There are sometimes distinct advantages to being a single parent.....not when the drains need clearing or something vital drops off the car and you have to stop and sort it out on top of all the daily disability doings...but when you want to sit up in bed reading until the early hours with bags of Tyrell's crisps and pots of tea there is at least no-one to moan about the crunching and slurping.

I am currently working my way through a pile of contemporary Disabilty Studies books that winged their way from Amazon with a view to updating my knowledge ready for the writing up of research. Crisps do make revoltingly greasy stains on the page but they also highlight this brilliant passage that adopts the  perspective of 'turning things around' to great effect. So I'm just taking a moment out from' Gut Reactions' to share this with you.

It's from the work of a Disability Studies writer called Mike Oliver who is disabled himself. He takes a series of conventional 'disability' questions, formulated from the 'normalcy' viewpoint, and turns them around to present them from the perspective of disabled people....interesting reading ! 

Q. Are your difficulties in understanding people mainly due to a hearing problem ?

Alternative question: Are your difficulties in understanding people mainly due to their inability to communicate with you ?

Q. Does your health problem/disability prevent you from going out as often or as far as you would like ?

Alternative question: What is it about the local environment that makes it difficult for you to get about in your neighbourhood ?

Q. Does your health problem/disability affect your work in any way at present ?

Alternative question: Do you have problems at work because of the physical environment or the attitudes of others ?

Q. Does your health problem/disability mean that you need to live with relatives or someone else who can help or look after you ?

Alternative question: Are community services so poor  that you need to rely on relatives or someone else to provide you with the right level of personal assistance ?

Q. Does your present accomodation have any adaptations because of your health problem/disability ?

Alternative question: Did the poor design of your house mean that you had to have it adapted to suit your needs ?

                                                                                 Gaia Charis, May, 2010.