Social media is full of parents asking for different treaent in so many different situations simply because they are parents. And while not everyone agrees with them, many do.
Many in society, or at least on social media, believe parents are some how special. That the choice to have children comes with a deserved entitlement. So long as I live in a world that refused to grant me equity, this belief will always confuse and frustrate me.
I don’t understand why special treatment for a choice is supported.
I get it, being a parent is hard. But this is a choice you make, for often more selfish reasons than you are willing to admit. My point is parenthood is not selfless. It is a choice and people seem to want special treatment because they made that choice. And I am portrayed as a horrible person for believing they shouldn’t have it. That no one should have special treatment until we all have equity. Equity is more important than special treatment. Especially if you want special treatment for a decision you made.
I’m aware this isn’t specifically accessibility or inacessiblity related. But I think it speaks to the social opinion of accessibility. That we’d give different treatment to people based on the choice they made before we’d give equitable treatment to disabled people.
Pictured above is one of the comments left on one of my recent posts regarding accessibility. Below is a Tiktok hilighting all the posts that I have done over a 12 day period in my local Facebook which specifically highlight issues I have had in accessibility.
This shows how many times I can apparently raise a very real issue in a short period of time, before people actually start to ask if I am making it up.
As if they cannot fathom how serious it all truly is, how regularly this all happens.
Obviously I am not making any of this up. I am not infact going out of my way to find content to post about. I thought I would be able to post about this for a bit longer, before I had to defend the validity of what I am trying to do.
In fact my posts bring light to only the dangerous inaccessibilities or inaccessiblity which result in me having to change my route or plan for the day.
If I decided to post every instance of inaccessiblity that I face in a day, I would probably never stop posting.
But this is apparently the limit of what people can take when an issue they’re not used to or one that doesn’t effect them is hilighted.
When I arrived at my puppy training class today with my little girl there was no car blocking the pavement, there were however bins that I could get round.
However even I returned this car had parked near the bins, meaning I was no longer able to get around.
Technically this car didn’t block the pavement, however because of what was already already on the pavement where this car had parked made the pavement in passable and inacessible to me independently.
Though my sister was able to help me in this situation. Alone with the dog this would have been a lot more difficult if not impossible for me to deal with.
Someone sent me unsolicited advice on Facebook, in which they called me Narsastic and said I need to get over the issues I have been posting about online. This advice suggested that I move, a very ablenormative suggestion. As if I could just move to an area that would be better accessible to me. It’s not that simple. But this is not the point of this entry.
In the comments of the post, someone told me that I was making the issues bigger than they are. That there were often times that I could and should simply take more risks.
It is not up to someone else to decide what risks I should take to access the world I live in. Ultimately I should not have to take any risks at all. And if I feel a risk is to great I will not be shamed for not taking it.
The consequences of the same decision for me can be widely different to the consequences of someone else making the same decision, even if it may not appear so. This doesn’t matter if the person is disabled or not. Only they know there own risks.
I have to be careful that I do not risk a fall. The mere possiblity of a fall early in the week increased my pain for two days. A fall could cause serious pain and damage. Maybe I could take the risk, maybe I would be fine, but that’s my decision to make and not anyone else’s. I am the one that has to deal with the consequences of a risk going wrong.
Yes I’m scared of falling because if I fall I’m the one that gets hurt. I’m the one that has to deal with the consequences. Not some random commenter on Facebook that doesn’t understand my situation.
Risks are not objective. One persons safe passage is not anothers. It’s up to individual people to access there risks.
You do not always understand the risk that someone is taking. And you certainly don’t understand the risk that I am taking navigating the world. Your advice isn’t asked for or wanted. Until you’re taking the risk yourself you don’t get a say.
So this event happened a week ago. After a day out shopping I came home to find a street near my home, a main street, which also happens to have a cemetery on, had the pavements almost completely blocked by cars. As you can see in the video, I found crossing the road at the crossing very risky due to a car actually being parked on the crossing. So I attempted to go down the street, passing all the cars while doing as little damage as possible, to the point where I couldn’t. This pooh was a pole. A normal obstacle on the pavement that without the cars wouldn’t have caused an obstruction to me, but it did. So I had to turn back, and attempt getting back passed the cars without causing any more damage to the cars or damaging my chair. I then attempted the crossing despite the risk.
As I have said, the street is very near to my home and I know it well. Therefore I know that going the other direction would not only have taken roughly 20minutes to get back to the same position on the other side of the road, but would have also posed it’s own dangers to me. I don’t often used that side of the road, until after the crossing that I attempted to cross at, apart from when the bus drops off there.
I know my usual routes well, for a reason. It’s a necessity of existing in this inacessible world. Were I to go back up the road on the side I was on, I would be going against my usual routes. One route that I did that I did know, as it is part of a different route for a different task, was to go down that road. As I attempted to. My back up plan was blocked.
I was able to deal with this situation with the help of my sister, but I am really not sure this is something I could have dealt with on my own. I found this a very overwhelming situation.
Now at the time I posted this to my social media platforms, and while I had a lot of support, many people were insisting that I had to give the people leway as this was clearly an important event. A funeral. And while I recognise that, and I did at the time. I had to remind everyone that I am still disabled when life events happen.
Another interesting note is that a funeral took place today, and the pavements weren’t blocked. So this isn’t an excuse to block pavements, the blocking of pavements does not happen every time a funeral takes place. It is not a necessary and unavoidable part of a funeral. It is simply careless, and not thinking of others.
