Earlier this month, Pam Fortune, a local artist and WECIL Community Member wrote a poem about access and we would like to share it with you.

If you want to learn more about accessibility and what we can all do to improve access for disabled people then take a look at #AccessibleAdvent on Twitter. Throughout December activists and individuals have been posting one thing a day on what would make life more accessible for them.

Accessibility For All – A Poem

Accessibility is not just physical entry but a way of taking a full part and it

Creates abilities to fully be ourselves and brings

Confidence when we can live our lives and feel included

Empowered and encouraged when our environment

Supports our varied and often unseen needs when barriers can

Suppress and stifle all that we have to give, to live, to be

Included in all aspects and areas of living

Barriers are not always physical obstacles but are often

Invisible, just as many conditions and disabilities are unseen

Leaving lives not lived to their full potential and

Individuals often side-lined, not only environmental access failures but

Trapped in myriad ways if they cannot reach or enter the worlds open to          

You when your world may exclude me but if you remove my barriers

From society my world is open to all of you too

Open to all abilities which are as variable as any ‘dis’abilities

Recognising that we all have strengths and weaknesses

And I have qualities and gifts which may add to our world if I am not

Locked behind those barriers many of which you simply cannot see

Let us all be free! Free to fully access life and opportunity!

Thank you for to Pam for your wonderful poem. If you would like to submit an entry for our blog, please email: hannah.nuttall@wecil.co.uk

We are interested in all forms of art! So please get in touch if you have something you would like to share.