I was enjoying a cappuccino in Kidbrooke yesterday morning when I saw something which kind of perplexed me. When I was very, very young, I remember being pushed around in a pram. Before I got my first manual wheelchair, I suppose it was the easiest way to move me around when I was outside. Probably like most people, I remember my mum pushing me around shops and the town centre. When I grew too big for it, when I was five or so, we switched to using a small manual wheelchair. Yesterday though, when I was in Starbucks, a man entered pushing his obviously severely disabled son in what looked like a large buggy. It was more or less exactly the same as those used to ferry babies around, only bigger; there was no way the boy in it, who was probably around seven or eight, could push himself around.

Of course, there could be a wide range of reasons why it was a good idea to use this kind of transportation device with this young man. The thing is, I can’t help feeling it infantilises disabled young people: it is like they are still babies, only bigger. At least when I got my first wheelchair I could attempt to propel myself; the young man I noticed yesterday didn’t have that option, but would always be passively pushed from place to place. While I wouldn’t quite say I find that troubling, it nonetheless puts a slightly nasty taste in my mouth. Wheelchairs and powerchairs are something which you see adults using, but such enlarged buggies, however practical they may be, will always limit the person in them to the role of an infant.