Disability History Month

SarahT41

I have been doing some more research into disability history, partly for my own interest, partly because I wanted to mark it in my workplace (I'm a library assistant). I'm ashamed to say I knew very little until now, but of course that is mostly down to the fact that disabled people, or at least the fact they were disabled, are not in the history books.

Like many marginalised groups, disabled people are largely missing from the lists of historical events and figures that most people have heard of – but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t always existed.

As we come to the end of this UK Disability History Month, I’d like to share a fantastic free resource from Historic England which provides an overview of disability history from the medieval period up to the present day.

https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/disability-history/

All of the information on these pages has also been translated into BSL, in videos at the bottom of each page.

I just thought it might interest other people too!

I am always pushing for better representation in our library stock, making awareness displays and trying to improve the accessibility of all our services, but I also find it incredibly frustrating sometimes feeling that if I wasn't doing those things, no one else would.

There are a lot of aspects out of my control - we need more disabled writers who have access to the resources to get published, and greater diversity within the publishing industry. As a visibly disabled person, the overwhelming majority of the intrusive and inappropriate questions I get about my mobility aids and medical details are at work, from members of the public. It's also very hard to remain professional when I've already had that same rude question about "What's wrong with me" several times that day already.

All that I'm doing to make sure a disabled voice is heard within my workplace is in the hope that I can slowly change the attitudes of these people, so that one day they might stop seeing me as a curiosity and see me as a person.

I hope that this interests some of you, I'd love to hear if you've learned something new, or have a disabled historical figure that you think not enough people have heard of!

Holly_Scope

@SarahT41 I love seeing posts like this - shining a light on area's society can improve. This is really thought provoking and I've taken note of the link to have a look myself a little later. 😊

Best wishes,

Holly

SarahT41

Thank you @Holly_Scope 😊