So I’m going to do my best to explain the advantage wheelchair post from Friday, forgive me though as its taken a couple of days.

As I believe I said I went to a concert on Friday, one which was nicely accessible but had some key elements of inaccessibility, as these things often do. There was also ableism present, which had some good and bad consequences during the evening.

I have to start with the fact that I could get in the building be a major win for accessibility. This is not always a certainly, but I of course checked this out beforehand so was not surprised. The surprising part came when they allowed us to skip the entire queue. Which is obviously not equity, but if anyone wants to be disabled to take this one perk, I’ll swap.

We were then able to be near the front, leading to a great experience. Now my view was obscured a little but I knew it would be. I chose not to go on the accessibility platform and that’s the price of that decision. Its just the way it is, equality of equity, costs.

Now on to the ice cream. Earlier that day before the concert I went to go see someone close to me and I was given free ice cream by someone they know. They thought they were doing something nice, and I won’t lie the ice cream was nice. But the ableism of them giving me the ice cream was weird.

While it was nice to get upfront at the concert and the ice cream wss nice. I would have had a perfectly good time at the concert if I had the exact same access and treatment as everyone else, and I can pay for my own ice cream.

I also hope that a day will come where I won’t have to check if I can get into a building.