Just did a Disability Equality Training Day

[needmorecoffee]

was very interesting and a decent lunch

what a disappointing posst. where is the account of all they got wrong

it was run by a fantastic woman who has CP and is very active in the disability rights movement.
Came out ready to bop anyone who makes a disablist comment
But I am now fully versed in the social model vs the medical model and know the difference between disability and impairment. so ner.
And apparently you shouldn't use the term 'people with disabilities', its 'disabled people'

eh

I thought the whole point of saying 'people with disabilities' was so not to define them by their disabilities? Can you explain?

so did I. But apparently you are 'disabled' by society not your impairment so you are a 'disabled person'. But you can be a 'person with an impairment', 'a person with cerebral paplsy' etc etc
Technically I said, even if you say the disability bit is society (attitides, barriers etc etc) you still are a 'person with disabilities', those disabilities being steps, attitudes etc etc
it got a bit nit-picky after that.
I also argued that an impairment can be disabling but they disagreed. You can do anything you want regardless of your impairment.
What if you have no brain - I know a 13 yo with so little brain matter the docs don't know he is alive so he can't see/hear/think etc etc.
So 'people with disabilities' is not right but 'person with CP' or 'people with CP' is ok.
sigh.
I reckon i must spend half my life with my foot in my mouth!

I'm more with here which offers a critique of the rigidity of the social model which does its utmost to ignore the body itself and has become very extreme. This article talks about a more balanced appraoch as used by Canadian and US actvists.

"You can do anything you want regardless of your impairment."

Er, I'm visually impaired, I can't drive but I want to That's really interesting though, thanks for posting

thats what I said. Disability isn't just barriers imposed by society, your impairment does limit you.
Its like feminism, you do have to admit a difference in how people are, its not just society.
But it was an interesting day and we learned that while the DDA is a great law, its toothless cos the individual must take a business to court, like who has the time and money for that?

sorry bit late to this but.......
what piffle(not you NMC)
dd is not disabled by steps, she is disabled by the fact that she can't walk.

Oh pfft.

While being (of course) passionately in favour of disability rights, I am thoroughly pissed off by a certain sort of person in the disability rights movement. Someone with full use of their faculties and highly articulate who just happens to have a set of wheels, genuinely thinking that they have some divine right to tell us all about disability when 9 10ths of the things that word encompasses they couldn't even imagine, let alone represent and campaign for. Yes, the issues she is talking about are real and important. But as far as I'm concerned she's missed the bullet and she can FECK OFF bending the entire disability agenda to suit her small set of needs.

DD1 can sort of walk. She can't be allowed to walk because she'd fall straight under a car. Nor can she communicate, copy, feed herself, play, laugh, etc. etc. etc. This is because SHE is disabled. Telling me that is society's problem, not hers, is out of the same barrel of shite as telling me she ought to be "included" in a mainstream school. And thousands of kids every year are failed my mainstream schools because the disability agenda has been hijacked by idiots like this who can't see beyond their own circumstances.

I'm baffled by the term "disabled people", as my brain works in pictures, so I get a picture of something that's disabled i.e. not working, e.g. a car that's had its wheels taken off...then I get a picture of a person. It makes it look like the whole person is not working. "Person with a disability" makes a picture of a person where only one thing isn't working, not all of them.

The social model only works for some disabilities, I think. It works fairly well for mine, since most of the problems I've had have been linked to social expectations and exclusions, but society doesn't make me fall off bikes or not be able to swim or be unable to cope with particular sensations. Society doesn't stop son from not being able to find anything in a dictionary or online research or not be able to put thoughts down in a sensible order.

The disability movement is dominated by the non-leraning disabled.
But they do point out that if all barriers were removed things would be easier - and barriers also mean lack of suitable support, not just physical barriers, and other poeple's attitudes.
She did get us to list everything that affects a disabled person in society - lack of money, steps, neighbours being mean, unsuitable schools, no braille books, bullies, lack of support, lack of carers, and not one thing was a person's impairment which was interesting.
Lucky, like with the feminsit agenda when you couldn't even own up to PMT, new debate is coming in the Holy Grail of 'the social model' is being modified. Probably all political movements go through this.
I'm guessing the social model was a backlash against the medical model which is also wrong. We aren't just our disabilities and its not just our disabilities that disabled us.
Things always find a middle ground but the disability rights movement is relatively young and the social model did serve to get disabled people seen as poeple first.
I do find steps disabling. They prevent me doing something. If they weren't there, I wouldn't be prevented. My disability doesn't stop me getting into a shop, the steps do. But my disability does stop me becoming a firewoman
I did make several points about learning disabilities - there were a few poeple with LD's in the room so I pointed out I was talking about people with no understanding of the world outside their heads but I don't think she got my point. Unfortunately there is a bit of reaction against non-disabled parents/carers by some in the disability rights movement. Mainly cos they have been treated badly by parents who subscribe to the medical view of 'normalising at all cost' but I think thats much less common nowadays. Most parents accept their kids for who they are and do their best to include them as far as possible as part of society (until they come up against societies barriers).
But I think the opinions of the severe learning disabled (and I'd include low functioning autism in this, as well as anencephaly etc etc) are missing. Partly because if you can't talk or understand no-one knows what is going on inside your head and partly because even disabled people have some issues about LD'.s

Its an ongoing thing and I think parents of those with LD's need to be part of it on behalf of their kids. Like stopping the closure of all special schools. Inclusion is a great idea but there are those it will never work for and they need proper suportive schools.
So get political