It is widely reported that attitudes towards, and discrimination of, people with disabilities are getting worse. Institutional abuse revealed in recent scandals points to the shocking treatment some disabled people still face. The charity Scope argued that London’s Paralympics would ‘play a positive role in raising the profile of disabled people’. Chris Holmes, LOCOG Director of Paralympic Integration, predicted a ‘step-change in attitudes towards and opportunities for disabled people’. Has society become more hostile, as campaigners claim, or are we just more sensitive about the words people use? While the games may lead to greater participation in sport, will they have any impact on wider attitudes or on participation in the public sphere? Has the treatment of people with disabilities really changed for the worse anyway? Are some people still disabled by society?
Tanni-Grey Thompson, former Paralympic athlete and member of the House of Lords, recalls: ‘when I was growing up you didn’t see disabled people on the streets… because they were locked away from society’. The disability rights movement played an important role in changing things by struggling for equality, and a greater visibility for disabled people in society. People weren’t disabled by their bodies but by society, said campaigners. But where today is that radical message that the disabled are as able as their able-bodied counterparts and that society needs to change?
It seems that campaigners are more inclined to fight not for access to the workplace, but for the continuation of benefits threatened by welfare reforms; not for the right of disabled people to have their say and participate more fully in public life, but for the censorship of ‘offensive’ comedians like Ricky Gervais and Frankie Boyle. Thompson is opposed to welfare reform because she argues that instead of having to ‘prove what you can’t do to get support’ the welfare system ‘should be about what support you need to be able to do things, so you can get a job, you can contribute, and you can pay tax, and you can be in society in a different way’. This is a welcome sentiment but how can it be realised when disabled people are increasingly portrayed as vulnerable dependents on the state tormented by abuse, rather than as go-getting political subjects able to change the world around them?
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