Problem #1 - Lack of Education

Most people are not malicious, or deliberately predudiced against disabled people. Most businesses and organisations do not actually want to exclude anyone... Yet it is all to easy for an able bodied person to "not think" about the countless number of ways in which their every-day decisions can impact people with disabilities they've never even heard of. It is not their fault that they are unaware... they are simply living thier lives the best they know how never intending to hurt a flea. Most able bodied people don't actually know any disabled people... and even fewer know several, and even fewer than that have taken the trouble to ask about their condition and the ways in which it effects every hour of their lives!

the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) was supposed to have changed all that. Yet apart from occasional short slot at the end of TV and Radio news programs (which you may well have missed anyway) very little publicity about the ways in which disabled people are forced to live second class lives is available to the public at large. Consider what it would be like if everyone wearing jeans was forced to walk in the road instead of on the pavement. Consider how unfair it would be if people with brown eyes were not allowed into parks - and if only red-heads and university teachers were allowed in pubs. Is it really any fairer that someone who relies on a perfectly legal invalid carriage for personal mobility be denied access to the beach, parks, countryside walks?

Many disabled people will never again be able to skip up a kerb out of the way of an on-coming car. they simply cannot race up a hill or roll back down... but what they should be able to do at the very least is make full and unrestricted use of the thousands of miles of existing footpaths without let or hinderance from unsurmountable physical barriers placed there by those in positions of authority who simply haven't realised the extent to which they are limiting the recreational persuits of the disabled population.

And that is what this campaign is all about... as a disabled person myself I know only too well the thousands of activities I will never be able to partake in again... but I also know the activities in which I could partake if only we could persuade the powers that be that my persuit of a full and active life is not going to bankrupt anyone or lead to civil war. I am simply a chap with an electric scooter where my legs should be and there's nothing I'd like better than to enjoy countryside walks alongside my able bodied companions.

the question that faces you and everyone else is this... am I and my kind worth going a little out of your way for? If I was your father or brother or son, wouldn't you be just thrilled to bits to see me out in the fresh air enjoying myself instead of being cooped up at home slowly going crazy and degenerating into a mean and bitter old man?... One day, someone you love might find themselves in the same position as I... and when they do - my only hope would be that you would move heaven and earth to rid their world entirely of pointless physical barriers that prevent them enjoying what remnants of health they still have to the full.

Colin

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Equal Access Campaign

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