Lockdown confined everyone to their homes but for some disabled people it has continued even as the country opens up.
Vicky Haylott lives near Edinburgh with her husband and three children. She says her life was pretty normal before lockdown with the "slight complication" that she is blind, as is her husband and eldest son.
However, Vicky says the new public health rules and physical distancing, where the layout of familiar places has fundamentally changed, have caused her problems she has never faced before. "Coming out of lockdown has been much harder than being in full lockdown," she says. "For those of us with no vision, we can't social distance, so the measures put in place now are impossible for us to adhere to.
"It traps us because the constant nerves and worrying about whether you're going to accidentally walk into someone or get run over by a bicycle, or not be able to find the queue for a shop.
She says people with disabilities have learned their own methods to navigate their way through the world.
"If those strategies are taken away very suddenly, that person can then be faced with an unmanageable situation," she says.
Sally Witcher, chief executive of Inclusion Scotland, says not enough consideration was given to disabled people and their complex needs when lockdown came into effect, and this is having a continued impact now we are coming out of it.
"Disabled people have been abandoned. They feel forgotten and the responses that have sometimes been developed to support people haven't helped, or haven't been adequate, and haven't recognised the needs that disabled people have."
So, what do you think? How have you found the easing of lockdown? Have you found it difficult to abide by social distancing rules? Do you think that disabled people have been abandoned and ignored by policy makers? Let us know what you think down below in the comments.
