accessibility

I Will Not Be Drowned Out

I suppose, at the end of the day, I can see why they do it. I’m getting angrier and angrier about the apparent new wave of disability ‘influencer’, whose videos YouTube seems to be suggesting to me more and more. They are pretty much all female, talk clearly but use wheelchairs or powerchairs. The thing is, if they are indeed disabled, they have disabilities I’ve never come across before. Yet they seem to have now taken it upon themselves to advocate for the entire disabled community, as if it is suddenly up to them to tell the online world what life is like for disabled people?

Then again, wouldn’t you? Say you had a fairly tenuous link to a minority, but being a member of it not only gave you a right to things like welfare benefits and free public transport, but also the opportunity to become an online influencer in quite a niche but growing area. All you have to do was do your makeup and sit in your powerchair, making videos about wheelchair access to busses and accessible toilets. Never mind the fact that other members of that community have been trying to articulate precisely the same things for years, or that you only began identifying as a member of that group two or three years ago and clearly have very little actual experience of the issues you’re talking about; the fact that you are articulate, photogenic and have a decent cameraman means you can attract far more views than the people already in that area. Wouldn’t you try to emphasise your membership of that group and turn it into a living? After all, there are now countless influencers on YouTube, and they all need some kind of niche.

The thing is, they might not realise it, but in consciously choosing to identify as members of that community and presuming to speak on behalf of it, they drown out the voices which were already there. They presume to speak for people who would far rather speak for their selves. What such influencers are doing is patronising and insulting. That is why I am so upset about this phenomenon, and why I keep coming back to it on here. I am more than capable of telling the world about the barriers and hardships I face as a disabled man; I do not need some pretty bitch on YouTube talking over me!

Walking Frames Are Not Wheelchairs

This has happened two or three times now: I have waited absolutely ages for a bus, but when it eventually arrives, the wheelchair space is occupied,  not by another wheelchair or even a pram, but by a person sitting on a walking frame. I’m sure we all know the type of frame I mean: the kind increasingly being used by podgy people, pushed forward but which you can sit on. Such devices are clearly not wheelchairs, but at least twice now have prevented me getting onto a bus, the driver having judged that the person with the walker takes priority.

 Frankly, I’m becoming increasingly annoyed about this. Not only has it meant that I have been unable to get where I needed, but I frankly also suspect that it is symptomatic of something more concerning. I might be overreacting once again, but in letting such people take up the bus wheelchair space, they are effectively being told that they are just as disabled as actual wheelchair users. Or rather, it allows them to be seen as disabled by those around them. In other words, it plays into the cultural intrusion trend that I am so concerned about. It would be no problem for them to get up and sit on an ordinary bus seat, but allowing them to stay in the wheelchair space and take priority over an actual wheelchair user plays directly into their probably unconscious desire to be perceived as disabled.

I am convinced that this is a real and growing issue, and one I feel increasingly insulted by. The fact that it has started to mean that I have been unable to get onto buses perhaps means I should try to do something about it. If anything irritates me, it is people claiming to be something that they demonstrably aren’t, especially if it’s for any form of sociocultural collateral. Usurping cultural identities seems to be a perverse, growing trend; and the way that these women on their walking frames seemed to grin at me when the bus driver allowed them to stay where they were, suggests to me that this is a clear manifestation of it.

Another Example of Cultural Intrusion

Just to go back to what I was talking about a few days ago about this apparent new sort of disabled person, yesterday I came across this short film from Eliza Rain. I’ve been puzzling over Rain for a while now: a manual wheelchair user, she says she became disabled / started identifying as disabled in the last two or three years, but refuses to state what her disability is. However, she now seems to be quite a prolific Youtuber, uploading a video every couple of weeks. As she puts it, “I make content all about living in London with a disability including travel advice, tourist advice and just general disability good things along with a bit of fashion and fun sprinkled in there.”

In the video I’ve linked to, though, she is talking about prams taking up the wheelchair space on busses. Of course, that is a problem I encounter quite frequently. The trouble is, in this very short video, Rain goes way, way over the top, to the point where she becomes antagonistic and misleading. That is to say, her representation of mums with prams as bolshy bitches refusing to move goes way too far. They may often be reluctant and sigh loudly, and it may sometimes take the intervention of the driver, but in my experience they have always followed the rules and moved their pram to allow me onto the bus. I have never encountered the overt argumentative refusal Rain tries to depict.

It therefore seems to me that she is attempting to over-dramatise things to get attention. If she actually used busses as a wheelchair user, she would know that the vast, vast majority of times it isn’t a problem, leading me to strongly suspect that this is an experience she does not in fact have. Once again, someone is attempting to take ownership of the experiences of others for their own gain. No mums blatantly refuse to move their prams as depicted here; nor have they ever been so argumentative and insulting. Yet the way she presents it, it seems like Rain is the victim of overt intolerance and persecution.

Thus what troubles me about online content like this is, as someone with a congenital physical disability who had to go through things like special school, people who know nothing about experiences like mine are increasingly taking it upon themselves to speak for all disabled people. Miss Rain says she only became disabled a year or so ago, yet she brands herself as ‘Disabled Eliza’ and seeks to inform the entire online world about what it is like to have a disability. Forgive me, but I can’t help feeling offended, as if my sociopolitical voice and experiences are being increasingly hijacked or stolen by people who become disabled, or claim they do, then exploit their disabilities to become self-styled online influencers, despite knowing almost nothing of what me and my friends went and continue to go through.

