Ouch!

 

Ouch

If you were sitting in a waiting room and someone walked in and smacked you in the head with a cardboard box, what would you expect to happen?

If I’d hit you, I know what I would do. If I were the one carrying the box, I’d apologise—profusely. Even if I hadn’t seen you. Even if I hadn’t meant it. It would still be my mistake. My responsibility. The onus on me to put it right, and not do it again. 

That’s why it feels so bizarre that, as a disabled person, when somebody hits me in the face with whatever they’re saying, I’m the one expected to apologise for being hurt. I’m told I shouldn’t have been sitting there. I shouldn’t have come on that particular day. I shouldn’t be in the waiting room at all—almost as if disabled people are supposed to warn the world of our presence before entering a building.

On a personal level, you can imagine how upsetting this would be if it happened once. But it doesn’t. It happens so often that the bump from the cardboard box is becoming quite painful. I find myself making more and more excuses not to be in any room anywhere—not because of one dramatic incident, but because I’m exhausted from being hit in the head and then told it’s somehow my fault.

On an organisational level, I genuinely don’t understand why a policy can’t be put in place to stop people knocking me in the face in the first place. If customers or patients were being regularly inconvenienced—or literally struck—surely it’s up to the organisation to make a change. Yet whether it’s parking bays, accessible entrances, safe walkways, or waiting rooms, the burden is consistently placed on the disabled person to complain afterharm has happened. Only then—maybe—is something reviewed.

This is against compliance - which is anticipatory - furthermore, it’s unfair.

Most of the time, reasonable adjustments aren’t made because no one at senior level has thought about them - or had disability equality training. Safe public spaces are assumed, and potential harm as a small operational detail, not something worth planning properly. But planning safe routes for staff to move through day in, day out, year after year is a management responsibility. It requires an impact assessment. It requires someone to think, “Could the way we work harm someone? Could this exclude someone? Could this be done better?”

I’ve noticed that many organisations have quietly stopped doing the very impact assessments that meaningfully include disabled people at all. The result? They hit you in the head first, wait for the complaint, and then consider changing the practice.

But here’s the sticking point: the complaint itself. I’m tired—angry, even—about having to complain in the first place. I retired in the hope of finally escaping the relentless expectation that I should fix the ableist systems I move in. And, worse, I should expect being hit. As an individual I was never responsible for educating every organisation I encounter. And frankly, I’m worn down by having to say, over and over again: can you please stop hitting me?

This isn’t a matter of personal sensitivity. It’s a matter of education, compliance, justice, and basic equality. No one should be behind you with a box. And in this analogy—and in real life—organisations should make sure their practice isn’t ableist. The fact that something wasn’t intentional doesn’t remove the responsibility to apologise. And it certainly doesn’t justify blaming me for simply existing in the space.

The aim needs to be to avoid hitting people in the first place—not to tell disabled people it’s our job to get out of the way.