Disability History Month takes place from 22 November through 22 December.
Makeup artist Umber Ghauri, comedian Laurence Clark, and musician John Kelly have taken part in a new campaign from mobility bathroom specialists Bathing Solutions to discuss the stigma surrounding the ‘disabled’ label.
Umber, who self-identifies as queer and mainly works with people of colour and the LGBTQ community, shares their personal battles of living with endometriosis and discusses what it means to be disabled.
“I identify as queer, in this really wide way, because it’s an ever-changing kind of thing, and I also identify as brown, because I am, and I’m Pakistani and Muslim,” she says in the video.
“Disabled is another word I’ve recently accepted as part of my identity.”
Umber describes how many people with disabilities that aren’t immediately visible to others don’t feel they are entitled to help, or to use the label disabled, because they don’t fit the expected image the world has of them.
“It was probably a word I could have reasonably used for most of my life, but how disability was presented to me throughout my life didn’t seem to fit with what I was experiencing,” they continued.
“The things I’ve been diagnosed with aren’t visible. People picture disability in a very visual way, [but] actually most people, even people who look disabled, most of what’s going on with their disability is internal.
“Pain is not visible, tiredness is not really visible. A lot of people who experience that don’t feel that they have a right to be called disabled.”
Watch Umber’s video below.
CEO of Bathing Solutions, Lawrence Warriner, said of the campaign: “We consider ourselves advocates for disabled people and supporting them has always been at the core of our brand.
“Through these three stories we hope to connect to people by demonstrating there are others out there battling the same issues with labels and identities.”
Click here to find out more about Disability History Month.
You can also watch Laurence and John’s videos here.
Latest
