As I have said, I have Covid, and it’s weird to say the least. But I don’t want to make this post about Covid.
As I write this post as 2am I realise not for the first time in my life, that it can be incredibly frustrating to have your brain awake when the rest of the world is asleep. I want to do things now, that I can’t do until morning, but I can’t do them now, and in the morning I know doing what I need to do will cause me a lot of anxiety.
I’m aware this post doesn’t make a lot of sense, and I apologies for that. I don’t really want to explain myself right now, physically, I’m just to tired to write the length of post required to make this make sense. I could say that I will explain this when I have the energy, but there’s a few problems with that.
The first is that it really isn’t exciting, it’s just adulting. The second is I don’t know when I will have the physical energy to write a post long enough to explain this, I’m struggling writing this one. And the third is that by the time I have the energy to do this, I will probably forget to write about it anyway.
I apologies for the state of this blog right now, and these posts.
So, I have tried several times to expand my writing by having a separate blog for it, but it just doesn’t seem to take, not in the way that this blog has worked for me. So, I have decided to add a section to this blog, just for my general writing.
The writing in this section is not going to be specifically disability, inaccessibility or writing prompt related.
It will just be pieces on a range of topics I want to write about, or I am inspired to write about, potentially writing prompts from other places on the internet. Honestly, I haven’t really decided where I am going with this as of yet.
All I can tell you for now, is that I love to write. More than that sometimes-writing feels like the only thing I can do in life, maybe because I can write independently, I don’t know. What I do know is I really don’t want to lose my passion for writing. I really want it to become something more in my life, one way or another. And maybe this blog, that seems to be doing something for me personally, is the way to do that.
Wish me luck with this endeavour, as I say I have failed at it more than once, so I feel like I need it.
If you have any suggestions, or any areas you would like me to write on, let me know.
Voice to text is a wonderful tool, that in case you don’t know allows you to produce text from your speech though what ever microphone you have on the device you are using.
It is a tool which allows the production of text without the use of hands, and while it can simply be a tool that makes writing easier for some, it can be a necessary tool to enable writing for others.
For me it is a tool I occasionally use, when I want to write but I’m to tired to physically write. That is the main reason I use it. But occasionally I have to use it because I simply cannot reach the keyboard because of my little doggy Bella who has decided to sit in my way and who I don’t want to make move. I’ve included a picture of this below.
Image Description: A picture of the of my dog, the head has been cropped a brown caviler king charles resting on a laptop with a brown blanket underneath.
So voice to text does have it other uses. Like letting your dog sit where they want to.
But occasionally speech to text isn’t very accurate, and for that reason some of my posts or comments may not make total sense. This would depend on whether I find myself able at the time to reread and edit the text produced by voice to text. Most of the times I will, but sometimes I may not.
So please keep this in mind, not only for my blog, but for anything that you might read. Mistakes in texts may be present for a variety of reasons and the author may or may not be aware of them or able to fix them.
My best piece of advice would be if a mistake prevents you from understanding the text it is best to inform the author, but if it doesn’t perhaps think twice if you need to or not.
While I’ve been posting less on here, as I’ve been very busy, I’ve still been continuing my Facebook campaign which sparked this blog. As I try to get back into this blog they’re a few updates I want to share with you about this, and I will try to do so in the next few days. Bare with me though please.
As for the luck of this blog the blue black grounds I previously used for the post have become more difficult to add from my phone, so I’ve decided to stop doing these. That said if this in any way makes anything I post less accessible to anyone please let me know as I will figure something out.
Thanks for sticking with me, more subject specific update will come tomorrow 🙂.
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.
My Inaccessible Life 