions at the same speed as everyone else, plus apparently other adjustments that were provided, but weren't effective.

They both complained and the show has now been pulled at their request.

By refusing to provide reasonable adjustments, I think there's a pretty good chance that the Beeb actually breached the Equality Act.

University Challenge special axed over lack of support for disabled contestants

University Challenge: Christmas episode axed after ableism complaints

Current Mood: Seething
Current Location: Going nowhere

My technothriller WIP has been pretty much stalled ever since Russia invaded Ukraine because the plot is heavily drone dependent and I needed a better feel of where drone and counter-drone technology was going as a result, to make sure the narrative doesn't turn suddenly obsolete. It occurred to me the other day that I pretty much have that, so I've been noodling at it again for the last few days.

One change I was considering making whenever I returned to it was to shift a major secondary character who's Deaf from getting by on her own with lipreading and a cochlear implant to using a sign language interpreter -- which probably already made professional sense as she's a DA and needs to be certain she isn't missing anything when she's in court. So I sat down to do that on Friday, and it actually went a lot faster than I anticipated, while still being a fairly big edit job. It's an interesting exercise because it makes you think much more about where everyone is standing during a conversation, especially when you throw in that she's also lip-reading where she can. And it also changes more intimate scenes (she's the protagonist's wife) as having a conversation while spooned up against each other isn't really practical if you need to see hands and lips. On top of which doing it in the dark is just out. Equally you can't just send her off to show someone around the family home, if she can't actually hold a conversation with them, so viewpoint character/protagonist suddenly became an important part of that little excursion.

By coincidence I came across the trailer for Marvel's upcoming Echo this weekend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFUKnherhuw , in which the only person to speak is Wilson Fisk/Kingpin/a very bulked up Vincent d'Onofrio as Maya Lopez/Echo/Alaqua Cox is Deaf and uses ASL and is too busy kicking ass in the trailer (never mind she's also an amputee) to stop and sign. But there's an interesting piece here and here where director Sydney Freeland talks about changing the way they might otherwise have framed shots to accommodate the fact they're being signed.

Current Mood: Busy again
Current Location: Follow the signs

... that's the only logic I can find for the Chancellor's Autumn Statement.

The Guardian reports in this article that under Jeremy Hunt's proposed changes to disability benefit 370,000 disabled people will lose £5000 a year, but only 10,000 are expected to be able to find work as a result. On top of which there's a handy implicit demonising of all disabled people as benefit scrounging scum (which used to be the name of a friend's blog the Tories were indulging in it so often).

But the changes will only apply from April 2025, by which time the Conservatives will have been out of power for a minimum of six months.

The real object here isn't to force disabled people into destitution, though I've no doubt that will please plenty of Tories if it happens, it's to force Labour to either implement it, or axe it. If the implement it, they'll take tremendous flak from their own supporters, if they axe it, the Tory press will hound them for 'going easy on benefit scroungers'.

It's cynical to the point of being actively evil.

Current Mood: Demonised

Tory junior finance minister Laura Trott has been out today chumming the water for her boss (Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt) in advance of his Autumn Statement and telling anyone who'll listen that disabled people who are unable to work in the workplace and therefore are in receipt of disability benefits have "a duty" to work from home.

The cohort of disabled people she's talking about here are those judged to have 'limited capability to work'. Which basically means "In an ideal world we might be able to find them jobs, but in practise we can't get employers to even look at them" and for a good chunk of them "Working would actually probably be damaging to their health". And in many cases they should actually be in the next cohort up from Limited Capability, with no capability for work related activity, but the assessments have been fixed by the Tories since forever.

Of course the idea of DWP providing useful support for disabled people to work from home is risible, DWP doesn't see us as capable of anything beyond shelf-stacking, so the likely assumption driving this is everyone can get a zero hours contract doing remote call centre work. It's actually going to move disability employment backwards, because why should the government invest in schemes like Access to Work to make workplaces accessible, when they can just throw us all at remote minimum wage call centre jobs? And the employers will know it, and that there's no political will to drive Equality Act enforcement.

I think the language Trott was using is revealing. By talking about us having 'a duty', rather than the normal Tory waffle about 'work being good for you' - based on some extremely dubious 'science' that looked at abled workers, not disabled, Trott is tacitly acknowledging that they can't make the 'work is good for you' argument for the people affected, and if that's the case, then she's really acknowledging that work will be bad for them.

