Menu
A Life.
You’re 65, trust me it’s not that far away. You noticed your sight started to deteriorate when you were 27 whilst you were on holiday with your friends and by the age of 33 you were wearing glasses for small print and increasingly needing to turn the light up and enlarge the text on your phone to read. By the time you were 36 you’d given up the team sports you loved as you felt more like a hinderance to your team mates every game. By 41 the deterioration in your sight was very noticeable, tripping over kerbs and spilling drinks, and you took the decision to go to the doctor who informed you that you had been living with a degenerative condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa which alongside your short sightedness was reducing your field of vision and making it harder to see in reduced light.
By the age of 47 the world had closed in around you. Your night vision was non existent and walking into darkened rooms or out into the light led to you being stationary for five minutes in order to adjust to the lighting conditions and function at all.
Perhaps one of the greatest challenges was that you had been forced to give up your driving license and were now relying on your friends and public transport to get around.
It seemed that the world was set against you from this moment. The timetables were in small print, people in the queue tutted or nudged your back when you didn’t step forward fast enough, steps were hard to see and hand rails were hard to get to especially when it was busy. Travel was hard but arriving was harder still as it seemed everywhere you went you were apologising and explaining to people that your sight wasn’t good and that you needed help to carry out the simplest of tasks. You met with your friends less and your feeing of isolation and despondency grew.
…but you’re not 65 are you. You’re 26 and this is someone else’s life. This is someone else’s problem and there really isn’t a need for you to think about this is there?
Well, the truth is that even if this isn’t the way your life pans out, with 1 in 5 people in the UK disabled now and with nearly 50% of all people over 65 living with a disability there is a very good chance that you and the people you love will have to come to terms with some of the issues and many others highlighted here.
Whether you are involved now in the provision of services, developing new ideas or just working for the man to pay the bills these issues are our issues and we as a society are duty and commercially bound to address them.
I would love to tell you about WelcoMe and how my own company is addressing these challenges now but it’s actually more important to me that you get it.. that you see a need yourselves and put universal design theory into practice in your own work and also take a moment to walk a couple of miles in someone else’s shoes to understand the link we all have to a society in which all lives matter if we are to call ourselves progressive.
I’m not going to leave you hanging though as if I have stirred you at all I know you will find these links useful.
