Think the Paralympics improve life for disabled people like me? You're wrong

We get two weeks every four years when disability is cool, then normal service is resumed. Back in the disability box with you, and don’t you dare moan about me putting my Mercedes in a blue badge space because if you do I’ll lamp you

There has been a 40 per cent increase in prosecutions and convictions for disability hate crime (Getty)

“Have you noticed a change in the way that people act towards disabled people since the 2012 #paralympics?”, asked the charity Scope in a Twitter poll as the Rio Games opened (it’s still running if you’re interested).

Not so much, said broadcaster and disability activist Mik Scarlet who tweeted in response that he’d been verbally attacked on the streets on the day of the opening ceremony.

It came as the reality of disabled life in modern Britain was writ large with the release of figures from the Attorney General’s Office showing a shocking 40 per cent increase in prosecutions and convictions for disability hate crime.

There is a grain of something good in those figures – they at least appear to show that the Crown Prosecution Service and the Police are taking the issue more seriously than they used to. That might account for part of the increase.

However, we can be sure that those 941 prosecutions represent only the tip of a very big, and a very nasty, iceberg. A lot of incidents still go unreported. I hear about them from friends every day. Like Mik Scarlet, I’ve also experienced abuse.

Hate crime, and aggressive behaviour towards people with disabilities, is, however, at the extreme end of the everyday discrimination suffered by those of us in Britain’s invisible minority.

We get two weeks every four years when suddenly disability is cool, and everyone talks about it, and it’s on adverts, and in the media. Then normal service is resumed, and it’s get back in the disability box with you, and don’t you dare moan about me putting my Mercedes in a blue badge space because if you do I’ll lamp you.

What’s that? You want jobs? Of course, we welcome applications from everyone. Until the people we put on the interview committee take note of the wheelchair, or the crutches, or the white stick or the guide dog and decide the easier option is not to bother. If it even gets that far.

There is a reason that the disability employment gap has remained stubbornly high despite Government claims of wanting to tackle it.

Employers and their people are only following the example of the media they consume when they’re not at work (and sometimes when they are). On the rare occasions disabled people appear in it, they’re there to tick a box, to provide a bit of inspiration porn or to serve as a prop for a lazy screenwriter. With an able bodied actor called upon for the role. Such as in the appalling Me Before You, about a man made disabled euthanising himself. If all else fails, but a disabled character in it. Hey presto, you’ve made your weepie win at the box office.

What’s all this got to do with hate crime? It’s simple. People have a regrettable tendency to attack and abuse what they see as “the other”. We know this. It’s where racism, homophobia and other prejudices come from.

A good way of tackling those prejudices, as well as making clear that they are utterly unacceptable, is by raising the visibility of the groups concerned. This helps to create an environment of acceptance.

It helps the gay community when prominent people feel confident enough to come out and talk about their sexuality. It assists the cause of racial equality when people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds can be seen reading the news.

Neither of these examples can, or will, stamp out racism and homophobia on their own. But they do help with the battle against them.

We haven’t even got that far with disability. We get the Paralympics (which should anyway be integrated with the Olympics) every four years, the Last Leg, and Frank Gardner or Gary O’Donogue on the BBC. And that’s about your lot.

If people see that broadcasters, and the wider media, feel that it’s ok to discriminate by excluding a particular group for all but two weeks every four years, is it any wonder that they feel that they can do the same? Or worse?

At the time of writing, the Scope Twitter poll I mentioned had garnered 140 votes. Some 30 per cent said they had noticed a change in attitudes for better, but 28 per cent said the opposite while 42 per cent said no change at all.

There needs to be change.

A more scientific Scope poll found that more than three quarters (78 per cent) of disabled respondents said the Paralympics improve attitudes. Four in five (82 per cent) of them said the Games change negative assumptions about disability.

Unfortunately, it has still had only a very limited impact on disabled people’s everyday lives. Just one fifth (19 per cent) thought Britain is a better place to be disabled than four years ago despite the huge success of London 2012.

Which helps to prove my point.

Two weeks of sunshine don’t provide much consolation if you’re going to get rained upon for the long term. And work on that needs to start now.