making accessibility inaccessible: the unending fight of asserting your disability and your needs

DISABLED PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE AND WE DESERVE BASIC F*CKING DECENCY

TW: incoming rant and probably more swearing than usual…

You’ve been warned.

Today I want to take a moment to talk about how ridiculously sh!tty the disability system is. The fact that it is still in place boggles the mind.

Who the f*ck thought up the disability pay system? Papers and forms for days, weeks, and months on end, required papers from 3 different doctors, specialists or other, all the phone calls to make, all the interactions needed, the pay withheld until everything is given to them…

Why do the most fatigued, hurting, anxious, and depressed people need to do this much to try to PROVE that they need the pitiful amount of money we’re given?

Yes, ask the person with ADHD to have multiple appointments, phone appointments, a sh!t ton of papers ready, and of course it’s the ADHD person’s responsibility to follow-up at any point in the process.

Ask the su*c*dal depressed person to deal with all of this sh!t when they can’t even care enough to feed themselves.

How about the one with crippling anxiety, who breaks down at the idea of having to learn something new because it’s always so overwhelming?

Get someone with fibromyalgia to spend years and years of not being even believed, to fight for the right of being barely acknowledged as an afterthought… But now that they’re acknowledged, this is just the beginning. “Here’s 34 forms to get filled out by doctors, most of which don’t believe you, and we need it by this date, or we’ll just throw your file away. Toodles!”

This website may contain affiliate links which means that I may receive compensation at no extra cost to you if you make a purchase from a link found on my site.

The joke of handing us form after form even AFTER being accepted, and withholding payments whenever we don’t meet the time expectations…

What a cruel joke to play on the most vulnerable of us.

Life is overwhelming enough as it is. When we, disabled people, end up trying for disability pay, that means we’ve already given up on trying to keep up with abled people, and we feel like absolute sh!t for not being able to work enough.

We’ve already lost that fight. Then the system throws us for a never-ending loop of bureaucracy just so we can have a much-below-the-poverty-line income.

F*ck that.

So many rules, so many limitations, “ifs” and “buts” and constraints. We’re already f*cking limited! We’re applying for disability, for f*ck’s sake!

It’s infuriating to see a process so badly implemented. I understand, somewhat, their reasoning behind it, but it’s a sh!t way of discouraging abled people to fake a disability. And in no way do I agree or approve of their reasoning.

And then, if we manage to finish these ridiculous tasks and give the papers on time, be there at all the things we’re appointed to, and get approved…

We’re broke.

Because all of this work is done for such a small, pitiful income that there’s barely enough to cover rent.

The Disability Pay system was made with the goal of keeping us in extreme poverty. That’s why the system has limitations on how much money you can have in your bank account. That’s why they give you almost nothing to live on and tell you to deal with it.

I guess if we can’t work, we’re just useless, right?

You may be wondering why they’re doing that. It’s a sh!tty question with an even sh!ttier answer, but I’m already here writing this blog post so I’m gonna answer:

Poverty pays off.

How expensive it is to be poor. The financial struggles that we were GIVEN are affecting everything in our lives. And yes, we were GIVEN those struggles. One cannot expect us to live a proper life and get back on our feet when we have to get a month’s worth of groceries with a week’s worth of grocery money.

So here’s the thing:

• Our mental health suffers from all the stress
• Our financial struggles lead us to go for the absolute cheapest options, which often aren’t very good and will require further expenses to keep
• We can’t eat healthy, because we can’t always eat, period.
• We can’t take care of our homes, be it because of the stress, our mental health, physical health, or a mix of everything.
• The effects of extreme poverty brings us into a depressed state, which usually ends up with full-on lethargy. What’s the f*cking point, anyway?
• the social stigma and discrimination makes us isolate. Some of us may have the support of our families/friends, but a lot of us don’t.
• We can’t improve our quality of life. That requires money, and we don’t get that.

For a lot of physical disabilities, I believe there are more forms (yay) and proofs of necessity that can be given so that help is provided, but I do not have a physical disability nor any experience in filing such forms, so don’t quote me on that. I do hope they have that option though. Sh!t’s expensive.

If you take a look at each of these bullet points, you’ll see at least one, if not more, reason why the struggle brought by being poor benefits others. But who decided that we weren’t worth the bother?

Who decided that we don’t deserve a livable environment? Our mental health is already suffering, and now we need to spend all our energy to survive? I know that a small pay is better than no pay. I also know that being in survival mode for a long period of time is very detrimental to anyone’s mental health AND physical health. So why the f*ck??

As usual, blame the rich people. The rich will go to great lengths to make sure their precious little cash cow(us) remains as it is.

Did you just call me a cow?

I’m not sure if this term is widely used, so I just wanted to add that “cash cow” is a term used by rich people when talking about their money-making thing, or system, or whatever they made that makes ’em money. But yes. That’s us.

The extreme poverty bunch.

They’ll always have more people to prey on. Aside from disabled people, there’s a whole lot of people out there who can barely make ends meet, and they’re just as profitable as us.

I guess the most enraging part, to me, is the fact that getting disability pay comes with so many strings attached. You want to make some cash on the side to make ends meet? they better not catch you. Have a sudden/unforeseen money amount deposited in your bank? If it made you go over the limit, your disability is already gone.

What if you wanted to start a small online business, hoping to make some extra cash? Same thing. They threaten to take away the disability pay at the first sight of money from a different source, and they know damn well that between 150$ from an online business that’s just starting out or the (very low, but recurrent) pay from disability, we don’t have a choice but to run after disability, and leave the business potential behind.

It’s a similar concept to the minimum wage effect. That’s not a living wage, and most people need two, if not three jobs, to make ends meet. That kind of exhaustion is bound to give way to costly mistakes, bad spending choices due to being so tired, etc.

They’re just not even trying to hide it with us.

That super low-balled monthly check is what keeps us from being homeless, and we’re fighting too much for this sh!t.

It is most definitely unfair, and downright disgusting, that such a poverty-based system is allowed to remain that way. It’s even sh!ttier, I think, that it’s so widely accepted, but that’s a topic for an entire different blog post.

Is it that demanding to want to be treated like people? We’re not given a fair chance, so of course we can’t show them that we’re worth the help that we require. Not that anyone’s interested.

The system fails us daily, but so do abled people. No one is in a better position to fight for our equality than people who aren’t suffering of invisible disabilities, but we’re not even an afterthought. When I talk about my disability to people that are “family,” I am judged, called lazy and useless, and worse. And I know it’s not a rare occurrence.

We’re being cast aside for “having trouble adapting,” or “not being able to act normal,” or “not being able to keep up.” If abled people are so good at adapting, then why aren’t they adapting to us? Why aren’t they even trying to understand? Why am I spending so much energy adapting my brain to neurotypical people, and at the same time, I’ll never be good enough for them?

Sound like bullsh!t to me.

I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I don’t have most of ’em. I’m just angry at this bullsh!t and the fact that I can do f*ck-all about it.

DISABLED PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE AND WE DESERVE BASIC F*CKING DECENCY

/rant over.