This is the former British Lion Gareth Thomas, who is something of a high-profile player (ninth highest ever test try scorer) even if at 35, he is presumably coming towards the end of his professional career.

I don’t think anything more positive (or negative) about Gareth for this. Basically, if he was playing for my team, I’d support him. If he was playing against my team, I’d want him to play badly. His sexuality has — as he himself says — got buggerall to do with the sport…

“I just happen to be gay,” he added. “It’s irrelevant.”Gareth Thomas, quoted on BBC News

I don’t want to praise Gareth for coming out, simply because the idea that he has to be brave in order to come out rather demonstrates that we still expect ingrained homophobia in professional sport. But perhaps we are wrong to expect this, as can be demonstrated from the reaction he encountered from some team-mates:

“But they came in, patted me on the back and said: ‘We don’t care. Why didn’t you tell us before?’ Two of my best mates in rugby didn’t even blink an eyelid.” Gareth Thomas, quoted on BBC News

Perhaps we are finally growing up after all. I’d like to think any other homosexual player in professional football would receive the same response from their team mates and — with luck — from the terraces, although I think you might need a few idiots ejected from grounds first.

And if that wasn’t a big enough sporting revelation for one day, it also transpires that Newcastle’s manager, Chris Hughton, was formerly a columnist for the newspaper of the British Workers Revolutionary Party. No, that isn’t a joke.

In his youth at Spurs, he used to write a weekly football column for The News Line, the paper of the British Workers Revolutionary Party, although he says that this was because a mate of his asked him to, and he wasn’t really bothered about politics, just liked the idea of having his own column. Yeah, and the fact that he seems to have introduced a kind of a workers’ collective at Newcastle for making decisions is entirely coincidental, is it Chris …

I knew there was something I liked about him…

Also, the few I have actually read tend to be crap, and I’ve been publicly scathing about them from time to time (although generally polite to the people they have originated from). It’s always possible that this is just down to me being a bad-tempered so-and-so as well. But while I find it easy to ignore the ones which don’t interest me (I might read the bad jokes, I will skip ‘inspirational messages’), I find it impossible to ignore the ones which are told as truth but are actually full of racist bullshit.

The Infidel Papers

There was a diatribe called ‘The Uncomfortable Definition of an Infidel’ which describes how a prison officer attended his annual training session for maintaining his security clearance as a prison officer, where he had to sit and attend a presentation by preachers from the Protestant, Muslim and Roman Catholic faiths, and basically it turned out that according the the Muslim preacher, every good Muslim should kill anyone who wasn’t a Muslim.

The message was from a John Harrison MBE, and contained the tag line ‘this happened in London’, and closed by saying:

Everyone in the U.K. should be required to read this, but with the current political paralysis, tolerant justice system, liberal media and p.c. madness, there is no way this will be widely publicised.

Anyone reading that message, and accepting everything at face value, would presume feel a little more uncomfortable about Islam, see it as an intolerant religion incapable of coexisting peacefully with other religions. Maybe we should be asking the question “why hasn’t this been widely publicised”? Isn’t it something everyone should know about?

Well, no. Because it’s all bollocks. A big fat racist lie.

Firstly, while I’m quite happy to believe that members of the prison service may be required to attend diversity seminars, I fail to understand how a diversity seminar is necessary for them to maintain their security clearance, nor why a diversity seminar would include two Christian preachers, one Muslim preacher, and no representatives of Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism or Atheism.

Secondly, there’s the matter of John Harrison MBE. Wondering how and why a prison officer got an MBE, I looked him up, to discover that he’s not actually a prison officer at all, it would appear that he’s a photographer. And, more than that, he’s actually gone to the trouble to explain on his site that the whole thing has nothing to do with him:

There’s a link on his site which says ‘click here if you have received an email from John Harrison ref. religion’, which then goes on to say:

An e-mail purporting to be from John Harrison MBE is currently circulating following the release of the New Years Honours list, this e-mail is in no way associated with John Harrison MBE of Harrison Photography.

But he’s just the John Harrison MBE that it is most easy to find, he wasn’t actually the John Harrison MBE MIDSc referenced by the article. This one is:

John Harrison, MBE. MIDSc. 2006 saw John’s 50th year in the health service having worked in military and civilian hospitals around the world. He has been heavily involved with training and became
a member of the Institute of Training and Development as well as continuing as a full time sterile services manager, currently at The North Hampshire Hospitals NHS Trust.November 07 issue of ‘Medical Device Decontamination’

Only it didn’t have anything to do with him either.

Right. So if the details about the seminar are incorrect, and the details about the author are also incorrect, should we not then begin to treat the rest of the message with a little less respect — and maybe a bit more contempt?

If anyone actually bothered to try and corroborate the details in any way shape or form, then as well as discovering that the details and the author or incorrect, they would find that this has been circulating around the internet for about four years and is an editorial written by someone from a Christian ministry, purportedly about his experience at a prison in Missouri (so look, the location was a load of bollocks as well). Only it would appear that he wasn’t telling the truth exactly:

the event described was a training program for prison volunteers, for which ministers from several faiths were invited to give presentations in order to acquaint prison volunteers with the varied religious beliefs of the inmate population. The man who gave the presentation about Islam was not a Muslim minister; he was an inmate pressed into service [...] Mr. Kniest, the prison’s Volunteer Coordinator said that “The inmate did a good job,” adding, “He was asked a few questions that were beyond his ability to answer. But he was not asked anything like that question [in the editorial]“snopes.com

And as snopes.com points out, if you cherry-pick your points from the Bible, you can find references suggesting that anyone who works on a Saturday should be put to death (Exodus 35:2). But of course the minister would ignore the bits from his Holy Book which suggests Christianity may be intolerant, and instead invent stories relating to another religion suggesting instead that they are intolerant.

That’s hardly what I call Christian behaviour. But then again, I’m not a bigot.

