My last post was all about taking pride in who you are with June being LGBTQ+ pride month. This post is going to be a bit similar in some ways, as while it is slightly less well known, July is disability pride month.
Like the last post, this one is a bit later in the month than I would have liked, however the reason is very different this month. Last month I didn’t have much time to get to writing the post, and while I have also been busy this month, the truth is that I was really struggling to decide what to write about. As an LGBTQ+ person, I find it easy to talk about how being who I am is great and I should be proud of it and not let anyone tell me otherwise, but disability is different. Disability even in its name is often about barriers and what I can’t do, and there are days that it is hard to take pride in it and think about it in a positive light. As a result, I was struggling to write a post about it, until I came across a social media post that inspired me a bit (I will link to it at the end). It was from a fantastic activist called Charli Clement, and they talked about the very problem I had been struggling with, and how people still find pride.
So, this post is going to be about one of those themes that Charli talked about, it is going to be taking pride in overcoming the barriers we face every day of our lives when we have a disability and the fantastic community we have which is made up of these incredible people.
So, people with disabilities face all kinds of barriers, from physical things you can see, such as no wheelchair access to a building, to things you can’t spot as easily, such as loud music at an event which causes sensory overload. When you start looking around it is easy to start seeing that the world is not built with disabled people in mind for the most part. There has been a lot of progress over the years, but there is still a lot to be done. What this results in is that people with disabilities can often struggle more, as not only to they have to deal with the same challenges as everyone else, but they have to overcome these challenges plus the extra ones that come with being disabled. I personally often struggle to keep up with the amount of work I need to do due to my disability impacting my ability to concentrate and get stuff done in time for a deadline.
So, while all this sounds quite demoralising, you might be wondering what this has to do with disability pride. Well, the truth is, people with disabilities still manage to do incredible things. When I was in primary and secondary school, I was considered smart, but often treated as though my disabilities meant I wouldn’t do as well as my peers. Yet despite this, I have overcome the barriers and am currently finishing the first year of my PhD in computer science, after last year graduating with a first-class BSc in Software Engineering. I know many incredible people who have disabilities that make navigating every day life incredibly difficult, and the way they still manage to achieve incredible things and overcome obstacles that would stop people with no disability at all, constantly inspires me.
The ability of this community to thrive and overcome barriers and support each other is an incredible thing to observe, to see people help each other as they know what it is like to be starting at a disadvantage and have to work harder than others. This is partly what inspires the work I do as part of my PhD, looking into how technology can help people with ADHD in education, because I know how hard it can be to succeed with a disability. This shared experience is what often drives people to support each other, it could be someone like myself, who has experienced it directly and as a result wants to use that knowledge to change things. Or it could be a parent whose child has a disability and the parent has tried to learn more to be able to better support their child. This shared experience is what drives innovation and leads people to discover new ways to help people and make the world just a bit more accessible.
So, I am choosing to look at this month as an opportunity to take pride in the incredible people in the disabled community and be amazed and constantly inspired by one of the most resilient communities I know, and I encourage you all to do the same and be in awe of the determination that people can have to make positive change.
As promised, here is a link to the post that helped me finally decide what to write, and also a link to Charli’s page, as they are and incredible activist and individual and an excellent example of an inspiring person with a disability.