WE'VE come a long way fighting prejudice these past 30 years. No longer is it acceptable to insult someone because of the colour of their skin. No longer is it legal to pay women less than men for doing the same job. And no longer is it funny – if it ever was – to tease someone simply because they are homosexual.
So why is it still deemed acceptable to treat physically-disabled people as if their wheels have replaced their brains? This is the question Wallace and Gromit creators Aardman Animations are tackling with their new advertising campaign, Creature Dis
comforts, launched for the Leonard Cheshire Disability charity.
Six characters – including Slim the Stick Insect (walks with a stick), Peg the Hedgehog (only has one leg) and Spud the Slug (no legs at all) – are voiced by individuals who are disabled themselves. These creatures are funny, and touching, and if they can't make people think twice about the crass insensitivity of treating disabled people like freaks, then I don't know who can.
They have certainly got a challenge on their plasticine hands. Like many people with mobility problems, my mother often has trouble admitting that she is actually disabled. But she suffers from osteoarthritis and spondylosis and can't walk far without pain. For several years, she has used a mobility scooter to get about.
Totally fearless on her "chariot", she once merrily scooted her way through one of the roughest housing estates in East London to visit her grandson in hospital. Let her loose in Meadowhall and mall-rats scatter as she powers through the crowds.
I've seen the look of hurt in her eyes when her disability is regarded as a contagious disease. Nowhere is worse than public transport. I once almost got arrested by the British Transport Police for yelling at Underground staff at Bond Street Tube station.
The platform attendants flatly refused to help us carry her scooter – which we had dismantled – up the escalator because "it was against health and safety". In the end, we had to forget the shopping trip, get back on the train and go home.
I hope those platform attendants came in for some serious reprogramming when the Disability Discrimination Act was updated in 2005 and made it an offence to prevent reasonable access for disabled people in public places. But I suspect that people like them, with zero consideration for others, will never really understand – unless one day they lose the use of their legs, too.
They are probably the sort who park in disabled bays at the supermarket. A recent survey by Baywatch, which campaigns for proper use of disabled bays, found that more than one in
five designated supermarket spaces was being used by a
driver without a Blue Badge disabled permit.
I can't believe how selfish some people can be. Don't they think for a minute why disabled drivers and passengers might need extra space and closer proximity to the entrance? If I catch anyone doing it, I confront them. As I did with the able-bodied father who parked in the newly-marked disabled bay at Lizzie's nursery the other week.
When he finally gave in – probably because another father joined in with my ranting – and moved his car, he then sat defiantly with his engine running, while children played a few inches away. Says it all, really.
It's about respect, isn't it? So thank you to the kind young David Beckham-lookalike who held the door open for us at the café in Blackpool the other week. But no thanks to the woman who tutted because she couldn't squeeze her plump backside between the wall and my mother's parked-up scooter in that restaurant in Cleethorpes.
I saw you, and I'm glad my mother didn't.
Mum would hate to think that people feel sorry for her. But you would be surprised at how patronising others can be. Many assume that she can't think or speak or hear what people say because she can't walk very well. Asking "does she take sugar?" might sound like a cliché, but believe me, it happens.
The updates to the Disability Discrimination Act have done much to make life better for those with physical disabilities, through things as simple as ramps to enter public buildings, and ground-floor toilets in
pubs. But we still have a long way to go before we all know how to think sensitively about disabled people – then don't think about them being that different at all.
We need to recognise that prejudice against those with disabilities is as pernicious as any prejudice based on race, gender or sexuality. As Spud
the Slug might say, look in their eyes, not at their wheels, and we might be on our way towards a fairer future.
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