Monday 3 May 2010

Blue badges and autism

Blue badges [thats the cards we have over here for parking in disabled bays with,they dont look anything like a badge],are always associated with those who have severe physical mobility problems,such as a wheel chair user.

One thing online mixed disabled communities and non disabled communities have in common is the amount of users who think disabled bays are only needed by wheel chair users,[the outdated disability logo of a wheel chair user obviously does not help but then what else coud be used].

Another common thing between both,is the amount of users who think only severely physically disabled people get blue badges, or high rate mobility of DLA [disability living allowance],seeing the rest of us who get both as frauds,but also badly judging many severely physically disabled people who do not use wheel chairs,or may not need mobility aids all the time.

Many of us on the severe half of the autism spectrum get high rate mobility through the severe non physical criteria,yet may be very hyper when getting out a car,so look like unworthy of a disabled bay,
we usually aren't even noticed anyway as people usually think the blue badge belongs to the driver.

Disabled people can be our own worst enemy when it comes to blue badges,because so many do not understand how having severe developmental and learning disabilities can cause severe and life threatening or injuring mobility/outdoor problems,we all have individual issues rather than the same.
The criteria for us to get high rate mobility [and thus blue badge if wanted] is extremely strict and difficult compared to the physical disability criterias so,anyone with autism who got their BB through their HRM are required to be more severely impaired than through physical need and so are not just getting it for nothing.

Before preaching about difficulties they have not got one bit of understanding of,why dont people who think autistics shoud not get blue badges,do some shadowing with the organisation am in,or with the NAS,or with autism initiatives or any of the other autism support organisations who have HRM and BB users,to see some of the reasons why we genuinely need BBs and disabled bays?

There needs to be a lot more awareness of disabled parking bays and what users of them can be impaired by,because the official ignorants criteria is made up of:
-is not able bodied,this means the badge owner will be a wheel chair,frame,rollator,crutches etc user-just anything physically obvious for the severe disability clueless to understand.
-is not young/middle aged,yes-if believe some, only old people get blue badges! so many disabled people have problems with age discrimination.

in own experience-sainsburys has been worst for age problems off both staff and customers,once we had been reported by a old age pensioner who had parked across several bays without a blue badge [and actually ran inside past the attendants who didnt care] for parking in a disabled bay and been asked to take the badge out to show the car park attendant it close up,as all of us were 'youngens' or 'little shits' or whatever their favourite word for us all is.


Lastly,not everyone with severe enough autism,has a BB even though they may have HRM, not only that,have seen some people try to start rants on disability forums,about 'all autistic children getting blue badges being a sign of how they're giving them out for anything now',yeah whatever.

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