150 years later..

Recent disability (UK), support for 150years of disability media, feels like a damp squib.   In reality, it tends to suggest nothing has happened since.  1944 saw the first attempt to include the disabled in the workplace, via the law.  1945 saw it overruled when the war ended when the able-bodied demanded their jobs back.  Employed areas developed FOR disabled-only (Remploy/Monwel etc), guaranteed regular work and good pay for a few years, until able-bodied who were suffering unemployment wanted disability subsidies stopped so the work came to them instead.  Every step forward entailed another step backwards.

Disabled/deaf are more vocal, more visible, and more 'adopting the position', we need a change of direction. Many suggest only the disabled read disability media, so preaching to the already converted springs to mind, just activists chatting amidst themselves. Charities do it too.  We have become issues to exploit, rather than advancing things. We are talking cash basically, e.g, £6B is spent yearly, supporting  15,000 deaf people, and that DOESN'T include funding that charities get and the UK has 17,600 of them dedicated to ONE area of people disabled by profound loss. 

With lots of money and employment involved, these deaf quickly lost any control over it all, as corporate charities cashed in on them.   Major charities also use corporate strategies to head-hunt staff from others, and in effect caused the closure of many of them, any system that didn't provide cash inflow, wasn't entertained. Running at a loss wasn't a proposition, despite many well-meaning support areas, claiming many support approaches took precedence over profit.

You won't read a single disability or deaf area that believes all that has contributed to their inclusion or equality. Anecdotal evidence suggests we actually have fewer rights and support than 30 years ago when a plethora of equality and inclusion laws came into being.  The catch 22, was that a pandemic of individualism was created, which led to 'each to their own' approaches, so cohesive action was unable to gain traction, via numerical support. Disability and deaf areas are fragmented into more secular, and singular approaches by degree of disability, or type, or as in the deaf case, by language, background, social, and loss degree.   

In essence disabled areas and deaf ones created their own form of discrimination and made them the norm.  Legal action neutered the ability of disability groups to set a precedent, each individual had only a success, (or a loss mostly), for themselves. Another person had to DIY, but the state took away legal support for them to do so. 10m disabled and 11m with hearing loss, but the lack or actual support for these inclusive areas means it is basically nil where it counts.  Charities have next to zero as regards to membership support, but, the total power to speak for everyone else. It's tails wagging dogs. The few at the charitable 'top' getting the kuds/recognition, but the bottom line we are interested in, is as far away and in the smallest print, as it ever was.