Oh I’m quite well aware. When I said office settings, I should have been clearer and said firms of solicitors, I was a paralegal for over 12 years and cut my teeth on discrimination cases and later on disease claims and closed head injury claims so for my part I have met a lot of people with a variety of disabilities, closed head injury is a nasty, indiscriminate, almost ironic bitch, trust me, “foodie are you, see how you get on with no sense of taste or smell”, “oh you like to dance do you …” it’s a hard thing to have something snatched away.
So yes I’m also well aware of the publications and pamphlets and ‘helpful’ information and the ever changing list of terminology that some feel is necessary when discussing people with disabilities … but oddly not any other group of people. It’s that need for appropriate terms that irks me, we’re all just a bunch of people, capable of some things but not others, muddling along and doing the best we can.
The simple fact is that if a person using a wheelchair can’t access a building or an area within a building then neither can parent with a buggy. Nobody runs seminars for the parent or tries to find another name other than parent, even though they’re just as excluded.
It wasn’t even a month ago I stood in the middle of an aisle in tesco with a man in a wheelchair, the pair of us in stitches because while I’d been bent over he had asked me for something off the top shelf … all 5.2" and naff all use for high things that is me. Nope I can’t get round a supermarket without help either:)
I suppose my point is that it’s just this need for terms or the misguided notion that we the able (there really is a need for a universally sarcastic font here) are trying to make the world a better place for the less able … and we’re trying to be as sensitive as possible about it by using floaty names and terms that only succeed in causing even more confusion about something that really should and could be quite simple.
Simply put, we all benefit from better design and the implementation of basic common sense and good manners.
Start by asking a person their name, the one they were given and using that instead of a name that a group of people likely agreed to be the best of a bad bunch, rather than good because none of them are good, that’s why they change and are “improved” so frequently.
I’m sorry but the need for terminology will always be something that I find a bit mad and pointless, and oddly doing more harm than good which obviously isn’t the intention. Just as an example I regularly see a queue for the wheelchair accessible toilet that goes something like, mother with young son, father with young daughter, woman with trolley full of paid for shopping, man in wheelchair, woman with pram … you get the picture. Now if it was a disabled toilet rather than a toilet big enough for a wheelchair/trolley/buggy, then the man in the wheelchair wouldn’t have to queue. It’s hard explaining myself in print, I suppose all I’m really trying to say is that you can exclude people which is obviously wrong and a bad thing, you can give them the things they need in order to use the space the same as everyone else but you need to be very direct about who those additional facilities are for which obviously draws attention and highlights the disability or you can be completely inclusive which, going by the example I’ve given seems to be a step back, inclusive rather than helpful.
Any terminology used needs to be very very clear, no fuzzy easily misinterpreted edges and if the public as a whole need to be educated in what the terminology means then it isn’t clear, plain and simple. At the minute we seem to be floating toward a situation where we have a disabled toilet but we won’t call it a disabled toilet, we’ll call it a wheelchair accessible toilet so that nobody gets offended and then we’ll send out a load of pamphlets educating the masses that the disabled toilet that isn’t called a disabled toilet shouldn’t be used by anyone who isn’t disabled … it’s so british, so avoiding the elephant in the room and frankly so condescending and derogatory that anyone who thinks that changing the names and then teaching everyone that they’re just new shinier versions of the old names is a good idea needs a good shake.
Lastly though, one thing every solicitor I’ve known would agree on is that all of those unintentional discrimination claims would disappear if people just spoke to each other a bit more. Simply piping up “look I’m lost here, tell me what you need/want and we’ll sort it out” or “listen I know you’re trying your best but it would really help me/I’d really appreciate it if …” would end sooo many problems that all the literature in the world can’t help.