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What comes to mind when you think of disabled people in the media?
Inspirational stories of Paralympians winning gold despite their “differences”, deaf babies hearing their mothers for the first time.
Then at the opposite end benefit cheats and deeply traumatic stories of abused and neglected disabled people that focus on how hard it must've been for the parents.
I know those are a lot of the images I was bombarded with growing up and it followed me into my own writing career.
It’s what led me to found my publication The Unwritten, which aims to give disabled people a platform to tell their stories authentically.
Unfortunately, even during a pandemic when 6 in 10 deaths were disabled people I was watching much of the media continue to ignore disabled people. Or worse play to the same old stereotypes.
To read more content from our week-long series on Disabled Britain click here.
Well, this week we aim to change that. Today marks the start of Disabled Britain: Doing It For Ourselves, a week-long series across the Daily Mirror's print and digital platforms, showcasing the lives of disabled people and the issues important to us.
I was beyond delighted when the Daily Mirror asked me to guest edit and curate a series of features highlighting the reality of disabled life, written by the voices of those with lived experience.
Working on this project has been the highlight of my career and hopefully shows the importance of having disabled people involved at every level.
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The articles have been conceived by disabled people, written by disabled people, and photographs - where possible - taken by disabled people.
After all, as the saying goes, there’s “nothing about us without us”.
This week also coincides with the start of Disability Pride Month, a time to listen to disabled peoples voices and acknowledge that we are not ashamed of our disabilities. They’re another part of who we are.
Throughout this week, we aim to change your mind about how we all view disabled people. There are 14 million of us, and we aren’t all the same, it’s time the public stopped listening to lazy stereotypes and viewed disabled people in all our wide-ranging splendour.
If you take anything away from this week, I hope it will be that disabled people don’t need pity or awe. We don’t want sympathy, we want empathy.
