Access Linky: Jan 2018

Happy New Year access friends! Welcome to the first #AccessLinky of 2018!

The linky was a little bit quiet last month, what with that little thing called Christmas taking over our lives!  It does mean I get to do a more thorough round up of all the posts linked up though… yay!

Round Up:

If you have starting school age kids, it’s that time of year when you are making the final adjustments on that statement on their application (something we’re doing for our youngest!), however when your child has special educational needs (SEN) it can be an even more stressful and complicated process to find and secure the right setting! Rainbows Are Too Beautiful sets out a really handy summary of the options in her her post Six School Possibilities for SEND kids.

This post (The Long Haul) by The Long Chain strikes so many chords for me, and is the reason I campaign! Please please read it all, but I had to share this quote from the post:

“Any problems we might face over the coming years are not because of Benjamin and his disabilities, but because we live in a world that values profit and popularity over people, that pays lip-service to equality but neglects to make reasonable adjustments towards inclusion, that celebrates diversity but assumes the only purpose of prenatal testing is to facilitate the eradication of ‘diseases’ such as Downs Syndrome”

We need society to embrace the social model of disability and create an inclusive environment, so that children such as Benjamin and his family (and our family!) don’t become excluded as they grow older (and bigger) and can live their lives freely!

A Modern Christmas Carol by A Wheelie Great Adventure is a brilliant analogy for the issues around trying to get big business to engage with the changing places toilets campaign!  Let’s hope the Christmas future brings those changes!

And finally, imagine if people were pleasant and courteous (and not impatient!) all the time!?  A little glimpse from Wheelscapades into how an everyday experience can make for A Jolly Good Day if people make a little effort to treat each other kindly and with respect!

Please do check in again next month and catch up with the linked blog posts and the round up!

Linky Info:

The linky will be open for 3 weeks! Share your posts about ideas and experiences (good and bad!) around physical and/or sensory accessibility of buildings, places, spaces, products and/or activities below…. and don’t forget to check in again next month to read the round up and link up again!

Guidelines:

1. Link up to 2 posts each month (old or new)! It would be lovely if you could add my badge (cut and paste the code in the box under the badge image above and add it into your blog post while in ‘text’ mode of your blog editor) or add a text link back to my site so that people can find the linky and read the other blog entries;
2. Please comment on this post to introduce yourself if you’re new to the linky, and comment on some of the other linked posts to help share ideas and experiences (use the hashtag #AccessLinky in your comment)!
3. It would also be amazing if you could share your post (using the hashtag #AccessLinky) on social media to help spread awareness of the issues around accessibility!  I’ll also try to retweet as many posts as I can!
4. I welcome input from anyone that is affected by accessible design – users, carers, friends and family as well as designers, developers, managers and legislators (so pretty much everyone then!). I welome blogs from professionals and suppliers as well as individual bloggers as long as they keep within the spirit of idea exchange and are not sales posts for products or services.