A Different Perspective on Disability Equality: What’s Changed in Ten Years?

A decade is a long time, isn’t it? Long enough for fashions to recycle, technologies to become obsolete, and social movements to sprout new branches. Some days it feels as though everything has shifted. On others, it feels as though someone has simply changed the wallpaper while leaving all the old problems neatly pinned to the wall.

The world has changed. My word, it really has. And yet.

I’ll start with a confession: I never wanted to write the first Disability book. Not really. Partly because people told me they could do better, and partly because disability equality training was already my day job. Keeping up with developments in the field felt like trying to organise a filing cabinet during a small earthquake. When the request came for a second edition, I hesitated. Do I just send the first one again? Except I couldn’t. Too much had changed. And somehow, not nearly enough.

Yes, disabled people have a richer, louder, more confident public voice. D/deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations have multiplied like activist sourdough starters. Disabled people are speaking up — loudly, brilliantly, often with sharp humour. And yet we are still silenced, ignored, softened, filtered, or spoken about rather than with. The scale of change is impressive. The lack of change is infuriating. Both are true at the same time.

Because let’s be honest: things are better, but the situation remains unacceptable. As disabled workers we are undervalued, often underpaid, sometimes unpaid. As customers we are sidelined or treated as though access is a favour — a bit like being promised the VIP lounge, except the velvet rope is a broken lift and the bouncers are politely clueless. Out in the community, our presence is tolerated, moderated, occasionally domesticated — as though we are unusual pets rather than human citizens with rights, needs and, heaven forbid, knowledge.

Much has changed. But had organisations and governments acted on the invitation of the first edition — had rights to education, work and leisure been taken seriously rather than bookmarked for later — the landscape today might be far gentler for those of us who still face prejudice, discrimination and inequality as a matter of routine.

So here I am again. Thirty years into teaching, researching and living this subject. The world has changed. I have changed. And so this conversation must change too.

I will be publishing the second edition of A Different Perspective on Disability soon. But you can download a number of others goodies by clicking links below. 

 

  

A different perspective on disability equality

A Different Perspective on Critical Disability

A Different Perspective on Critical Disability PDF 

A different perspective on inclusive practice