To ask people with disabilities to explain what discrimination they have faced?

My disabilities are invisible.

Here are just a few things said or done to me.

You don't look deaf
I'm amazed that people would think I'm lying.

Talking to my back. Mumbling. Looking away mid sentence.

Being left out. Told never mind, I'll tell you later.

Shouting or drawing out words
CAAANN YOOUUU HEAARRR MEEE NOWWW

Oh hey I sign too,
While making random hand signs

You speak so well!
You can talk?!

So... you lipread

Do you drive?

Have you thought about getting an implant?

The school took all the class on swimming lessons and left my daughter behind at school, the worst part was they didn’t even tell me that she had swimming lessons or that they didn’t want to take her, I only found out because she came out of school one day crying about it.

When my autistic DS was in mainstream, another parent clearly didn’t want him in her DD’s class. She made a complaint to the school about DS attacking her DD in the playground. DS was off sick the day she claimed it happened.

People have made fun of my son’s vocal tics in the street.

Family members can’t be bothered to try to understand him when he speaks.

I could be here all day listing incidents like this and I know we’re not unique. In general, people are great but there are enough arseholes in the world to make things difficult.

@Sometimeswinning dc wasn’t even given a chance to fail before school had ruled they didn’t want him. The above happened almost immediately within the first two weeks. Members of the Sen team from the council weren’t allowed in and give any advice. We wanted our son to have a chance in our local mainstream school. We appreciated it might not work but he’d been in a mainstream nursery. The head said to me almost as soon as my son started that my son wouldn’t be attending his school in Year 1.

The experience was so poor we moved our son to another school and he now attends another mainstream school which has a Sen unit attached.

I recognise many of these as being actions for students who need to be excluded from the class because of their behaviour. Where does your dc go to school now?

I’m severely deaf. I had a lot of support in primary school but was pretty much chucked and left to my own devices in secondary.

Eventually, little too late, accommodations were made around GCSE time but I did struggle a lot with teachers. Especially ones who would turn around and write on the board whilst talking.

Or standing and holding a book over their face.

I need to lip read and I would tell the teachers that, and they would apologise and do it again.

Then they would get cross with me because “I wasn’t listening”. No. I couldn’t hear you. There’s a difference

When my dc attended a mainstream school for a year:

• Locked out the classroom with 1:1 when lessons were happening
• Shut in the classroom at lunch with 1:1 so not allowed by teachers into hall for lunch
• Wasn’t allowed to go on school trips unless I drove DC in my car even when I said I’d go on the bus with them

I have slight hearing and speech impairment. I am regularly referred to as a retard or mungo (I apologise for repeating those slurs) and sometimes by people I am related to. Often the butt of jokes I.e "speak up" "you talk too much" (usually when I am anxious I won't speak as much and they're trying to be funny 🙄) "oh there is chatterbox" (pointing at me, same arseholes trying to be funny! ). I've experienced this from family, former friends and also former colleagues. I guess some disabilities must be hilarious to see for those who have never had to live with them. Regardless of the shit, negative comments, I have had a successful career to date, travelled a fair bit, am financially stable, am working hard to get a first class degree at the end of the academic year and am fairly happy otherwise. I never explain this to anyone unwilling to hear me out. Fuck em, they're not worth me putting in the effort.

Sorry to other people who have to put up with this shit.

My son has been followed, manhandled, possessions stolen, girls from a neighbouring school trying to get him to take rude photos of them ( in full view of the security cameras we had to install privately because after more than forty separate reported incidents the Police's view was " why do you let him out of the house? (he was then 15)") our house targeted with stone and egg throwers, and his brother had cigarettes burned out on his leg for verbally defending him. This in a "nice" market town in the SE.
As a disability social worker, every one of my clients without exception had experienced multiple acts of abuse and discrimination just going about their daily lives.

When my child was diagnosed with ASD and we were in the meeting with his teacher and the ed psych the teacher said 'Oh today autism is in the news because of this [teenager in the news] who has autism who killed his neighbour. ''

Thank you for that contribution.

I have to attend parties with my child as he has anaphylactic allergies.

He also has ASD and struggles with social communication. I had the mother of another child call me after a play date and tell me that because he struggled with eye contact in her considered opinion he was a sociopath. Apparently she wanted to break it to me gently.