Having spent over twenty years attempting to chronicle my experiences and thoughts for the online world, I bet anyone would be just as upset by this as I am. I am not trying to suggest Rain or anyone else is ‘faking’ their disability, but rather seising upon their impairment for cultural and political gain, and in so doing effectively usurping voices like my own. Yet I don’t want anybody to speak on my behalf: Surely it is up to guys like me to relate to the world what having a disability is like, including using the wheelchair space on busses; not someone for whom having a disability is seemingly just a means to attract hits on Youtube.

Cultural Intruder Alert

When I got up and turned the news on earlier, I came across something which I found fairly problematic. At about quarter to eight, BBC Breakfast ran an interview with a man called Dave Steele, the self-named ‘Blind Poet’. Steele had apparently become blind (or, more accurately, partially sighted) ten or eleven years ago, and was now writing poetry and publishing books about his experiences. What irked me about this wasn’t so much the fact that he was articulating his experiences, which of course he had a right to do, but that he now seemed to be presuming to speak for all disabled people. That is to say, since he began to loose his sight, he had taken it upon himself to become some sort of disabled people’s champion, as if it was now up to him to inform the rest of the world what it is like to have a disability.

I know I shouldn’t get so worked up about this, but I am coming across it more and more these days: otherwise fairly socially privileged people who happen to get a relatively minor disability, but then framing being disabled as a core aspect of their identity and presuming they are a leader of the disabled community. From his description, it sounded like Steele’s eyesight was only marginally worse than mine; but whereas I just put my glasses on and get on with life, he opted to churn out books of poetry about it and appear on breakfast TV as some kind of disabled people’s champion. More to the point, as a (presumably) straight, white, otherwise able bodied man who only started to become disabled a decade or so ago, Steele will frankly know very little of what life is like for someone with a significant congenital disability, from being bussed away to special school, to being constantly spoken to like you’re a five year old, to being mocked and laughed at on an almost daily basis by schoolchildren.

Thus for people like him to adopt such sociocultural positions, even taking their disability as their pen name along with the prefix ‘the’, as though they are the only one, feels like an imposition or encroachment of the worst kind. I don’t want to sound melodramatic or over the top, but it is like a white person finding out they have black great-great-grandparents, and assuming that they can speak on behalf of all Afro-Caribbean people and claiming to have endured racial discrimination all their life. As I say, this cultural intrusion is something I’m coming across more and more these days, not just with respect to disability: the voices of the most marginalised people in society are increasingly being usurped and stolen by people who know nothing of their experience. Being straight, white and able-bodied is now no longer politically cool, so people will do anything to emphasise things that render them members of marginalised groups. The problem is, in doing so they usurp the voices and steel the often brutal experiences of the actual members of such groups.

TfL Lifts Should Only Be For Wheelchair Users

After what happened today I’m seriously considering starting a campaign to make all the lifts on the London transport network strictly for wheelchair users only, or at least confined to people who strictly need them. It had started out as a pretty normal day: after seeing it flagged up on the breakfast news, I thought I would go up to Central London to check out the Qatari state visit. I took the Jubilee Line up there, getting off at green park. Predictably, however, I got there too late for all the festivities, so there was nothing left for me to do but head back.

Just to make things a little more interesting, I thought I would trundle to Westminster, take the Jubilee Line to Bond Street and from there get the Elizabeth Line to Woolwich. For some reason it impresses me that you can now transfer between the Jubilee and Elizabeth Lines at Bond Street without leaving the station.

It was there, though, that the problems started. As any Londoner probably knows, Bond Street is quite a complex station, with its labyrinth of tunnels, escalators and lifts. To be honest I find it rather fascinating how the engineers managed to merge the old and new parts of the station. This afternoon, however, when I attempted to use one of the older lifts, I found it was going very slowly indeed. Just as I was starting to think that I should have just gone straight home, it finally arrived, and I wheeled into it along with five or six perfectly able bodied people. Everything seemed to be fine, until we got to the required floor, and the lifts doors wouldn’t open. No matter how many times the button was pushed, the doors refused to open.

People gradually began to panic. After a few minutes one guy pressed the emergency button and spoke to the operator. She assured us that a maintenance guy was on his way, but nonetheless I was there stuck in a lift, getting more and more furious with the lazy p’tahks who surrounded me. If such lifts were only used by those of us who need them, they would probably all work perfectly well.

Obviously things were eventually resolved, and after about quarter of an hour the lift began working again. Truth be told things were never in much doubt; but the fact remains that the lifts on the TfL network are getting older and older, and the more they are used by people who are perfectly able to use stairs or escalators, the more likely they are to break down. Obviously there will need to be some exceptions, such as mums pushing prams, but if you ask me all lifts should be strictly reserved for those of us with no alternative. As with my grievance concerning prams occupying the wheelchair space on busses, it just seems so arrogant and self-centred. It is now clearly becoming so problematic that I feel I have to do something about it.