Join Jill: Raising awareness and why it matters
Learn about some of Jill’s experiences of getting involved to change things for the better for people with disabilities.
What could you to do help speak up for people with disabilities?
I feel that raising awareness of disabilities is important thing to do when you are disabled yourself, it helps people understand you better.
I love raising awareness of different things such as AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication), changing places toilets, cerebral palsy and anything else about being disabled.
With raising awareness of AAC I have a lot of stuff to make awareness of AAC. I have done a lot of talks like at Scottish parliament about AAC, about my experiences of AAC, how to communicate with someone which AAC and just how important AAC is. As pair of raising awareness of AAC I am very involved in making AAC the key by being in a few steering groups to get my views across.
I did some of campaigning for changing places toilets in Glasgow because there wasn’t enough changing places toilet in Glasgow. I had a petition around to get more changing places toilet in Glasgow. The campaign was successful and now there is a lot more changing places in Glasgow. I was involved in a group who made sure that queen street train station has the Right disabled access after it has been done up.
I am a part of a group called tag (the advisory group) The Advisory Group has been going since 1996. It was originally set up by KEY Community Supports to enable people with learning disabilities to have a stronger voice in the services they use and in their local communities. The Advisory Group has been going since 1996. It was originally set up by KEY Community Supports to enable people with learning disabilities to have a stronger voice in the services they use and in their local communities. I am a part of Glasgow west tag and national tag too.
In my job I do a lot of blogs about myself and experiences of life with a disability.
I do all of these things to raise awareness of disabled people to say if somebody who is disabled that doesn’t mean they are stupid and can’t live their life as normal. I know from my personal experiences that sadly there is a lot of people sees people like myself and think they hear disabled aww, that’s a shame they don’t know any better but that’s where raising awareness comes in. By raising awareness of something it is really helping people to understand.
Doing speeches and writing blogs I know that I go on about myself and it may seem like I am a bit of show off but that isn’t the case at all. I do it because I want to try and make people to understand me better as disabled person.
I like the saying “don’t judge someone by looking” but everybody does. It is hard not to. But once you know the story of that person you understand and accept them more.
Coming back to about changing places toilets, people and places wouldn’t know about the toilets and how important a disabled toilet is for a disabled person without people like myself making awareness of these toilets
Sometimes when I am out and out I get people asking me what is that meaning my talker because they don’t know what a talker is but by doing what I have been doing like doing talking, that is helping many people to understand how I communicate.
Let face it some people out there especially children don’t know anything about disability because they don’t know anyone who is disabled but if schools teaches pupils what disability is then if these pupils meet a disabled person later on in life we will have better understanding of that person with a disability. A few months back I did a talk in the high school about my AAC device and how you should communicate with someone used AAC. I think it is very good that schools are doing that.
Having a disability is very hard but you need to overcome it. For me, by raising awareness of disability that is me overcome my disability and saying look I am disabled but I can live my life as normal as I can.
What could you to do help speak up for people with disabilities?
Email me today jill.clark@bobath.scot