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What is Disability Equality?
Disability Equality (as opposed to Disability Awareness) is about
making the case for equal treatment of disabled people. In this respect
Disability Equality should be seen in the same light as race/gender/sexual
orientation equality.
Over the last 30 years our society has come a long way with regard to creating
a level playing field for people of different race, gender and sexual orientation.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said of our society's attitude towards
disability. For example no one would seriously think about excluding
a child from a school because they are gay or black, but the case is constantly
being made for separate schooling for disabled children. Equally, it
would be unthinkable to say to a woman "You are so brave to go out to work
and earn your own money!" Yet speak to any disabled person in work and
chances are it will be a familiar refrain to them.
Disabled people do not want charity. They do not want preferential
treatment or positive discrimination. What they do want is a level playing
field on which they can compete with able-bodied people. This means
equal access to education, employment and a social life. Unfortunately in
the absence of this level playing field they do need protection and sometimes
a bit of a "leg up". For example, the Blue Badge scheme gives preferential
parking to disabled people. This is necessary because disabled people
are much more reliant on their cars than able bodied people because they cannot
use public transport. So if all public transport was fully accessible
there would be a far lesser case for disabled people having Blue Badges for
parking.
This principle is firmly founded in the approach we have taken to addressing
other areas of inequality. Antidiscrimination legislation has been in
place for rate and gender equality for much longer than disability equality
to offer legal protection. Recent initiatives such as the Conservative Party's
"A List" of candidates and the Governments "quotas" for integration in faith
schools are examples of efforts to create level playing fields for traditionally
disadvantaged segments of society.
So Disability Equality is about creating an environment where the existence
of disabled people as employers, employees, entertainers, audiences, parents,
politicians etc is seen as normal.
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