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

[Givenuptotally]

Two horrific threads on disabilities this week. Can I ask any disabled person reading this to name and explain the discrimination they experience on a day to day basis? What are your experiences? I really do feel that so many need their eyes opening to what people with disabilities face.

My son has a disability. When diagnosed, his teacher refused to do additional training to be able to effectively support him. Many parents of children with the same condition end up having to attend school discos or residentials so their child gets the same experience as other children.

Kienbocks?!

Dd 15 has a chromosomal abnormality which affects her bone growth and causes her a lot of pain. But to most people she looks ‘normal’

We had a teacher tell her it was her own fault she couldn’t get to her lesson.
The school put half her classes upstairs when they know she can’t climb stairs.

endless twatty school boys on the bus who refuse to move from the disabled seats and tell her she is faking.
The bus driver who refused to tell them to shift with ‘nothing I can do about it love’

And there is a special place in hell for the dr last week who told us that she is only in pain because she is angry!
No she is angry because she is in pain and not getting any help from you!

If I can have another bite at the cherry:

Access ramps.
Because measuring your stairs and buying a ramp for the exact same length as your stairs isn't an access ramp. Neither is some wobbly homemade wooden contraption that's minus a slip resistant surface. A foot of ramp for an inch of rise is generally the accepted angle. And a decent slip resistant surface so I know it's not going to turn into a cresta run if it's wet/icy is always appreciated.

If you cant walk down a 45 degree angle on something that's imminently collapsible or slippery then surprise, surprise neither can I.

@DuckWithOneWing

That's it! If I say kienbocks people normally have no idea what I'm on about!

Have DS with Aspergers and dyslexia. School was an awful experience. One pathetic incident was him being prevented from attending a paid for after school French club by the teacher saying she was no longer running the sessions so we wouldn’t return. So unnecessary, my other DS was a model pupil and DS with ASD would often spend the lesson with me at the back of the room looking out the window…awful behaviour. No meltdowns, no shouting, just not joining in. She was getting two class fees. Still can’t understand why she lied to my face like that. I could understand if DS had been screaming or hitting.

Now experiencing the discrimination and token efforts at inclusion while job hunting for someone with ASD. He has a good set of GCSEs, not fab A-levels but good for a level three apprenticeship. He had interview with a large company beginning with V which bangs on about being inclusive. No effort/ method for reasonable adjustments at interview stage. Telephone interview which he struggled with as with social communication difficulties being an issue removing the visual element made it impossible. Rejected with cut and paste feedback.

Other applications ask for people to call to discuss reasonable adjustments, great for discussing physical ones, rather hard when communication is hard. Or forms stating they are proud to be inclusive of all races, religions, sexual orientation and disabilities etc but leave off disability the actual list when they want to ascertain what protected characteristic you have. Then nothing about reasonable adjustments, so not that interested in inclusion.

The level of disinterest and lack of thought from companies has caught me out. All this rubbish before he even gets a paid job. Volunteer work is all he can get.

Woohoo! We're twins! I had a PRC though, not a fusion.

Being asked continuously if I’m up to a job / being asked for a medical certificate to prove I am. I’m more than capable of knowing what I can and can’t do.

I don't have a physical disability but my mum was severely disabled and these posts are giving me the rage 😢.

Our local train station only now has an access ramp to both platforms BUT you can only buy tickets on one side and you arrive at the opposite platform you need to cross over the bridge with stairs or take the long way around which is an extra 10 mins walk for an able bodied person due to the location. Even just as a pushchair user this makes we want to scream.

Not me, but my Nan who passed away a few years ago. I helped care for her, mainly taking her shopping every week. She was in a wheelchair. She was utterly invisible, the amount of times women’s handbags would just smack in her face as they walked past her shocked me and I was a very shouty person for a little while. Also things like getting in lifts - no fucker will let you go first and even push in front of you if you take more than a nanosecond to take the breaks off the chair for example.