And what worries me is that people see this as plausible, as if the majority of muslims worldwide are somehow hiding the secret that really, all of them want to kill all of the rest of us. Fortunately, when I pointed this out to the person who had sent it to me, they quickly realised that they had been taken in and that it was indeed a load of bollocks (and took the time to assure me that they were not indeed a racist — which I already knew, although some degree of piss-taking for having fallen for such obvious racist crap without any checking may indeed be in order).

But that is really the thing that worries me: not that there are racist bigots out of there, pumping these sorts of stories out by email, but the fact that ordinary people are doing their work by believing them and then forwarding this poisonous crap on to everyone else. Whether I’m going a bit far by describing this as everyday racism I don’t know, but I think there’s certainly at least some element of this in the matter — would people have been so quick to believe a similar sort of nonsense relating to baby-eating Catholics?

Not only do we, as members of society, have a responsibility to correct this sort of garbage when we hear it (it isn’t really that hard to check, if you’ve got an internet connection and understand how a search engine works) but the media also need to take their share of the blame for promoting negative attitudes towards Islam.

And the media seem happy to promote the idea that Islam is something we should be worried about:

Counting the Mohammeds

Just look at the Telegraph from yesterday (HT to @antonvowl for bringing this article to my attention):

The ONS was criticised for treating the various spellings of Mohammed as different names. It only published the top 100 names for each sex which meant figures were only released for three variations of Mohammed. Mohammed was placed 16th with 3,423, Muhammad 37th with 2,068 and Mohammad 65th with 1,100.

Figures for five other alternative spellings – Muhammed (496), Mohamed (428), Mohamad (40), Muhamed (11) and Mohammod (10) – were later released to the Daily Telegraph. That made a total of 7,576 and put Mohammed and its alternative spellings ahead of the official second place name, Oliver, of whom there were 7,413. There were 8,007 Jacks.

Telegraph: Jack pips Mohammed to be most popular boys name

The Office of National Statistics is accused of being disingenuous by not lumping all the ‘Mohammed’ names together. Presumably therefore the Telegraph would expect ‘Jack’ and ‘John’ to be added together? And certainly all Bills, Williams, Wills and Liams would need to be added together, would they not? After all, they are just variations of the same name also, aren’t they?

And if you add Billy, William and Liam together, you get 8,824, making William (and variants) the most popular boys name, more than 800 ahead of Jack (or only about 10 ahead if you count ‘John’ in with Jack), and a comfortable 1250 or so ahead of the entire combination of Mohammed variants (and don’t take my word for it: check the stats yourself (xls)). But for some reason the Telegraph don’t seem to mention this…

Or is it just that the Telegraph wants to add the Islamic names together to generate a little bit of scaremongering about Islam? After all, what is there for the ONS to be disingenuous about? It’s not as though there would be a problem if the most popular boys’ name was Mohammed, would there be?

Or is it just that we are being conditioned to believe that there’s some sort of problem with Islam? Who wants us to think this — and why? Is it just to sell papers? Frankly, I’d expect better from the broadsheets, but maybe I’m just a romantic.

And if you’re going to go on about traditional “British” names, please take note: unless you’re prepared to change your name to (or name your children) Egbert, Æthelwulf, Oswald or Cœnwulf, then you’re just using the usurping Christian names yourself and you’re not exactly following the British “tradition” either.

Bloody Normans. They come over here with their Domesday Books and their fucking tapestries…

Blogging against Disablism Day for me isn’t just about writing your own post, it’s also about reading what other people have to say, accepting I won’t necessarily agree with all of it, I won’t necessarily like the writing in some of it, but still an interest in what other people think and experience. From previous years, I know there will be some gems to be found in there, and if you don’t go looking for them, you will never know what you’ve been missing.

So to make it easier for those of you who aren’t prepared to go reading through the official Blogging Against Disablism Day 2009 post in order to find out what everyone else has to say (or maybe you just like reading the ‘review’ posts), I’m going to offer you up a selection of the ones I liked the best. Although at the rate I’m finding them, this is liable to be about half of the posts…

The first BADD post I read was a personal account from Bad Cripple which still makes me smile: someone standing up for themselves is always a good thing, although the point is they shouldn’t have to — not everyone would have the courage to do this.

There’s Linguanaut, who found the RNIB unhelpful as he has one ‘good’ eye, and points out that speaking more loudly to him does not, no matter how often people try it, improve his eyesight. He also (and not surprisingly, given the name of the blog) has a small look at language, which always interests me. However, on the down side, he includes Order-Order and Ian Dale’s diary in his blogroll…

There’s a personal journey from SpeEd Change which highlights the way that homogenised treatment and expectations can actually single out disabled people. Similarly, something which was obviously intensely personal produced this; sad but beautiful in its simplicity:

There’s a word for that kind of thing … when a newborn is treated as another pending, tragic statistic because her genetic diagnosis arrives before she does

What Sorts of People…

There’s The Iron Chicken who describe ‘A Convenient Myth’ — if everything is inaccessible, disabled people can’t go anywhere, so people don’t see as many disabled people, so it’s assumed that not many people are disabled, so there’s no need for accessibility. This is also illustrated by another post from Radio Clare which highlights how some people want people with disabilities to be hidden away from the rest of us, just so nobody gets offended (and also references “political correctness gone mad!”, hurrah!), and who also demonstrates that not only is she non-disablist, she’s managed to overcome her own prejudices and is also now non-beardist, and non-glassesist.

Wheelchair Dancer tells us to piss on pity, a phrase which I must alliteratively describe as pithy. The Goldfish extends this, describing a personal journey that everyone is different in a variety of respects and she no more needs to feel obliged to explain her impairments or her thoughts around disability to society at large than anyone else should feel obliged to explain why they are gay, or straight, or have chosen to dye their hair.

This actually reminds me of one of the few things I learned from an equalities course once. We all know to treat people with respect (or we should); what people might not consider is that if they are the “one” of type x, then they will feel singled out if people keep asking them questions about it, irrespective of whether the questions are sensible and reasonable. If you have one Muslim and thirty nine non-Muslims interested in finding out more, each asking their own questions, that person might feel quite harrassed and picked on, without anyone being overtly offensive. And that takes me back to Radio Clare again…

The incurable hippie also picks up (as I did) on disabled Martin Ryan being allowed to starve to death whilst in hospital, something so shocking I was surprised hadn’t received bigger media coverage.

