Ouch! is a BBC podcast by disabled people and about disabled people. But it's not just for disabled people. It's hilarious and I'm thoroughly enjoying it, despite all my limbs, senses and faculties being in relative order.
It's not a documentary about being disabled, it's not serious and it's not depressing. It's a discussion programme concerning all the disability related things the media tend to avoid. Experiences, events and interesting, often funny stories.
This gaping lack of representation of disability in the media is inexcusable, and when they are represented it's always 'inspirational' and 'moving' rather than just people who happened to be born exceptional, trying to get by in life. It's like only displaying gay people as persecuted victims of homophobia - why not just stop drawing attention to the most obvious but tired angle (the difference that sets them apart from everyone else) and show them as the part of society they really are?
I would soon stop getting looks of cherished sympathy as I guide my blind client to his taxi, and my friend would get less unashamed blank stares from passers-by as he whizzes down the high street in his electric wheelchair.
There are hundreds of thousands of disabled people in the UK and millions the world over. Why not show them as regular parts in films and TV programmes without their disability being the whole point of them being there? People might stop seeing them as 'the disabled' and more the part of life they really are.