Disabled people also need to implement the social model of disability

The social model of disability.

I’m going to get hate for this but…

The social model of disability states that people are disabled by the barriers in society for example; a lack of access to buildings, establishments and even spaces.

The social model helps us recognise barriers that make life harder for disabled people.

Removing these barriers creates equality and allows disabled people independence and autonomy. Most disabled people follow the social model of disability. Saying that the disability or impairment is not the issue, but the societal barriers faced by attitudes or the lack of actions of others.

disabled people and the social model of disability

If that’s the case then, why are disabled people or communities not advocating for each other?

Deaf people talk about sign language and captions, wheelchair users talk about ramps and physical access, blind people talk about audio description and alt text, autistic people talk about Neurodiversity and acceptance, chronic pain people talk about invisible illnesses, and people with mental health issues talk about loneliness and isolation.

But what I fail to see is each community advocating for the other.

Unless that person has comorbidity of course.

Disable people need to be allies to one another.

I follow and have followers from every walk of life, and a heavy majority are disabled people. Yet no matter how many times I tweet or write or talk about the importance of Photo descriptions and how every platform has made a way to incorporate accessibility, I barely see anybody implementing it.

How can we as a disabled collective expect the wider society of non-disabled people to support us, meet our access requirements and be fully inclusive, when as a community we are failing to do that for one another?

Adding photo descriptions on social media isn’t that difficult.

It’s honestly so exhausting to keep repeatedly asking people to add photo descriptions, especially on places like Instagram.
Where I have shared time and again of how to do it.

Scroll to Advanced settings, accessibility, write alt text.
Describe your photo and hit done.

Most people take forever editing, writing a caption and then adding their quota of hashtags, but forget to add a photo description?

If I were to not follow every disabled, or even non disabled person for that matter, who don’t implement photo descriptions, I would have a very empty feed.
When is every disabled person actually going to be an ally to the entire community?

Because until we use our platforms to become accessible ourselves, amplify the voices of other disable people, tell your audience to make accessibility a priority and put inclusion at the forefront, we aren’t going to see progress.