In a strange land talks about language, and in particularly the way disability terms are used as insults — “lame”, “spaz” and so on — which implies a lack of worth in people with those disabilities. And you can lump the Moylesian “gay = not very good” terminology into this category too.

Batsgirl offers us a take — not so much on language, but more with perception — with well meaning insults — and in particular one insult which I had already read on her blog, which I suggested had handed her the BADD topic on a plate. I had said then that I looked forward to reading her post: it didn’t disappoint.

I’m always impressed when someone makes me consider something that had not previously occurred to me, and Kethry made me consider whether it is disablist to commend a deaf person on his or her speech. I still don’t have a firm personal opinion on that one: I’ve got as far as “it depends”. Which I find is generally an accurate, if unhelpful, answer to most questions.

On a similar note, what happens to disabled refugees or in a war zone? It’s probably no surprise, but it is persons with disabilities that are first to die. I also liked this post for the typo, suggesting that the blog behind BADD was “Dairy Of A Goldfish”, wondering where I can get a pint of goldfish milk…

Bitch Queen Emily (hey, her phrase, not mine!) talks honestly about a relationship with a disabled person and trying very hard not to be ableist — which isn’t always that easy. From a personal relationship to a spiritual one: Sophia’s Call gives a perspective from a Catholic hospital chaplain which, I know some people might be inclined to dismiss because of the source, although I would rather hope not: after all surely the point here is to fight against judging people? Besides which, you’d miss a really interesting post, and one not about strictly physical issues for a change…

Then there’s another one which looks at people’s perceptions towards those with autism, and cautions, not so much about making initial assumptions, but in not seeing past these assumptions later:

And the thing is, I honestly can’t blame people for making these initial assumptions; it’s an easy trap to fall into. I do, however, think that sticking to these assumptions even in spite of evidence is very much worth criticism.

Normal Is Overrated

One of the things I like about BADD is it gives me the opportunity to read a whole pile of blogs that I wouldn’t normally read. If I particularly enjoy them, I might come back and visit later; I might read some of their other stuff. I’ve found quite a few blogs like this today. It’s particularly pleasant when within two paragraphs I’m thinking “what a lovely turn of phrase, I’ll be coming back here again”.

…my haphazard attempts with the petrol lawnmower, which under my visually impaired and fibromyalgic direction becomes more of a ploughing device than a cutting device. It looks like shite before I mow and looks like hammered shite afterwardsA Load of Old Squit

After one thing that made me laugh comes another, this time from Ham.Blog with their Invisible Illness Bingo.

Attila the Mom has a story to which she simply remarks WTF? As I’m less refined then her, I’ve also provided the expansion of the anagram in case there was anyone who didn’t realise that the “F” in it was for “fuck”. Those of you with a nervous disposition should have looked away some time ago. However, she’s spot on with her sentiment. Read the story to find out why.

Hello to you out there in Normal Land
You may not comprehend my tale or understand

Ian Dury and the Blockheads: Spasticus Autisticus

And, like all variety numbers, it’s appropriate to finish on a song. Particularly a song which is by one of my favourite singers/bands: the late and very great Ian Dury. For this reason I implore you to take a look at Marmite Boy’s post No, I’m Spasticus!

Finally, apologies to anyone not included in this run-down. I have still read your post (or at least those added before 20:30 “Goldfish time”); I too value your contribution; it’s just that I’ve not included it here. However, I probably did like it very much, as my initial run-through of this post was listing the majority of the posts on BADD, rather than simply offering a selection. Also, there’s only a certain amount of writing I can do in one evening without my wife and kids demanding a little more of my time, so if you’ll excuse me pinching a disability metaphor for something else, I’ve run out of writing spoons for the time being…

I’m not disabled. I do however have a dodgy knee, which seems quite likely to cause me more difficulties as it gets older, so it is entirely possible that I will become disabled at some point. In fact, were I to live long enough, I suspect it becomes almost certain that I will be disabled at some point.

If I were to live as long as Harry Patch for example, and assuming I was still capable of blogging on the run up to my 111th birthday, I suspect I would be classed as disabled. It is something that will come to us all, providing we live long enough. But we (us “normal”, “normies”, “disability-challenged”, non-disabled folk) don’t generally think of the elderly when we think of the disabled. We tend to think of people who are disabled by something other than the aging process.

Language Lip: Disability Models and Disability Words

Of course, the social model of disability tells us that they are disabled by society: that while they might have very poor hearing, for example, this could certainly be considered an impairment, but it would not in itself be disabling, were it not for the fact society does not generally adapt enough to their needs. The medical model of disability would say that the people are disabled by the fact that they have very poor hearing. My personal belief is that both models are appropriate, depending upon the circumstances: for example, the social model deals most effectively with disability discrimination (and preventing it); the medical model is better used by the medical profession when looking at the condition in question…

This leads to different terms being preferred. Some people use “with a disability” (this is more ‘medical model’); some people use “disabled” (more ‘social model’). Some people use ‘the disabled’ (which some people don’t like as it lumps everyone into a group as diverse as ‘the left-handed’). I will no doubt end up using what is perceived as the wrong term from time to time. Fortunately, there are people around to politely remind me:

@ThePickards I *am* disabled. I *have* impairments. I do NOT “have a disability”. Social model, dearest.@ladybracknell

Which is also an excellent summation of the social model: a disabled person has impairments, but they are disabled by society…

My argument is that while people should know and understand the reasons behind the terms (and the fact that many official governmental sources don’t seem to know which one they are supposed to use) this is not as important as the way you actually deal with people. It’s still important to get the terms right (and certainly not to use particularly offensive or patronising ones) but to someone (*ahem*) with a disability it’s generally more important how they are actually treated then whether or not someone (particularly someone not expected to be ‘in the know’) uses the right term.