Dont get me started on disabled toilets and bloody radar keys

@Pinkandpurplehairedlady its so demeaning isn’t it. And pointless. Like once you get a medical issue you become somehow untrustworthy, and assumes that any non-disabled person would be up to the task without having a third party prove it.

I got told on a thread on here months ago that I couldn't have a professional job because I had autism.

Also that I shouldn't use wet wipes on days when I'm having a bad day and should have a complicated cloth washing arrangement over my sink so that I didn't personally murder the whole of the environment.

@DuckWithOneWing

Yay! But not yay because it's absolute crap at times! I don't feel so alone now! Did it work for you? I don't think they ever offered me PRC, I had it fused 12 years ago.

So my list is fairly endless really, so including but not limited to :

I didn't have great or receptive parents and siblings was made to feel crap about myself in the family home
Bullied throughout high school, and even had teachers as well as pupils openly question my right to be there at what was a (mainstream) failing comprehensive, so it wasn't like I was receiving some spectacular education anyway. It is interesting that they didn't question they were entitled to an education they felt I was unentitled to.
I also had someone in uni, when you would hope for people to be adult, question why I had not gone to one for "people like me"

At high school in particular, the PE teacher singled me out for weekly ritual humiliations til she left at the end of Year 9

So the "you don't belong here" narrative started for me at aged 9 ish and has never stopped.

I suffer from the age old problem of people speaking to me like I'm a 3 year old they've just given a balloon.

OTT saccharine voiced, out of the ark nonsense which was being challenged by activism in the Eighties and people still fucking do it.

I have had so many carers say how much they have learned about societal barriers both physical and social just by being stood next to me and seeing what happens.

Random people I don't know thinking they can comment as they like.

Three separate occasions in shops I have been directly asked if I understood the price, and if I could afford it. The last time was when I prepaid for a course of treatment at a salon. Every time I attended it was made clear to me that I was not the sort of clientele they were looking for, my money, apparently was not as good as others.

Endlessly, endlessly, across settings the person with me being asked questions that should be directed at me, the last person to do this was a minority too, so should have known better. It also weirdly seems to happen a lot in healthcare settings

Was once told to my face that the charity I'd applied to for a job would never employ me due to my speech. I really should have taken them to court for outright breach of the Equality Act but I'd been involved as a volunteer for years and this rejection absolutely destroyed my mental health. I don't doubt that my impairments have also seen me be rejected for other jobs but that's the only one I can prove.

I have had endless problems with bus drivers speaking to me like a pain in the arse, and the occasional but not that often jostling for space.
Train drivers fine, but I once got a train for someone else in the carriage to start shouting Benefits at me, just that, the word Benefits, on its own. Taxi drivers make it clear they don't want to take me, and act like they are doing me a favour, even though I'm paying them. On a London visit, I had at least 3 taxis refuse me service by just driving off. I hate getting taxis so much now that I recently motored along about 60 mins in the rain, because it was preferable.

And that @Givenuptotally is the tip of a very big iceberg

and @WiddlinDiddlin - I absolutely hear you on the accessible toilets that aren't big enough to get a wheelchair in issue. I once asked for one to be opened only to find a drunk man lying on the floor

I've had comments about "everyone gets tired, it's normal" from my supervisor when I was working or "you're just a bit tired, have an esspresso or two and you'll be fine". This was pre-wheelchair. I wasn't "just tired", I have ME/CFS, my energy level is at 50% of the average person on a brilliant day. On a more normal day, it's at 25% and by the time I'd got up, had a shower, got ready for work, had breakfast and taken the dog to daycare, I was at around 5%. None of that was normal, but you can't phone in sick with "I'm out of energy" in the NHS.

