I’m supposed to say my wheelchair, right?

On 10th Feb 202410th Feb 2024 By Katy DalyIn Blog, My Disability Truth, Writing PromptsLeave a comment

The most important invention in your lifetime is…

So I’m going to answer this question in terms of what invention I feel has had the most important impact on me personally. Not necessarily the most important global or social invention of my time. Basically I’m not doing any research, I’m just answering the question based on my life.

If you looked at me now, you’d think this was the most logically answer. And while I am grateful for the invention of the wheelchair, and in my case particularly the electric wheelchair, there are in fact other more important inventions to me.

I don’t think I’d be answering this question properly if I didn’t consider the inventions that undoubtably saved my life when I was born. Like many with my condition I was born extremely prematurely and should’ve died. So a small nod to the inventions that are the reason I’m alive.

Then it’s important to remember the ones you’re more likely to see me in, my electric wheelchair. There’s my electric bed and air mattress that I need to sleep, as well as my electric blanket which has to be the best pain killer for me personally. My comfy chair which just gives me somewhere else to sit and my shower chair, which I hope by the title is self-explanatory. Then you’ve got to remember the hoist, that gets me from a, to b, to c and sometimes d.

But the ones that I feel are the most important thing to me are those like the mobile phone, the internet, the computer. Now I know this sounds very millennial of me, if I’m getting the terminology correct. And someone’s somewhere is going to judge me for my reliance on the internet. But just remember where you’re reading this blog.

The internet, social media and the technology that exists to use them on. Provides me access and inclusion to the world around me in a way my wheelchair cannot do in such an inaccessible world. Steps do not exist on the internet.

I know social media gets a bad reputation and I understand why. But I always say it’s the way people use technology, not the technology that it is bad. While this doesn’t apply to things like guns which don’t have a good use. It applies to things like knives which clearly do, and in the case of this post, social media.

Social media lets me be the me I wish I could be in the real world. It lets me meet new people near and far, and learn all about them. It lets me keep in touch with people, that would be even more difficult to do without social media due to my lack of mobility. The internet truly is a wonder. And phones can do so much, provide so much access beyond what I use them for.

Inventions truly are a wonder. They can often be used by people in ways the person who invented them likely never imaged. They are never to be underestimated.

Honestly I don’t

On 9th Nov 2023 By Katy DalyIn Blog, Writing PromptsLeave a comment

How do you manage screen time for yourself?

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.

Depends what I’m looking for

On 5th Nov 2023 By Katy DalyIn Blog, Writing PromptsLeave a comment

What are your favorite websites?

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.

I don’t know.

On 14th Oct 2023 By Katy DalyIn Blog, My Disability Truth, My WritingLeave a comment

When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?

I really wish I had a better for this question, but I just don’t.

I want to say it maybe it’s the first time I made a phone call, and I didn’t even ask my dad if he would do it for me. Phone calls are always something I have struggled with, thank you very much anxiety for that one.

Maybe it was the first night I spent in my own flat, though that just seems like a cliche, and honestly as I write this I can’t even remember it.

Maybe it’s the first time I got lost, and didn’t need to call my parents to get home again. In fact I have to say that didn’t cross my mind.

It’s weird being a disabled adult, having grown up as I disabled person. At least in my experience, you are told one day you’ll be an adult and be able to do what you want whenever you want, while constantly being reminded that you’ll always need help from others.

It’s bizarre to know that there are some people in the world that will never see me as an adult, just because of my disability. To be in situations where people still look to my sister or whoever else I am with, before me.

To know that no one expects me to be a proper adult. That the idea of being seen as one is inaccessible to me. And while you might see the term, a proper adult’ and think it is nothing more than a social construct. You are right, but so is an adult and adulthood, and I promise you the idea of proper adult is just as real as the idea of any adult. Take it from someone who has to fight to be seen as either, who the world still wants to see as a child. Adulthood feels inaccessible.

It’s extremely difficult to know that the only way I’m going go be seen as adult is by believing I can be one and therefore acting like one. While at the same time definitely not feeling like an adult. No one but me is pushing me to be a proper adult, and that makes it hard to be anything close to an adult sometimes. Honestly no one would care if I stopped trying to be seen like an adult. So I have to care.

That said, I don’t know if I’ll ever truly believe I’m an adult. For that matter, does anyone? Do you, whoever you may be reading this, believe you’re an adult? Do you think that you’re own belief in whether or not you’re an adult, effects whether you are treated like an adult? Proving that you yourself are not from a infantilised minority, like those who are disabled, I can’t see how it would, but I would be interested to know.

I don’t know if I’ll ever truly believe I’m an adult. But I know that I owe it myself now and to my younger self to try to believe it. To act like an adult, so I’m treated like an adult. To act like a fully formed person, so others see my value as one.

Was it Shakespeare that said “all the world’s a stage”? That is a genuine question, don’t be mad at me but I really can’t be bothered to look that up right now. But I think what that means is that everything’s an act, that everyone is acting. That everyone is pretending to know what they’re doing in life. When really none of us know anything at all.

So maybe we’re all just secretly children pretending to be adults. I know I feel that way most of the time. But my life has taught me that it’s more important for some of us to be better actors, to perform on stage better, than others. Though maybe if we’re all aware that we’re acting, there might just be a little less stage fright.

The more I post, the less legalities matter.

On 4th May 2023 By Katy DalyIn Blog2 Comments

So as I’ve said I’ve been posting online about issues of pavement access inaccessibility and poor parking. But the my post the more people seem less concerned with the law that I used to back the things I say in the posts and often the things I post about. Apparently if you simply have an opinion people don’t like, whether it is backed up by law doesn’t matter.

Today I posted about a vehicle parked in a bus stop. Vehicles parks in bus stops restrict access for the bus to park close enough to the curb so that’s a ramp can be used by those who need it. It is also generally not allowed by any vehicle except for in specific circumstances legally speaking. After posting this vehicle alert that they were apparently part of a company that maintains bus stops. However I could not find anything that legally supported that vehicles right to park there, as long as the bus stop was still in use, witch it obviously was as at the time I was waiting for a bus.

Despite supporting my post with research and doing further research when questioned. Many people think me having a different opinion and perspective on the issue makes me wrong, despite the fact I am able to support mine with evidence and they can’t.

It is just interesting to me that no matter how much I back up my opinion, legally or with other valid sources. There are people that will still think I’m wrong because of a social acceptance of a matter.

For example if I post an obvious working vehicle the assumption is that they have the right to block access, restrict a pavement or park inconsiderably are even illegally, simply because they maybe working. I would like to add that I’ve never knownly posted the vehicle of someone who is obviously working in the moment in which I post it.

If something is accessible it is inaccessible it is inacessible whatever your reason maybe for making it inaccessible. And the law is the law.

Frankly if you think I’m wrong for following or asking about a law on something I don’t really care about your opinion on the matter.

Resulted to this is something I may talk about at a later date. Someone once questioned why I was so interested in the law, and suggested that I might be Autistic because of it. I honestly found this very offensive but it is something to return to in a different post.

My Inaccessible Life

Tag: Facebook

I don’t know.