I also think it’s important that people don’t take needless offence, or to look for insulting language when it is not being used. For example, one disability blogger wrote this about a piece they had read elsewhere:

…is a blog with an ethos of promoting equality for women, for homosexuals, for black people, brown people and one suspects even green people from the planet Zog. So to read an article on such a platform which casually refers to ‘brain drain mongers’ both sickens and disappoints me. Some groups really are more equal than others, even amongst self describing liberals.

I’ve not provided a citation, because the person has made simply misunderstood something — which we’ve all done from time to time — and I don’t wish to single someone out for that: in this case confusing “mongers” (a term meaning basically meaning ‘trader’, as in fishmonger, cheesemonger, ironmonger, costermonger and so on) with “mongers” as an insulting slang term implying “having mongoloid characteristics” which is of course the offensive way we should no longer refer to people with Down’s syndrome.

If the term had been used in this out-of-date offensive disablist context, then I would have thought the writer would have been perfectly justified in this attack. However, I felt that it was unfair to infer that the writer of the original piece had intended to use disablist language when the more common — and non-insulting — version of the word would have suited the piece better.

In the original context, I believe the meaning as mongers of “traders in a particular idea” is even clearer:

But let’s suppose lots of rich people really do leave the country – what are we losing? The Brain Drain mongers would have us believe we are losing not just a chunk of the wealthiest 1%, but a chunk of the best…

Importantly, what became clear from the whole debate (in the comments) was that the original author obviously had meant to use it in the “trader” sense (and was initially appalled at the idea they had accidentally said something offensive before explaining the actual meaning in which it was used); that the person who had initially taken offense accepted this, and neither had any objection to the other. See, they’re both good people, capable of behaving like mature adults!

However, although I have some sympathy for some of the commenters who felt the offense was unjustified, the one who thought it “retarded” (and others with similar sentiments) did manage to demonstrate the disablism that wasn’t present in the initial article. [Update: however, that blogger has gone on to explain why her personal experiences would have lead her to assume the word was being used in an offensive manner]

[note: as there have been some anonymous commenters, I think it wise to be explicit that I have not posted on either article]

There’s three key points here.

The first is that where an offensive term is used, it may be through ignorance that the term is offensive: it is better to explain why a term is offensive. This is demonstrated by the delectable Lady B, who has a rather excellent blog, if one which she doesn’t update nearly often enough.

Secondly, disabled people (or people with a different skin colour, or religion, or culture) should not assume someone has automatically used a term in an offensive context, when a more appropriate reading could be found. If they do this, it may appear to some that this blogger has gone with the intention of finding something to take offense at (but having read other posts on the blog, and having read various comments, it is clear this was not the case here), and the anger/indignation at the perceived disablist term is exactly the sort of propaganda that the “political correctness gone mad!” lobby love to have land in their laps.

• You can’t say “it’s a black day for such-and-such anymore”. It’s political correctness gone mad!
• You can’t wear crosses any more for fear of offending someone’s religious sensibilities. It’s political correctness gone mad!
• They don’t even call it Christmas now any more, they call it Winterval. It’s political correctness gone mad!
• What do you mean blind people need to be able to use the internet? They’ll be asking to drive cars next! It’s political correctness gone mad!
• You can’t use the word monger anymore! It’s political correctness gone mad!
• You can’t even beat up a nigger anymore! It’s political correctness gone mad!

I for one feel that political correctness is a good thing. I think it’s great that we don’t find racist, sexist, religionist (?), disablist, homo- and xenophobic language to be acceptable. So I’d ask others that think similarly not to give any succour or encouragement to the “political correctness gone mad” erm… mongers… because I suspect that in some cases the latter sentiment is only slightly beneath the surface (although possibly with a hint more Islamophobia), so I would ask people to choose their battles carefully, ‘lest ye provide the anti-PC brigade with ammunition.

And finally, a genuine slip of the tongue (as opposed to deliberate choice of that word) is not in itself disablism. I mentioned this last February with bloopers aren’t disablism, brutality is, and I’m returning to the subject again today, when I look at two examples what I perceive is lip-service equality for the disabled — giving the impression you care without actually bothering to understand the real issues…

Hospital Lip Service

It is very easy for the disabled to receive ill-treatment. It is very easy for those who find it difficult to ‘kick up a fuss’ to fail to get the service they (and indeed everyone else) has a right to expect. But we as society ought to be making sure that these voices are being heard. In fact, for our public bodies, it is actually legislated in terms of the Disability Equality Duty.

But frighteneningly, a lot of big organisations seem to be more concerned about getting the terminology and ticky-boxes right than actually ensuring they don’t discriminate. This is paying lip-service to disability discrimination. And this is harmful. And, as you may have guessed, is the subject of the rest of this post…

Would any NHS Hospital taking the rights of the disabled seriously have allowed a man with learning disabilities to starve to death over 26 days, because he had difficulty in communicating.

It is easier for people to produce the documents, to tick off the check boxes than it actually is to ensure they aren’t discriminating against people. Kingston Hospital (where Martin Ryan starved to death in agony) published their Disability Equality Scheme in 2006.

How does the Trust’s own Disability Equality Scheme think they should do things?

Referrals from GP’s and/or other hospitals to include information relating to the patient’s impairment and any access needs. For example [...] Learning Difficulties

[...]Staff will be aware in advance of people’s needs and act on these accordingly to provide a positive experience for the patient.

Kingston Hospital NHS Trust: Disability Equality Scheme (PDF)

I somehow don’t feel that starving to death was a positive experience for the patient. But then again, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. The hospital’s Disability Equality Scheme was published in December 2006. They produced an action plan as part of this scheme, which had 55 action points.

As at April 2009, guess how many are marked as completed. Go on, guess…

Five.

This tells me one of two things. Either the NHS trust haven’t bothered updating the action plan, because they don’t see how they deal with people with disabilities as particularly important (which is a little surprising, given that when someone with learning disabilities starves to death in their care you’d think the negative publicity would make them consider it a little), or because they simply haven’t done it. Because it has all been about the ticky-box exercise.