I'm now in a wheelchair as my condition deteriorated. I knew life was shit as a wheelchair user, but it's worse than I imagined. I've had people just grab the back of the wheelchair to "help" me. No, grabbing the back of my chair and pushing me when I'm wheeling myself is not in the slightest bit helpful. On one occasion, it ended with me almost being pushed into a busy road. No apology from the pushee, just a "I was only being helpful!"
I've been ignored in shops by staff, been spoken to by staff and random people like I'm a five year old. I've been asked where my carer is and why I'm out alone. I've been conversely told I'm "brave" for going out alone.
The last one I'm almost tempted to turn on the random person by telling them they must be so brave to venture out walking.
I've been told that wheelchair users shouldn't work or that I can't work because I'm in a wheelchair. No, you just don't have the imagination to figure out how the job could be done by a wheelchair user. I can guarantee the wheelchair user could tell you if you asked.

So much!

The fact that I get excited when a venue has a 'changing places' just shows how inaccessible most places are.

Having people rage when I park in a disabled spot without even looking for the blue badge (because I'm a young woman and apparently only those over the age of 70 should have a blue badge!). Got out of the car once in a multistory and saw a parking attendant clock me parking in a disabled bay and come running down from a different level to check for a blue badge. Said nothing to me, but when he saw that I did in fact have one, stared me out until I left the building! I find people really want to find a reason to be indignant.

To have my child's SEN team refuse to make reasonable adjustments for me in meetings. These are the people who truly believe that only children can be neurodivergent.

I can shrug most of these off when they're aimed at me, but when my disabled child gets it, I get all mama bear and don't back down. Kids can be horrible to those who look or act different, but I wish their parents would react appropriately. Having teenagers mock a disabled 3 year old's stims is pretty damn low.

Last week I sobbed my heart out because a little girl in the park started playing with my DS and she didn't treat him any differently at all. But then her gran decided she shouldn't be playing with 'that boy' and tore her away 😢. Thankfully I don't think my son understood what happened, but he was upset that the little girl stopped playing with him as he was having loads of fun.

I've started to become a bit of a recluse as I just can't take people's hatred and bitchyness anymore.

Too many and big hugs and sympathy to all pp.

On a slightly lighter note...very few disabled toilets (those without drunk men, half the shops backroom, cleaning supplies etc) VERY few have mirrors.
As a vain disabled person I am really agrivated by this every single time.

I have albinism, so have visibly white skin and poor eye sight. We moved houses when I just turned four and my parents started me in the local village primary. I was bullied horrifically over the three weeks I was there and the school called my parents and said they’d have to remove me as they couldn’t guarantee my safety.

Growing up we’d go on holiday and we’d have other families pulling their kids away from us as they thought we must be contagious. even now as a 39 year old adult I get some awful comments out in public, particularly when I’m wearing the large dark glasses I have to manage glare.

work has been very mixed. My bosses are incredibly supportive of me, but sometimes it feels like such a battle to get reasonable accommodations through our processes at work. For example I have the two lights above my assigned desk in our open plan office turned off. On more than one occasion I’ve come in to find the lights turned on again - at one point two of our exec directors got up on chairs and taped cardboard over the light while we were waiting for facilities to come and turn them off again!

I know I’m really lucky to have such a supportive team but I’ve had a number of incidents at work where I could have been seriously injured because care wasn’t taken, for example for a while we had tape marking the edges of one set of stairs and the facilities took the tape off just the top step. If I hadn’t already grabbed the handrail I could have been badly hurt from that fall.

The council were my worst employers, I couldn't attend meetings, ironically on disability, because they chose building with no lifts and put the meetings on the 1st floor.

I lost my job whilst in the cardiac unit related to disability, they told me it was because I'd had too much time off but put the leaving criteria as no funding to get round it. I had no rights it was my word against theirs and I'd been there a year.

I've been declined by supermarkets because I can't shelf stack, as I'm unable to manual handle, but could work on tills fine and inheritance employees do tills only.

I was declined progression on inpatient wards with the excuse I couldn't restrain a patient but no one taught me or would take the time to adapt it safely. People are working on these wards who do not restrain.