Over and above the direct damage that's likely to accrue from forcing disabled people to work when they're medically unfit, we know from every other time DWP have been let loose to sanction disabled people on a whim that it will lead to despair, destitution, and all too likely cases of suicide. The Tories know this as well as anyone else, they fought long and hard to stop the DWP's internal inquiries into the deaths being released, but they clearly think they can get a few positive headlines in the Tory rags and/or find a few extra pounds for Hunt to give away to party donors in tax cuts. The Nasty Party is back.

In more positive news, the Court of Appeal has ruled that people are perfectly entitled to call Iain Duncan Smith "Tory Scum".

Current Mood: Angry
Current Location: The Slave Market

Good interview in the Guardian with Judy Singer on how she created the term neurodiversity. Slightly stunned that it was a consciously political creation from the word go - she was explicitly referencing the American Civil Rights movement with the 'diversity', and that she did it in her _undergraduate_ thesis. And it's a very Social Model of Disability construction.

"As a word, ‘neurodiversity’ describes the whole of humanity. But the neurodiversity movement is a political movement for people who want their human rights."

The mother of neurodiversity: how Judy Singer changed the world

Current Mood: Diverse

Just downloading some light reading for while I'm away: "An Independent Review of Sickness Absence in Great Britain" and the government response - which I'm assuming elaborates on "That's exactly the take on the skiving bastards we were looking for" since it was commissioned by the ConDems in the first place, one of the co-authors was ex-boss of the British Chambers of Commerce and his co-author's job title was National Director for Health and Work.

(How exactly is it 'an independent review' if the co-author is a government employee?)

Current Mood: Rolls eyes

Just gave the Tory candidate 10 minutes of hell on disability policy under the Tories. For someone who says he has a disabled son, he was appallingly ignorant on actual disability policy and repeatedly tried to tell me I'm wrong on stuff where I was reporting well known facts.

"DWP admits culpability in the deaths of 53 disabled people through implementing Tory austerity policy"

"Over how many years?" (Seriously?!?)

"Those are just the ones they've admitted".

"Um, ah, well at least they admitted it"

"Only because they were forced to by the Freedom of Information process, and the reports are redacted to hell."

"We raised disability benefits this year!"

"Not the legacy disability benefits though"

"Well, they're legacy"

"Not to the people still trying to live on them!"

*Headdesk*

I'm too angry to be really effective at this, but he'll remember this call. (I suppose kudos to him for sticking it out as long as he did).

There's a really good interview in the Guardian today with Sophie Morgan, who's a reasonably prominent UK tv presenter, and wheelchair user.

Her two decades as a presenter and as a disabled person have pretty much gone hand in hand as she started in a couple of reality tv shows almost as soon as she was out of rehab from being spinally injured in a car crash, but it's depressingly revealing to see how much she's had to overcome behind the scenes to be taken seriously as a presenter of disability stuff, never mind non-disability.

It's also interesting to note that I read a lot of Guardian interviews, which have occurred in all kinds of venues - hotel suites, zoom, people's kitchens, the French countryside - but this is the first one I can remember where it's mentioned it was in the Guardian offices; it's own comment on accessibility?

The Trials and Triumphs of Sophie Morgan

Current Mood: *sigh*

Today's budget, beyond its massive pensions freebie for the 1%, basically axes the entire existing disability benefits system. It's branded as doing away with the hated Work Capability Assessment, but my immediate reaction "They'll just have renamed it", turned out to be almost exactly right - they're going to use the Personal Independence Payment assessment instead, only that's not fit for purpose if it also has to cover whether you're fit for work or not. I've already been approached to be part of the team taking the white paper apart to find out how it won't work - probably for another Spartacus Report, though I'm not sure I'm up to it. My immediate concern is that it may have completely erased the idea of being unfit for any work.

The whole thing, with its emphasis on how everyone 'needs' 'fulfilling work' just reeks of Talcott Parsons and his categorisation of the 'sick role', aka disability, as deviant.

Current Mood: *headdesk*
Current Location: Deviant central

Finally back from Christmas/New Year with the folks, which wasn't quite intended to be this long a break, but ended up at four weeks.

When I turned up at St Pancras for the final leg of my trip home, the driver for the next train on the Kent Coast Line hadn't arrived yet, so I and the passenger assistance guy were stood waiting for about 10 minutes, and I couldn't help overhearing all the messages coming over his radio.

I particularly liked the one that went "We urgently need someone with a ramp for <some service>, the driver's refusing to take the train out until a disabled passenger is boarded".

I didn't catch which train company, never mind which train, but kudos to that driver!