“We are required to publish a Disability Equality Scheme by December 2006, this is the bit the Government will check up on, this is the bit we’ll do.”

Oh wait, perhaps I am being unjustly cynical…

A report on the implementation of the Scheme will be published annually

Kingston Hospital NHS Trust: Disability Equality Scheme (PDF)

…er… where is it, then? They’ve not done it. They’ve ticked the initial box, and they’ve not followed through. Lip-service equality. That’s why people die. Of course, I would happily have suggested that it’s more important to ensure that they were treating people correctly than producing a follow-up to the scheme, but the fact they hadn’t indicates that they think equality is something you do once, produce your glossy self-congratulatory brochure, and then it’s complete.

Which, as we all know, is bollocks.

Website lip service

It’s the same with web accessibility. Depending on where you are — and my experience in the area relates to UK Local Authorities — you’ll know different things about web accessibility. For one thing, UK Local Authority sites are pretty much the most accessible sites in the world, period. They are generally better than central government, they are generally better than business, and more importantly…

…most local government web developers I have spoken to have actually taken the time and trouble to understand why doing something in a particular way is accessible or inaccessible. They understand a bit about the assistive technology (screenreaders, text-to-speech software and so on) that make it easier for disabled people to use the web. They understand that some people can’t use the mouse.

And, for the most part, they generally do a pretty good job at making sites fairly accessible. They aren’t perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but the sites they produce are more accessible than any other sector.

Yet all of the press releases don’t deal with whether or not disabled people can actually use the site. They deal with whether or not the sites comply with a set of guidelines. This is missing the point somewhat.

The guidelines which are frequently referenced are WCAG 1.0. These are out of date, having been produced 10 years ago, and were superceded by WCAG 2.0 last year. They were also designed as tips which could be used to help people make their sites more accessible to disabled people. They were not an end in themselves. They were a means to that end.

And yet they are not treated as such by the PR people, by the people putting out the press releases. For them, it’s easier to put out a headline related to something more measurable — how many checkpoints someone has passed or failed, as opposed to something actually more useful — whether or not people with disabilities can actually use the site.

But Better Connected 2009 shows that little, if anything, has been done to address the problem. Almost exactly the same number of councils surveyed (36) [out of 464] achieved a Level A rating, and for the second year running, none have achieved Level AA or Level AAA — the highest rating possible [...]

[...]the original consultation process for ‘Delivering inclusive websites’ in 2007 had suggested that government sites should have their rights to use the ‘.gov.uk’ web domain withdrawn unless they met Level AA by December 2008, a recommendation which, luckily for the public sector, was eventually watered down.

E-Access Bulletin

Never let what is important get in the way of a good story. Firstly, the implication is that councils are lucky that the recommendation was watered down. Of course, what E-Access Bulletin don’t point out is that neither they (on that specific page) nor SOCITM (who produced the report) fail to live up to the AA standard themselves.

It’s easy to put the boot in, it’s harder to actually match the standard yourself. Not to mention that withdrawing the ‘gov.uk’ domain was a stupid idea anyway (the cost to the council of publicising every new email address, a new site etc? Who would that help?) and despite many gov.uk domains breaching the guidance for gov.uk domains, none of them have ever been removed before.

But SOCITM have chosen the guidelines as the thing which is important, not “whether or not the sites are actually accessible to real people”, ‘cos that’s a little trickier to produce ranking tables of. It was left to the RNIB (who carried out the testing) to actually produce the voice of reason (even if sadly, this didn’t make it to the headlines)…

The RNIB was also largely positive about the report’s findings, claiming that the figures do not necessarily represent a widespread lack of accessibility. “In fact, we noticed a significant improvement in the real accessibility of most of the websites we assessed. Unfortunately that doesn’t always show in a strict conformance check,” said Bim Egan

E-Access Bulletin

Understanding accessibility and making sites accessible to disabled users — that is fighting for equality. That is the local government web monkeys. Ignoring the practicalities of accessibility in order to provide a headline — that’s not only simply paying lip-service to equality, it’s a fist in the face to those doing most to produce accessible websites. That is SOCITM; that is the media. That form of lip-service equality does not help anyone.

Yes, it’s important to highlight where websites are going wrong. It’s important to provide advice for people wanting to develop more accessible websites (see Accessify Forum), but when organisations think getting a headline is more important than actually reflecting the state of play, it shows that they are, at best, paying lip-service to disability.

What to do?

So for all you out there reading this, I’ve got a challenge for you, for now until BADD 2010. Every time you see someone, or some organisation talking about equality, don’t just take their word for it. At least scratch the surface and see whether it is something they are actively doing, or if they are just paying it lip-service.

And where you find it’s just lip service, publicly upbraid them for it. As public as you like. You don’t have to restrict it to disablism, if you like, but let’s ensure that people who tell us all that they are campaigning for equality actually are doing it, instead of just picking up the acclaim without the effort…

Yes, it’s that time of year again, when the Goldfish turns BADD.

If that makes absolutely no sense at all, then I’ll explain. The Goldfish is a fellow blogger who organises Blogging Against Disablism Day.

The premise is quite simple: basically, you blog about disability, disability issues, disability politics, or something or other related to disability, and the idea of the whole event is to reduce discrimination against disabled people. This post should touch upon the notion of discrimination — disablism in some way shape or form. It should also show that this discrimination is a bad thing. The post should also be a new thing; it’s not supposed to be a collection of stale old rehashes…

That’s why it’s called Blogging Against Disablism Day. Well, that may be one reason, but I there may be a hint of backronym in there too as ‘BADD’ is just, well, to hip to the jive to have fallen out accidentally.

If yo want to take part, but aren’t sure what to write, poke around the archives for 2006, 2007 and 2008 to see if anything jumps out at you.

A few days ago, I noticed an article on the BBC News which was about someone with Down’s syndrome:

Otto Baxter is 21 and has Down’s syndrome. His mother Lucy thinks he should have all the experiences that other young men of his age have — including sex. [...]