Others still matter, regardless of the event. I am still disabled regardless of the fact that this is someones funeral.
As a disabled person, I am always the one expected to be aware of others situation. As if I am always in the way I should try to limit the impact I have on other people. This translates to me not wanting to be in other peoples way, which is something I subconsciously try to do in my daily life. I am now actively trying to do the opposite.
To me, accepting that the rest of the world has valid reasons such as funerals to not include me, is purpetuating ablesim. And I don’t expect the world to change around me. But I’m done being quite about the fact that it won’t.
I deserve to exist. I deserve my place in this word. And I deserve access to the rest of the word, regardless of what is going on within it. I deserve to matter.
I deserve to be able to go out, without risking my safety and on this occasion possibly my life, to simply get home again.
So this one is a problem I don’t really know how to solve, and I hold my hands up for this one, that I am also part of the problem. Bins on the street, during bin day, alter the path and mean that someone who is unable to move the bin has to find an alternative route. This is what happened to me while walking the dogs this morning. Now as I have two dogs, I was walking them with my sister, but if I was doing so alone, this would have been an extremely complicated situation, that I don’t think I could deal with.
Now I know that bins have to be put out on the street, in order to collected. And that’s why this one isn’t such an easy problem to solve. I’m aware the whole bin collection service isn’t going to put peoples bins back into there gardens, or pick them up if they are not on the street. But these bins coupled with rubbish that often liters the street, overgrown bushes and tree routes, and the cars that shouldn’t be parked on the pavement. Make everything very inaccessible to me.
I understand that bins on the street can be annoying to everyone, but just because a problem is a problem to everyone, does not mean it is the same problem to everyone.
Something needs to be done, I don’t know what that is, but something.
The world is inaccessible enough, having to remember when bin day is, is just something extra I don’t need. It just isn’t fair that I have to make these kinds of choices when I go out. Simply because people do not want to make things a little bit harder for themselves. You will also see, if you watch the video that there was glass on the ground, and food is on the ground. These are things that are dangerous to both able bodied and disabled people as well as pets. Another obstruction that is not often considered that often effects pavements, is the way tree roots and other plants grow and become an obstruction. Again this is often a problem for most people, but it is more of a problem for those with mobility difficulties.
If you have mobility difficulties, getting off the pavement when there is an obstruction on it, is not always simple. Particularly if you are in a wheelchair. I also have to consider how I’m going to get both off then on the pavement, by this I mean where the drop down curb is and whether it is being obstructed by a car. This is sometimes the case.
There is something wrong with the way we treat the pavements, the lack of care we pay to them, and this results in dangerous situation.
Please remember that your actions have consequences that are sometimes a lot bigger than you might realise. I know that bin day does not have an easy solution, but please do your best, if you can to get your bins in as soon as possible after they have been emptied. And please do not park on pavements, while this is not illegal in itself, obstructing pavements is a fineable offence, within the UK. Parking on the drop down curbs on the pavements is illegal.
If you see an obstruction on the pavement and you can safely move it, you should, you never know if you’d be making someone’s life a lot easy.
Please watch the Tiktok video to better understand the situation that I faced this morning.
Over the past several days I have been posting on various social media platforms about the different experiences I have been having in my local area. Someone advised me to start a blog so that is what I am doing.
I have had a lot of backlash with the way I have been sharing my experiences, but the reality is, the things I have shared and will share, happen to me whether I choose to share them or not. So I am going to share them or not, whether people like that or not.
Some of these posts will refer to events that happened a short while ago, as they were initially posted to my social media. I will try to post as close to the events taking place as I can.
So this evening started with me needing to go on the road again due to cars on pavements, getting caught on the pavement and becoming stuck briefly, but luckily being able to free myself. After which I had to travel down side streets and round a bend on the road in the dark, due to further cars.
Discovering a broken lift at a tram stop and a step free and lift free alternative enterance that was inaccessible to me. I then had to cross a busy road multiple times. On the final time I hit a pothole in the middle of the road crossing, which by some miracle didn’t throw me out of my chiar. At which point I was helped across the road by a cyclist while I waited for my sister to come and help me get home. Hoping I would still make it back for carers.
While waiting for my sister I was teary and angry about the whole situation as my evening had been ruined and I worried I wouldn’t make it home for my care call. I was on the phone to my boyfriend, when several strangers stopped to check I was okay.
After my sister found me, she got me home safely and my carers were able to come late so I am comfortably in bed.
Thank you to everyone who helped me this evening, especially my sister for rescuing me and my mum
who I believe was looking after me. She is the reason I have a 6 wheel wheelchair not a 4 wheel one, 6 wheels are much more stable and I believe the 4 wheel would have certainly tipped on the pothole. I don’t know what would have happened then.
Thank you to my boyfriend for proving the emotional support I needed and my dad for being there for me.
Also thank you to all the kind people I did not know for there help.
Hoping Metrolink repair their lift soon and someone discovers a way to remove tree roots. As well as someone filling in dangerous potholes.
My journey this evening should have taken 30mins it took me 2hrs and 30mins because of various forms of inaccessibility that could have been avoided with a little thought.
The videos to the left explain the evening in more detail. And the pictures below show Google maps photos of the pothole that I believe I nearly fell in.
Thanks again to everyone for ensuring I am home and safe.
My Inaccessible Life 