Disabled people are painters,
sculptors, athletes, footballers, writers, academics, company directors,
assembly workers, accountants, MPs, comedians, teachers, or unemployed.
Disabled people can be talented
or lazy, interesting or boring, it can be obvious they are disabled, or
they may have an invisible impairment.
Disabled people are individuals,
who are all different from each other. What they have in common, is that
sometimes people's attitudes, or the environment around them can act as
a barrier, that says 'you are not welcome here'.
If you hold a meeting about
Time in a building with steps and no lifts, you exclude a famous expert,
Professor Stephen Hawking.
If you send a fax to Stevie
Wonder or Andreas Boccelli, asking them to sing for charity, they wont
turn up - unless you send your information by tape or Braille.
If you decide that sport is
not safe for people who have epilepsy, you are saying goodbye to Tony
Greg, or Jonty Rhodes - Tony Greg was that rare phenomenon, an English
cricket captain who actually won the Ashes.
If you think that an illness
like M.E. means a person can't do much - look
at Claire Francis, best-selling novelist, and former round-the-world yachtswoman.
If you think it's okay to hold athletics events in venues with narrow doorways, steps, etc, because "after
all, they are athletes", think again: The country who came third
in the world in the ParaOlympics was the UK - some of Britain's greatest
athletes are wheelchair users.
Disabled people are just people, with all the talents and weaknesses that you have. We are disabled by the environment, or by the attitudes of others - so next time you are thinking about a public meeting, or a public building, or about talking to your disabled neighbour, try to make your attitude or your building more disability friendly, and find out what a person can do, not what you are stopping them from doing.