Otto tried dating agencies, including a “special” one in a bid to meet girls who also had Down’s. But Lucy said the girls Otto met there had been “fairly institutionalised” and he “didn’t have anything in common” with them. When he went on a date with one girl, her carers prevented them from moving the relationship past friendship.

BBC News: Mother wants sex for Down’s son

Lucy also went a little further in talking to This Morning:

Lucy says: “Society has a learning disability when it comes to Down’s syndrome. Why should these people be kept separate and pigeon-holed when they have the same emotions, desires and feelings as so-called normal people?”

She says she is even prepared to go so far as to pay for a prostitute for her adopted son. Lucy also hopes he may one day become a father — despite the controversy this may attract.

This Morning: Lover for my son

There’s a number of questions here for us as a society. Should we prevent people with learning disabilities from leading fulfilling — even sexually fulfilling lives? Some people might find it a little odd, but rather than considering your own personal perceptions, consider how it might feel to Otto.

He’s obviously capable of having friendships with people; of understanding relationships; and of very much being aware that this is something he is missing out on. Might it not therefore be considered cruel or even inhumane to deprive him of this?

Which brings us to the questions about who he should be going out with. Apparently his ideal is Fearne Cotton (no accounting for taste, is there?), but assuming that she’s unavailable, then who? Should he be restricted to only dating — and having physical relationships with — other people with Down’s?

The problem with this was illustrated for me by two people I did an acting techniques course with about ten years ago. There was a guy and a woman with Downs on the course. During the course, we all got to find out little bits about one another and I like to think became friends to some extent. The woman with Downs at some point, when someone else was talking about their partner, said something to the extent that she would love to have a partner, but people didn’t want to go out with her.

The gentleman with Downs expressed a similar concern but later, to me and another chap, confessed that people seemed to want him to go out with the woman, only he didn’t fancy her. As he said, he didn’t see why he should only be allowed do fancy people with Downs.

Which, you have to admit, is a fair point. But it also comes with a tricky issue. It’s easy enough to consider a relationship between two people, one of whom is physically disabled, and the other who isn’t. This happens all the time. It’s basically just the story of two people falling in love.

But for someone with a learning disability, it’s a little different. Any non-disabled partner is likely to be in a position where people might accuse them of exploiting them; there’s certainly a significant risk that the relationship won’t be an an equal footing. That’s not to say that I think it’s inherently wrong for people with learning disabilities to have relationships with people without, only that I think it brings a range of issues and problems.

Cambridgeshire Council have some guidance (PDF)…

They make it clear that the ‘service users’ ought to expect the same rights as anyone else:

• to have and enjoy a fulfilling personal relationship;
• the right to express sexual need in an appropriate way if they wish to;
• to privacy;
• to be sexually active;
• to have sexual education, including counselling on personal relationships, sex and sexuality, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases;
• to contraceptive advice and support services;
• to marry or cohabit;
• to make an informed choice about whether or not to have children;
• to be free from exploitation, abuse and degrading treatment;
• to take risks and make mistakes in personal relationships

Cambridgeshire: ADULTS WITH A LEARNING DISABILITY – INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS AND SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT

In other words, the same rights as everyone else. And that’s fair, right? After all, we are talking about fellow human beings, aren’t we? Of course, this is assuming that the learning disability is not sufficiently severe as to prohibit them understanding what this actually entails — someone has to be capable of giving informed consent.

And that is surely the crux of the matter. Anyone who is capable of understanding what a “relationship” entails, what a physical relationship entails is able to give informed consent, and therefore they are entitled to have a sexual relationship with whomsoever they want (within certain parameters: e.g. no authority figures abusing their position etc).

This also reminded me of a conversation with a Doctor friend of mine who said that she knew someone who as part of their job, had to help teach people with learning disabilities how to masturbate. This probably sounds weirder than it was — but as she said, certain people with learning disabilities can become very sexually frustrated and not know how to relieve this ‘tension’, which may cause them further problems.

This is presumably something which — if you’ll excuse the phrase — needs to be handled very carefully so as not to be inappropriate, but simply to be used to help people with learning disabilities, where it is appropriate.

So I know it’s not something we’d normally consider — or if we did, we’d tend to focus solely on the pregnancy and ‘can they cope’ aspects — but if we accept that people with learning disabilities are humans, with human rights, then surely we have to accept that those with milder learning disabilities have the right to choose to embark upon a sexually fulfilling relationship?

And, in the case of Otto and his mum, if he can’t find someone with which to do that, then why should he have any less “right” to visit a prostitute than anyone else?

[Note: I'm not saying that prostitution is right, nor that people have a right to visit prostitutes, merely that I don't see why someone with Downs is any different to anyone else in this matter].

Sometimes I’m am critical of our media, sometimes I am not. In this case, I think the media — or at least what of it I have seen and read — have handled this appropriately and not with the disregard and unpleasantness that I would have expected. So well done to our media on this one. I can’t necessarily say the same about everyone leaving comments on the news articles, though…

And these people are cockwits.

Now, as a parent I understand that it is indeed perfectly appropriate — and in fact desirable — to want to protect your children from danger. This is why although I might be happy for my children to get a jigsaw for Christmas, I wouldn’t allow them to plug it in.

Joking aside, I am appalled that some parents have complained to the BBC that a children’s BBC presenter with one hand is provoking awkward questions. What? And they think that the BBC shouldn’t employ someone with one hand because it might provoke an awkward question?

What if children’s BBC decided they wanted a presenter who was black? (Yes, I know they have already done, but I don’t really see the difference). Isn’t a presenter with a different skin colour to your child equally likely to provoke comment? God forbid that Children’s BBC should ever employ a pregnant presenter.

But there is a considerable difference between protecting your children from danger — I might well suggest that it is inappropriate for a children’s TV presenter to inject intravenous drugs live on air between programmes, for example — and trying to force your children to live in something which is plainly not ‘the real world’.

