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.