Current Mood: Thumbs up
Current Location: Assisted

Transport for London are relatively good at tweeting when the lifts at Tube Stations are out of action, making them inaccessible to those of us who need step-free access. Someone noticed that those tweets are oddly consistent with shift changes...

After being duly poked, TfL admitted it's mostly not the lifts going out of action, it's that if there's no one available to man the tube station due to staff shortages, they declare the lift out of action. Their logic is that if the lift breaks down people might get stuck and they can get them out quicker if someone's there.

So effectively their solution to someone potentially getting stuck in the lift is to make sure everyone is definitely stuck at the lift doors instead. *headdesk*

(There's a definite undertone of 1960s 'disableds aren't safe to operate the lift on their own' thinking here)

Current Mood: *Facepalm*
Current Location: Not in the lift

Oh god, I've been poking at Jacob Rees-Mogg's 'dashboard' of Retained EU Legislation which is on some woowoo 'visualization' tool called Tableau Public, or possibly Public Tableau, it can't seem to decide. This is the set of several thousand pieces of EU legislation still in force in the UK that our new Glorious Leaderene* is proposing to consign to a bonfire by the end of 2023 - and if she leaves Rees-Mogg in charge it'll be an auto-da-fe, not a bonfire. Rees-Mogg, often called the Minister for the 17th Century, clearly missed his calling, he'd have been completely at home in the Spanish Inquisition.

So anyway, this 'dashboard' has a search function that only does exact matches and doesn't allow combined search terms. In 2022? I have games I bought in beta that have better search functionality. Which effectively means you can only find which retained EU laws affect disability if you actually know exactly what they're called already, and if you don't know they're out there, you're stuffed. Just searching for 'disability' got me four matches, two about copyright and two about where benefits can be paid. So that's bugger all use if you want to poke it for a list of every retained law related to disability rights and accessibility.

I was doing this poking because I knew from the Civil Aviation Authority's website that EC 1107/2006, the PRM** legislation that covers disabled people's right to fly on the same terms and conditions as non-disabled folk, plus passenger assistance, plus compensation etc is retained legislation and therefore up for replacement/burning at the stake, and wondered if the same was true for the rest of public transport. At least EC 1300/2014 the PRM-TSI legislation that does the same thing as EC 1107/2006 for trains is listed as replaced by the EU Withdrawal Act (but if they replaced the trains legislation, why not the planes?), but mindbogglingly the other set of trains accessibility legislation (EC 1371/2007) wasn't replaced at the same time and is still retained legislation.

On top of the whole set of conceptual idiocy that makes up Brexit, I'm beginning to think the whole thing is an utter shambles at the detail level.

As Rees-Mog was virulently opposed to reasonable adjustments in Parliament during Covid, the idea of our accessibility rights in his hands sends a cold shudder down my spine.

And if that thing is accessible to people with visual impairments I'll eat my wheelchair cushion (lots of 'hover the cursor over the visualization for further information')

* God, I haven't used that one in thirty years

** Passengers with Reduced Mobility

Current Mood: *Headdesk*
Current Location: Visualized (shudder!)

Well that was weird. My default icon (the crutches in the mirror one) disappeared over the weekend. The icon and the description was still there, but not the pic. Fortunately I did have a copy to hand to replace it, once I realised it wasn't just a DW hiccup as I initially assumed.

Well, I guess it was a DW hiccup, just not the one I thought it was.

The picture itself was taken in a hotel in Valle Gran Reyes, largely catering to the German tourist trade, on La Gomera in the Canaries. IIRC this was the trip where we'd done the Competent Crew yachting course in San Sebastian and we'd then moved to the opposite side of the island for a few days sightseeing. If memory serves I was lying on the bed feeling utterly knackered, noticed the reflection of the crutches in the mirror across from the bed, and thought "that's a good metaphor for how everyone thinks disabled people aren't quite of this earth". And it still is.

Current Mood: Reflective

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David Gillon

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March 2025

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David Gillon

Entries tagged with disability

Labour's Disability Benefit Cuts

Dammit 2025, I do not need another 2024

Unsuppressed

We Can Erase It For You Wholesale

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

Rewriting the Rules

Access headdesk

Tories gonna tory....

Oh, FFS...

University Challenge special axed over lack of support for disabled contestants

University Challenge: Christmas episode axed after ableism complaints

Interesting writing exercise

Politicians playing with our lives ....

Here we go again....

The mother of neurodiversity: how Judy Singer changed the world

Le Sigh

You rang the wrong number, chum

Good interview with Sophie Morgan

Here we go again

Well done that driver!

Couldn't make it up

Bonfire of the Accessibilities

Weird!