Are we woke to disability?

By Samantha Renke – Mon, 24 February 2020

The role of a disability activist is no easy task, promote equality, challenge the status quo, oppose discrimination and empower others to know their worth and have a better quality of life.

I often feel a great deal of frustration as a disability campaigner, battling so many hurdles and taking one step forward and four steps back or more accurately one roll forward and then the feeling of my wheelchair being pushed down a very steep hill with no brakes.

Samantha sitting in her wheelchair outside of a cocktail bar

The last few years have hit the disability community hard, with high levels of austerity affecting those that need help the most, even the tensions from Brexit and political instability impacting greatly on the urgency for a benefit reform and more investment in social care have taken a back seat with devastating consequences for many individuals.

I would at times, sit at home feeling defeated and ask myself what’s the point, will change ever come? Am I indeed fighting a losing battle which sees disability at the bottom of the agenda as it has been for eons?

I was once told by a friend and LQBTQ+ activist that disability hasn’t had its time yet, it’s not on-trend, not cool enough to be noticed by the masses and for real socio-political change to occur and to put it simply we have to wait our turn.

The mere notion of a sort of pecking order in relation to human rights and equality reminded me of post-war propaganda posters.

Its 2020 and aren’t we supposed to be ‘woke’ about everything? Yes, there’s that word ‘Woke’ Harry and Meghan brought it to our attention and apparently Laurence Fox won’t date anyone who is!

It’s human nature to focus on the negative, we are all guilty of ruminating on that one comment on Instagram from a disgruntled troll even when you have a plethora of positive and complimentary comments but the truth is change for the better is happening, not as fast as it should granted, everyone in 2020 should have the right to access a public bathroom or be able to apply for a job without fear of discrimination which still isn’t the case but I’ve noticed in my few years as a campaigner that disability is finally on people’s radars.

Credit needs to be given where credits due. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised at the disability pledge mentioned in the recent Queen’s speech claiming that the government wants to support disabled people in all aspects of their life including; housing, education, transport, and the benefits system, to be addressed in a green paper. (1)

The proof will certainly be in the pudding but with the Major of London already announcing a great initiative which sees cares and PAs travelling for free on public transport (2) which would directly help towards the extra costs disabled people face, standing at £583 per month we seem to be heading in the right direction (3)

When we talk about real change, we need to look at those gatekeepers, the individuals at the top pulling the strings. Change has often been stifled because, by and large, the ones at the top have for decades gone by have been upper-middle-class white men who have often had their own bias agenda.

We are however seeing a shift in who these gatekeepers are and what they stand for. The announcement of June Sarpong MBE appointed as BBC as director of creative diversity late last year was a victory in the battle to see a more diverse landscape on our television screens. There still runs a risk of minority bias amongst minority gatekeepers but Sarpong and the BBC seem to have already made a commitment to the disability community thus far. (5)

Even the presence of Paralympian Libby Clegg MBE (6) who has a visual impairment on prime time television show Dancing on Ice or Adam Pearson winning Celebrity Mastermind is an encouraging declaration that maybe broadcasters are becoming more ‘woke’ to disability and can finally stop tiptoeing around disabled people.

Issues such as housing, on the other hand, need to be urgently addressed and if the Queen’s speech is anything to go by, we may see a significant agenda to combat the housing crisis. (7) At the end of this new decade, one in five people in the UK will be aged 65 or over. The 85+ age group is the fastest-growing group and is set to double to 3.2 million by mid-2041. However, just 7% of English homes currently provide even the most basic accessibility features, according to the English Housing Survey. (8)

“The first step towards ensuring disabled people play an active part in our society, and can live independent lives, must be to tackle the severe lack of accessible homes. We hope that this decade marks a watershed moment, with new homes being built which are truly accessible to disabled and older people.

"Habinteg wants to see the accessible and adaptable standard (similar to the ‘Lifetime Homes’ standard) become the new mandatory baseline for all new homes.

'By ensuring this new baseline for all new homes, more older and disabled people would benefit in the decade ahead. - Sheron Carter CEO Habinteg

Our biggest challenge is awareness, if you aren't aware of the needs of the disabled community then you are only part of the problem.

We must, however, act now and wake up to the needs of the disabled community and our aging population. If we don’t, we will find ourselves in a dire situation that will have a domino effect on every part of society.

Invest in us, respect us, include us and the rewards will be tenfold, but don’t leave these changes too late, we've seen with climate change what happens when we rest on our laurels.

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