The job centre employee refused to put me on JSA as they felt "no one will want you in that state you're better off on DSl".

I was pulled up at work for taking too long to go to the toilet when the disabled toilet was on the ground floor and the lift was out of order, other employees had access to several toilets on the same floor as the office. Similarly for lunch there was no reasonable adjustment to let me get out the building to get lunch and return and eat it like everyone else.

I was refused a job because I turned up to interview on crutches which was part of my disability they felt it didn't fit with the department despite being an equal opportunity employer. The interview was held upstairs with no lift.

My employer forced me to put a poster up on the office wall explaining what to do if I had an episode of my [hidden] disability. This was after an eight month struggle with OH to have my long term, incurable condition recognised as a disability.

Reasonable adjustments were refused. I had only asked for no lone working so that I could do my job safely and not find myself having an episode while working one to one with a service user, which was embarrassing for me and quite scary for them. All I got out of my employer was the suggestion that I should consider wearing a scarf in the winter.

I went sick for four months with something else and when I asked to go back to work, they dispensed with my services.

I had worked in this university department for nearly ten years.The university is publicly proud of its commitment to equality and diversity.

@LoveMyCats1 That is very interesting as Jet2 was the airline we flew with also. I also heard a member of staff say 'is it just me or do most kids these days seem to have autism or adhd' and laugh then walk off! We certainly will not be flying with them again.

Like life isn't hard enough having a disability then people or their children have to face horrible discrimination aswell.

😞 this makes me so cross.. things are steadily improving but still not perfect

Hearing here but my colleagues are deaf... so many times people will say to an interpreter or myself, can you tell them or not even look at the person they should be talking too.... Lots of eye rolling happens

My current manager at work (don't worry I leave in 3 weeks time) told me I can't be "that disabled" because I can get to the toilet using my walking frame when my husband is at work.

Was actually speechless and was one of the reasons i am leaving.

Similar experiences to others. Whilst investigating me, initally every conversation with a Dr began with "its beause you are overweight...". It took being diagnosed with MS to be told that actually its the damage causing the pain not anything else.

I hate going to park in a disabled place to find them all taken with people who dont have a disabled badge. "I was only there for a minute" yes, but that means I cant access the building next to it and have to go home or elsewhere. Its discrimination pure and simple.

Parking my mobility scooter up out of the way to access the small disabled toilet at a gig (Nottingham Arena!) and an able bodied person gets to it first without a care if anyone else was making their way. And yes I do realise she could have had an invisible disability but it made my life a bit harder. I realise now, I should have driven to the door and parked right next to it despite there being no where safe to leave it.

Most recently I went a large sporting event and used a rented mobility scooter. I had to send a long complaint afterwards due to the following issues:

1. Tickets for the disabled viewing area cost but werent always checked so was overfull and those of us who had paid the extra struggled to use it.
2. The ramp for the disabled viewing area was next to the main entrance and exit. As I was trying to exit, a woman decided to stop and chat to her friend in front of me. I managed to avoid driving into her but still hit her bag, and I was then treated to a stream of abuse about how dare I hit her bag. Not at all concerned that she had blocked my route and I had only just avoided hitting her.
3. There were many shopping stands, some were on the flat or had a ramp and could easily be accessed but others involved a step up, which is difficult for me, but impossble to those permantly in a chair.
4. The terrain is countryside, and disabled are given no assistance as to safer routes to take, just left to find their own way, and I often found the camber too steep and had to turn back and find other routes. The main disabled car park itself is on quite a steep camber at the bottom.
5. The whole thing made me realise how lucky I am not to be full time wheelchair user yet as I never felt so invisible, many people just stopping in front of me, or walking across my path and expecting me to stop, or just not seeing me as I was not at their height.

I got thrown out of a tourist attraction after a woman complained it was unfair I was allowed in with my rollator when she wasn't allowed to take a pram in. I sued them and won.