My sister just drove my chair into my bed which then hit my wall because my bed is also on wheels. A wall that is very poorly painted as I live in a council house. A wall which is damaged again.
It keeps happening.
The price of living in a wheelchair in a flat not properly designed for someone in a wheelchair is constant damage of the building in various ways. I know this. I’ve been a wheelchair user my whole life. And yet it still frustrates me.
I will get over the damage I know I will, I always do. I know that it’s not really important. But right now I’m angry with myself for being disabled. All I can think is this damage wouldn’t be happening if I wasn’t disabled. The internalised ableism is winning.
But I know in reality that the problem is the inaccessibility of housing for people in wheelchairs like myself. That without a lot of money, housing will always be inaccessible to me and I will always end up damaging it in one way or another.
I just wish it didn’t upset me every time. When I know it’s an inevitability I can do nothing about.
I don’t honestly believe in the need to manage screen time in the way, I believe most people view it. I think screen time should be more about what you do with technology rather than how long you spend on it
Technology has acted as a window for me to accessibility in an inaccessible world. so to limit how much time I spend using it, honestly seems bizarre. To me, it seems like I would be limiting how much time I spent in the real world, which I am aware, is the complete opposite to how most people see the situation where screen time and the related technology is concerned.
Now, as I write this, it might be obvious that I am thinking of technology as a mobile phone or a computer. and therefore pre-labelling screen time as meaning time spent on such devices, using social media specifically. As social media has definitely been my biggest window to the world. I personally level criticisms at the way people use social media as opposed to the platforms themselves, but this is a point of written about previously and something to save for a further post.
I make this point, purely as I want to make it clear that I’m aware that screen time can refer to things other than social media and the use of mobile phones and computers. it can also refer to, and often does refer to watching TV or perhaps listening to music. Again, if this is something you enjoy, I don’t believe it is something you should limit yourself to a certain time period. Why should your joy be limited by other peoples perceptions of it?
No, I make such statements of somebody who is able to make my own decision in the world and free use of technology. As somebody who understands what others might say, I would ‘be giving’ up in order to spend my time using technology. In other words, I’m fully aware what I could be doing instead of spending my time looking at his screen, others may not be. By others, I mean young children, not simply somebody you disagree with, people can spend their time, however, like whether you like it or not. Children are however a different story.
It is my firm belief that children should be given access to as many different things as possible throughout their childhood. This includes social media and other sometimes tabooed websites, when children have been educated correctly on their use and safety, as well as other screen focused technology. I don’t agree with banning use of any type of technology with appropriate considerations. In fact in modern society, given how prevalent the use of technology, and the Internet is, I actually think doing this would be cruel.
I could write about this topic forever, but I should get back to the initial question asked.
I don’t actively manage my screen time, I don’t see any need to. I live my life as close to the way I want to, as I can, and don’t listen to arbitrary faults the people place within it.
And to anyone reading this, you think I should be limiting or at least monitoring and managing my screen time in someway, I say this. Make the world accessible first, and then we will talk.
This climate, this post was written using both a screen and voice to text. I apologies for any mistakes in it that may affect the clarity of this post, please do let me know if and we change any such mistakes.
If you ask me the greatest, and most dangerous, thing about the internet is the range of what you can do on it.
The beauty of the internet is that you can do anything you want on it.
It’s hard for me to say what my favourite websites are, but I would have to say it’s probably those that connect me with others or help to access the world. Social media, like Facebook or Instagram, apps like Google and Google Maps are a god send for accessibility and independent travel.
The world is incredible inaccessibility, in ways I don’t really notice as I am simply so used to live in it. But the internet helps me find my way through it and make it more accessible.
So you may recall my post from late last week exploring (all be it briefly) a night out with my family. At the end of the night, one of the people outside of my immediate family that was present helped to get me into bed.
While they were helping me, it did not bother me as I knew that I needed their help at the time. I even let them have a go in my wheelchair and hoist. Any OTs that stumble across my blog, you did not read that last sentence.
In the days which followed, I began to feel guilty about the way they had to help me, even though they were the one to offer to help me.
Sometimes I wonder if the guilt of needing help will ever leave me alone you know. I don’t think needing help is bad of course, but sometimes the reality of just what I need help with is hard.
However I will still take the help which is an improvement from the complete avoidance, which is where I used to be at with needing help from outside my immediate family. In other words, I would just insist that I didn’t need the help, because of who it was coming from. At least now the guilt comes later, and it doesn’t prevent me from getting the help I need.
Remember you deserve the help you need, no matter how you feel about it. Your feelings can lie to you.
Someone made me feel bad today because something I do for my own health in the most accessible way for me isn’t the best for the environment.
It’s a common argument that we should all be doing what’s best for the environment, and to judge those who appear not to be. And while this is true, we need to remember that this looks different for everyone. And the inaccessibility of the world around us can often make disabled people seem like they don’t care due to what they need to do to live their lives.
This is your reminder not to feel guilty for the things you do which makes a very inaccessible world more accessible to you.
Also remember that those who do the most damage to the environment are greedy and looking for money, not accessibility.
Do you ever get that feeling where you feel so much you don’t know what you feel?
I’m not particularly feeling bad. Just overwhelmed.
I just had a realisation that I’m disabled, which if you know me will no doubt seem weird. But doing something differently seemed to help me, and I’m not sure how exactly to feel about that. I’m not one to like to do things differently.
