Disability Is Analogue Not Digital. by Les May

IN March of this year the Daily Express published four pictures of Paul McCartney struggling to rise from a lying position to a sitting position on a Caribbean beach. They were captioned by ‘Help! I need somebody’ and ‘Twist and clout’ in an attempt at humour. McCartney is the same age as me and in my experience there is nothing particularly amusing about trying to get up from the ground or floor if there isn’t something conveniently placed to give a bit of support. That’s why every so often someone who lives alone is found dead or severely dehydrated after a fall. McCartney’s face did not suggest he found it terribly amusing either.

I’m not going to suggest that the pictures were ‘offensive’ or generate some synthetic outrage in the hopes of provoking a ‘Twitter Storm’, but I am doubtful that the paper would have published similar pictures of some well known figure struggling to rise from a wheelchair. A wheelchair says ‘disabled’ and no one wants to to be accused of mocking the disabled. There’s even talk of making such boorishness a ‘hate crime’.

The editor of the Express is not alone in viewing disability in simplistic terms like this. Someone is either disabled or not; it’s a binary thing like some digital ‘on off switch’. But as many people, some old and some not so old, will be happy to testify, it’s not, it’s analogue. You gradually lose the ability to do the things you used to take for granted in your younger days.

There’s no cliff edge moment, leg muscles just become that bit weaker and it becomes more difficult to stand up without something to push on with your arms. Knee joints begin to show signs of wear and it becomes painful to walk Or you find you cannot read the small print, or you need the subtitles on TV programmes because you cannot hear so well as you once could.

One of the best descriptions I have heard of what life is like for older people came from the biologist Jared Diamond who at the time was 81, he said he lives a life of ‘constructive paranoia’. What he meant was that before putting your feet somewhere, check there’s nothing to fall over, when going down steps always hold the handrail, make two journeys not one when carrying things from one place to another and always put your keys in the same place.

Mostly the ability deficit that comes with age can compensated by these little tweaks to everyday life, but some cannot. In the late 1970s the bioengineer Heinz Wolff initiated a project he called URINE, an acronym for Uninteresting Research Into Necessary Equipment which looked at ways of overcoming the ability deficit which comes with age. More recently the Sports Department of Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) started a project to examine the link between loss of muscle strength and propensity for falls in older people. But in spite of all the talk about diversity there is little evidence that there has been any widespread recognition of the impact of the incremental decline in abilities which many people experience as they age.

Not all supermarkets ensure there are plenty of smaller trolleys for people who struggle to handle the ‘family shop’ size. Some directors of TV films and dramas have them filmed in what looks like ‘Mudochrome’. Businesses and local councils arrange for Public Notices to be printed with the smallest possible font size to save money. For several years the ‘i’ newspaper regularly ran a page which had parts of the text printed in pale blue or pale yellow on a white background. Web pages frequently have text on a patterned background. These things may look great, but they are purgatory for anyone whose visual acuity isn’t 100%.

No doubt all these organisations have some well paid individual to draw up a policy document on disability and diversity, but until these individuals begin to stop thinking about disability in digital, on off, terms and begin to realise that for most people it’s not, it’s analogue, life will be just that bit more difficult than it need be for some people because it’s the slow decline in their ability to do everyday things like what McCartney was trying to do that matters.

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