For Learning Disability Week the focus has been on listening. The Mencap Hear My Voice campaign is promoting the voice of individuals as a powerful force. Evie Prysor-Jones, SEN and safeguarding content lead at Optimus Education, explores why looking is just as important as listening.

‘Don’t stare at that person, it’s rude,’ my teacher snapped at me briskly when on a school trip. I remember being confused. I had been staring at the person’s coat; it was a really nice, fluffy, red coat, and I failed to see why it was rude to admire it so obviously. Looking back now, I can remember an additional detail that I failed to notice aged eight – the lady with the lovely red coat had a disability. I’m now convinced that my teacher took one glance at who I was staring at and assumed I was staring in open curiosity at the lady’s face and way of walking. She was the one who noticed that. I noticed a lady who had a fantastic coat. We grow up in a society that tells us not to draw attention to anything or anyone who is different from the norm. We tell ourselves it’s because difference shouldn’t matter, that you shouldn’t notice if someone is different, and we don’t want to make them embarrassed. Actually, why should any of us be embarrassed? In the right situation I think we should be told ‘it’s OK to look, go and chat, ask some questions, don’t be afraid’. As human beings, we have forever suffered from the fatal flaw of being scared of what we don’t understand. How are we expected to understand disabilities if as children we are told not to be curious and to look away? The reason this is on my mind is because this week is Learning Disability Week, hosted by NHS England. All week I’ve been following #LDWeek15 and have seen some wonderful things and some awful truths – horror stories of abuse, examples of institutionalised discrimination against people with disabilities and great frustration from people and families who have to fight just to have their voice heard.

People with disabilities are people. Some are nice, some are tall, and some are small. Some are funny, some are good at sports, some like cats, and some like dogs – just because you have a disability doesn’t mean you are the same as other people with disabilities. If we are told ‘don’t stare’ (‘they have a disability’ is the part not said out loud) we force everyone into one category and don’t hear the individual stories or get to know individual personalities. Learning Disability Week shouldn’t exist. I constantly hear about great things happening in schools to promote inclusion and education, but we need more of it. There needs to come a time when a child doesn’t feel the need to stare at someone with a disability because they recognise what it is. They know it is nothing weird or something to be pitied, that the child understands that the person sitting opposite them on the bus may have a disability, but is also just another person on the bus – perhaps with an excellent red coat. By Evie Prysor-Jones