I am delighted that people with disabilities are invited to participate in the year's Devizes Carnival procession.
It was the presence of disabled participants in last year's procession which prompted my letter to the Gazette & Herald shortly afterwards.
This engendered favourable comment from many people and resulted in my being invited to join Wiltshire Access Consultancy (WAC). WAC provides an invaluable advice service on disability access to community halls, shops and other public premises, at highly competitive rates.
I am now proud to be on the Board of Trustees of this excellent organisation, thus enabling me to help practice what I have preached for years that exclusion of disabled people from life's hurly-burly is discrimination and should be resisted.
Television, the media of the masses, has been guilty of this for far too long, thus perpetuating the myth that disabled, and disfigured, people are not quite fully paid-up members of the human race. With the full implementation of the Disability Rights Bill very soon, this televisual discrimination should end. There must be some foul-mouthed disabled folk who would qualify as Big Brother contestants!
In the meantime, I hope there will once again be plenty of disabled participants in the Devizes Carnival procession.
MRS P ST JOHN OSLAND
Devizes
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