Yes, you want to protect kids; you don’t want them to have to worry. But when my 5 year old wants to know why people are crying on the news, I will tell him that they are crying because some of the people in their family have been killed in Australian bushfires (or whatever the reason is). He deserves better from me than being fobbed off with some lies. And I will tell him, when asked, that you do get snakes and bears ‘on our planet’ (he watches a lot of Doctor Who, remember). But I will also tell him that the risk of these things is low: generally you don’t get them near us.

I have been asked before questions like “why is that boy getting pushed in a chair?”, and I will answer as best I can — in that case “because he hasn’t got any legs to walk with” seemed fairly reasonable. I have tried — as best I can — to answer the question “why doesn’t Homer like that man?” in relation to Homer’s Phobia.

That I found a little more difficult, because he’s obviously too young to understand the concept of ‘sexuality’ (I think!) so my explanation went something like this: “most of the time, when people grow up, men like to live in a house with ladies, and ladies like to live with men. But sometimes, men like to live with other men, and ladies with other ladies. People who do this are called ‘gay’. But it’s a bit silly to not like someone just because of who they want to live with!”

Not one I think I would have even attempted if the question hadn’t cropped up.

But parents who are worried about explaining disability are generally the ones who are worried about embarrassment, presumably because they think there is something wrong with it, and that the disabled people won’t want anyone asking questions. Coming from an adult, it might well be intrustive or offensive, but a child asking a question about disability is not particularly likely to cause offense. Indeed, in most situations, the person in the wheelchair, or with the guide dog, will already be aware of their disability, and is unlikely to be shocked that someone else has noticed.

Indeed, as a child psychologist points out in the BBC article, children just tend to accept things and don’t think that there is anything unusual about them — it’s only when adults start tip-toeing around the subject or go “oh my God! she’s only got one hand! quick, change the channel in case you catch it!” that the children start thinking that it’s anything out of the ordinary.

It’s part of the job description of being a parent to answer the questions your kids put to you and educate them. This does not mean only those questions you feel personally comfortable with. Nor does it mean that they need a full and graphic description of precisely how their baby brother got into Mammy’s tummy: you need to answer with something appropriate to the child’s age and what they understand.

But that doesn’t mean talking down to them. Your kids deserve better than that. No-one said being a parent was easy. But it is important.

That is what matters. The rest is just fluff.

However, it should not be taken to mean — as the headline seems to imply — that this means that the world has seen an end to racism, sexism, (non-)religious bigotry/hatred, homophobia and so on. The very fact that we feel the need to remark upon the fact that Barack Obama is black or that Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is gay shows that we see these things as unusual and different — that their skin colour or sexuality is worthy of comment.

And to me, that shows that we aren’t where we ought to be.

Sadly, this is only reinforced for me by things such as Carol Thatcher comparing a tennis player to a golliwog and then seemingly being annoyed that a private conversation in the green room has been leaked (note: for strict accuracy, she was apparently referring specifically to a comparison with the golliwog which used to feature on Robertson’s Jam) . This is along the same lines as BFR‘s idea that it is perfectly okay to be racist so long as you don’t do it during a broadcast.

And that’s wrong. It also demonstrates that the person exhibits a certain belief “well, everyone uses these terms, don’t they? I just made a mistake doing so in public…” which is dangerously wrong. Carol should be concentrating on apologising whole heartedly and saying that she shouldn’t have made the comment she did, instead of attacking the BBC because someone reported her for being a big racist (Well done Adrian, if it was you — but I still hope we beat you on Saturday). She’s also missed the point with her apology, too:

Carol is mortified that anyone should take offence at a silly joke.Carol Thatcher’s spokesman, quoted on BBC News

Basically, she’s sorry that someone took offence. She’s sorry that she’s pissed her TV career down the pan, no doubt, but the plain fact is that if she didn’t see the tennis player as looking like a golliwog, she wouldn’t have bloody said so. It’s the standard ‘in-the-public-eye’ apology, where the celebrity figure apologises, not for doing something wrong, but for saying something that has been misinterpreted. And it’s bollocks. At least Jonathon Ross and Russell Brand had the balls to accept that they were the ones who had said something offensive, rather than pretending everyone else had wilfully misinterpreted them.

And you know what really galls me? The fact that I’d watched that episode of the One Show, and had thought to myself “I can’t stand that woman, but at least she’s not as bad as her mother”.

It’s important to remember you can dislike specific people — Eddie Murphy, Carol Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher, David Blunkett, Osama bin Laden, Will Young and so on — without being racist, sexist, disablist, a religious bigot or a homophobe, provided that the reason you dislike them isn’t because they are black, female, blind, Muslim, gay or whatever.

For example, I dislike Osama bin Laden because he’s a monstrous, murderous fuckhead, responsible for the deaths of lots of people. I have to admit that my reasons for disliking the others in that list aren’t as good, but I still do have ‘em.

Oh, yeah, and I know I covered this in more detail in my Equality series of posts last year, and in my power of names post, but I’ve got some new things to add…

I encounter many people — usually just in passing — who, while they would not use the word nigger in conversation (on the basis that irrespective of their personal feelings, they know it will be found offensive) are quite happy to refer to ‘pakis’ and ‘chinks’. Depending on who they are, and what the circumstances are, I may take the time to tell them that I find the use of the word offensive, particularly if they are someone I am likely to engage in conversation again.

But we have to remember that it isn’t just racial names which are inappropriate and should not be used. You have terms such as ‘fag’ and ‘queer’ for homosexuals which would usually be seen as offensive if used by someone who is not gay, but I have known to be used by gay people, much in the same way that some black musicians use the word ‘nigga’ (these would generally be the same ones who use offensive terms to describe women, too).

Note however that this brings up two issues: firstly, does someone have the right to take offense at someone else using a word which they themselves would use? Secondly, should the term not be avoided anyway, as there is some argument that some civil rights groups would object to any use of the term.

And then you have the issue of the terms being used out of context. Famously, Chris Moyles described a ringtone as ‘gay’ because he didn’t think it was very good. It appears that he has misappropriated the word to mean that something is rubbish and defended this on the basis that other people have used it to mean this.

