Some ways to manage this would be to communicate with learning disabled people, those who support them and learning disability organisations, to make things accessible. It may be that they need to have a couple of shorter opportunities to share their experiences, rather than one longer interview. Maybe it will take them longer to process and think of answers. Maybe they need things explained differently or broken down more. It may be that they need things communicated in a more accessible way. Yes, learning disabled people have access needs, but that doesn't mean their stories shouldn't be remembered. This is very unfortunate, because we are literally losing history. Or they may have made the project seem like it would be inaccessible, difficult or unappealing to learning disabled people. For example, they may have used complex language or not promoted the project in places learning disabled people have access to. In reality, they may not have advertised in a way that would be accessible. People assume that making things accessible will be too hard, too time consuming and/or too costly, so they don't bother.Īlternatively, they don't understand they need to make themselves accessible and just assume when they get no interest from learning disabled people, that there aren't any learning disabled people interested. Probably one of the biggest issues that doesn't get talked about enough is accessibility. Unfortunately, there are a range of issues around learning disability history and telling it, that often put people off. So, that's a lot of stories that are often not being told. This is a statistic not from a specific study, but that's internationally recognised by disability advocacy organisations. Disabled people as a whole, make up 20% of the population. It's really unfortunate though, that people often decide that disabled stories aren't worth telling. I'm not learning disabled myself, I have a sensory impairment and a long term health condition, but I know learning disabled people who lead enjoyable and interesting lives. This is particularly the case with learning disabled people. They assume that we don't have interesting lives. People often assume that disabled people don't have interesting stories to tell. And in this blog post, I'm going to talk about why this happens. Disabled people, especially learning disabled people, are quite often left out of history and storytelling in general. Rebecca: As a disabled person, someone who has lots of disabled friends and someone who's been fairly involved in various aspects of disability advocacy over the years, for me the most important part of Hidden Lives Remembered is sharing the stories of learning disabled people. It is a follow-up to the one she wrote just before starting volunteering with us. Firstly, very many thanks to Rebecca who has spent several mornings editing audio for the project! She has also taken the time to write this blog reflecting on her time working on the project.

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