As I believe I have said on here before, social media is one of the ways that I had been able to make the world accessible to me. For this reason I hate when people start making blanket complaints about social media being bad, when in my experience it can do so much good. I truly believe that the problem lies in the way social media is used, by others. not in the social media platforms themselves.
Right now however I am locked out of my Facebook, which in a way feels like I am locked out of the part of the world, part of my world. Facebook safety security or something like that, as denied me access to an account I have had my whole life.
I’m a currently hoping my account can be recovered. But right now I feel like some of the most important people in my life, are no longer within my reach.
So I guess this is just a message to say, don’t judge what people use social media for, don’t judge how someone accesses the world, don’t judge a life you don’t understand. And don’t judge a technology, just because some of the people using it are bad.
So today I had a visit from someone to find me some kind of different seating to spend some of my time in, as it isn’t good to spend all your time in the same chair. And she suggested w few other adaptations which could benefit my sister in the home.
I feel a little guilty, because while she was focusing on my sister in some areas, I was almost completely focused on myself, and how what is being suggested will also be beneficial to me.
The way I see it it’s more important that this place works for me than it does my sister. As I’m unlikely to ever move, however this option is open to my sister should she choose to take it.
So I am being selfish, I think, a little. But I have to be. Everywhere else inaccessible to me, I have a right to focus on myself first, on where I live being accessible to me. I shouldn’t feel guilty about that, and yet I do.
That said, what’s been proposed will help, both of us. So that’s good. And my sister seems to understand why I’m being selfish in my thought process here which is even better.
I also struggled with the extent to which the conversation discussed what I need from her, but that’s something else that I don’t really want to think about right now.
I’m trying to deal with all this while also organising the rest of my life, the organisation of which is not up to me. As aell as dealing with the few elements of my life that are within my control. So let’s just say there’s a lot going on right now.
Are there things you try to practice daily to live a more sustainable lifestyle?
This isn’t as simple as it might seem when you’re disabled.
A lot of sustainability seems to ignore accessibility. Straws are a brilliant example of this.
In the grand scheme of using less plastic, not using plastic straws only saves about 0.025% of the plastic being used.
Image Description: Two pink and white straws sticking out of a green drink.
While saving any plastic is obviously good, the importance of not using plastic straws was blown out of proportion, as if it could change the planet. I don’t know if you saw the campaign?
But straws are an accessibility aid to others. There are to me. And paper straws which are often the replacement for plastic straws currently, are not as good of an accessibility aid for lots of people as plastic straws. They break easily so people need more, people can have allergic reactions to metal which is sometimes used instead, or straws may not be available at a venue altogether.
And I often forget until I use them, just how much I benefit from using them. Which is perhaps some form of internalised ableism, in convincing myself that I don’t need to use a straw. Or maybe it’s the difficulty of having to clean plastic straws, which is part of the thought process involved in my carrying one.
The same applies to reusable cups. I want to use them. But reusable cups need to be given to the person filling them clean, and it’s not always possible for me as a disabled person to clean them in between.
But anyway, the point of this post is don’t judge people who can’t act sustainability. They might want to, but it simply might not be a possibility.
I actually started this post at the beginning of the month, well I wrote the title at least. As the title suggests this was when I brought myself a new mobility aid. A phone holder. But I wanted to give myself some time to get used to this new accessibility aid, so that I could be sure I would actually find it helpful to me, before I wrote about it.
In the interest of transparency, I have since bought myself a better version of the one I had originally bought. Though in my previous post I talked about my use of an old Accessibility Aid being just as useful as something new. It is equally sometimes important to afford yourself something new if you think that it is going to help you.
I have to say that all in all this is one of the most helpful things I have afforded myself in a while. A simple piece of technology that holds my phone in various positions. Has made using my phone, which is a lifeline to accessibility and freedom in the world for me, a lot easier.
You can find the newer one I bought here, in case you think you might benefit from having it yourself.
But this post isn’t really about how good one new specific accessibility aid is for me. It is more about how socially difficult I found using a new accessibility aid.
I was worried that I would feel more disabled and for a while, I did for using a new aid. Society’s ableism is so strong that I as a full-time wheelchair user who is obviously disabled, worried about how disabled I would be perceived by the rest of society. The ableism of society is so strong that it can and often does lead to feelings of interlanised ableism. Where disabled people would rather suffer than appear more disabled to the rest of the world. But I decided to do my best to let these feelings go and give something that might help me a try. And it turns out it did.
I have felt this feeling several times throughout my life, with using a sling full time and having a permanent catheter placement to name just a few. Both of these massively improved the way I live my life. But my reluctant to use them in the beginning due to societies ablesim created many problems for me at the time. Avoiding the catheter specifically lead to me having anesthesia many times, that could have been avoided if I had gone straight for the permanent catheter. In other words I am saying that societies ableism was strong enough for me to choose surgery. Don’t underestimate how powerful ableism is, and how much harm it can do to a person.
But the point of this post is to say that I got over those feelings with time, and by putting myself first. And in every instance, my life was dramatically improved. So I guess this is just to say if it helps you, then you should use it. And if you think it may help you, then there is no harm in giving it a go. You will eventually become used to using it and more comfortable with yourself. Ultimately if you need it, use it. I know it’s not that simple in the moment. But future you will thank passed you for it.
My Inaccessible Life 