Well, for a start, I think he’s got the etymology wrong: I think gay to rubbish went along the lines of gay = feminine = weak = feeble = rubbish. Which, no matter how you cut it, still looks offensive to me. But if he’s allowed to redefine terms like this, just think how wonderful it would be if we could get this phrase into common usage…

Urrgh! I’ve just stepped in a Moyles!

Then we’ve got things like Little Britain, which has characters such as Maggie Blackamoor (who vomits copiously any time something foreign or homosexual is mentioned), the university secretary (?) Linda who offers insulting comments about various sorts of people (gay, disabled, foreign); Lou and Andy, the allegedly-disabled person and his carer, and various other similar characters. In short, mostly relating to people who are unusual in physical appearance (fat, disabled); have some sort of non-”normal” sexual preference (homosexuality, transvestitism), are from a foreign country or something similar, and the humour is derived from situations around that.

It’s one of those things where some people think that it is being offensive to minority groups, and some people think it is joking about the perceptions people have about minority groups and the way they tend to be treated. To be honest, I think this is a hard one to call; I come down on the side of it’s a program about perceptions, but the character Alf Garnett, whilst intended as a satire on bigotry, ended up being seen as somewhat of a hero to those he was supposed to be satirising.

And then you get some words which are deemed so offensive that the community in question has made no attempt to reclaim them, and indeed are actively campaigning for them not to be used. One such word is retard.

While it could be argued that the use of this word has been encouraged by the Tropic Thunder controversy, where a number of disability advocates have suggested that large parts of the fun are there basically to make fun of people with intellectual disabilities, it is possibly also true that the controversy stirred up has actually made more people aware of how offensive the term is, and how frequently jokes are made at the expense of the disabled.

Racism and homophobia are far from beaten, but there is an increasing acceptance that these are wrong. But all too frequently disablism is allowed to go unchallenged. It’s time to stop that.

Our choice of language frames how we think about others.
It is time to respect and value people with intellectual disabilities.
It is time to accept and welcome us as your friends and neighbors.
Change the conversation … stop using the r-wordThe R-Word

You can even pledge not to use the r-word, although I think actually treating other fellow human beings as, well, fellow human beings is probably a good start in itself.

But what we actually got up to will, for the most part, have to wait for a future post. What I want to talk about is how mind-boggling crap London is if you can’t do stairs.

We took two kids and a pushchair, and were capable of removing child from pushchair, carrying said pushchair up (and down) endless flights of stairs — not that it was easy mind you, but it was possible — but for someone in a wheelchair large parts of London must be almost completely out of bounds.

In that regard, I really must say that I’m ashamed of our capital city. I’ve never considered the North-East to be an exemplar of forward thinking, but when I try to go anywhere in the Newcastle or Gateshead, there are ramps and lifts almost everywhere. In London, presumably if you have wheels you are expected to stay at home.

In the interests of fairness and in contrast to London itself, I must say that Londoners however were very friendly, offering to help lift the pushchairs up and down stairs, offering to give up their seats for my wife on the tube (who was normally holding two children while I had a pushchair and a few bags) and so on.

But back to the wheels.

If you look at the Transport for London Underground map, you’ll see a little wheelchair symbol on the key, alongside the message:

Step-free access from the platform to the streetTransport For London: Standard Tube Map (PDF)

That is an important point. You are supposed to assume that all tube stations are inaccessible unless specifically stated otherwise. The stats below are based on my glancing along the tube map and counting, so it is always possible that I’m one or two out, but it’s still fairly telling…

• District Line: 15 stations out of 58 offer access to the platform without stairs — 26%
• Northern Line: 10 stations out of 50 offer access to the platform without stairs — 20%
• Central Line: 4 stations out of 49 offer access to the platform without stairs — 8%
• Circle Line: 3 stations out of 26 offer access to the platform without stairs — 12%

…if you really care about the numbers, or you have a favourite line you’re wanting to check, feel free to do so. But frankly, it’s shit. We are living in the 21st Century and for more than three quarters of the stations in our capital city to be entirely inaccessible unless you can use stairs is absolutely atrocious. This is the city that will be hosting the Paralympics in four years, you know…

Now I understand that many of these tube stations were built a long, long time ago, back when ideas like “disabled people having rights” were seen as somewhat wacky, but it’s really about time that they are brought into the 21st Century.

And it’s not just the tube, either. The signs don’t help.

For example, take Westminster: according to the map, this is one of the accessible stations, where you don’t need to use stairs. There is indeed a lift. But according to the buttons in the lift, this only serves the District and Circle lines, and as we wanted the Jubilee line, this wasn’t much use to us, so we fought our way down stairs/escalators carrying a buggy.

If the accessible stations are only accessible to certain platforms or lines, this makes the situation worse still. On the other hand, if the lift did serve the Jubilee line but chose only to tell you that it was serving the District and Circle lines, then this is hardly providing helpful information for tourists … which you would expect would be fairly common in Westminster, after all.

And then you’ve got the subways. Now most of London has pedestrian crossings. Basically, you press a button, the traffic lights change, the traffic stops, and you wheel across the road to the other side. It’s not complicated, it requires no special equipment other than a fairly standard type of traffic light, and everyone knows how it works.

Apart from in Westminster (and apparently surrounding areas). Instead, you are prevented from crossing the busy roads because you’ve got great big metal fences preventing you from stepping onto the road. Fine. However, when your only means of crossing the road seems to be to use a subway with steps (and no ramp), this proves a little trickier. In fact, we encountered this on something called ‘Buckingham Palace Road’. You might be able to guess what this is near.

So it appears to me that public transport in London is, for the most part, inaccessible to people with a wheelchair (and bloody difficult for people with a pushchair); and that you can only go and see Buckingham Palace if you can use steps. It’s beyond “not good enough”, it’s an embarrassment to the capital city, and by extension to the country as a whole.

So I’d like instead to propose that we simple rename London something else for 2012, find a nice accessible modern city, temporarily rename that ‘London’, and invite all the nice friendly Londoners to live there for a year while we hold the Olympics there. And then we’ll move it back again afterwards… what d’you reckon?