No, a plastic card won’t give me human rights
I often see feel-good stories about new “disability” cards. I’m not sure I believe in it.
All around the world, well-meaning organisations think about how they can help disabled people live their life with dignity.
There’s a range of issues that disabled people face, like:
- getting refused entry due to a guide dog
- getting refused access to accessible bathrooms
- being treated differently, or badly, at venues and businesses.
Many organisations thinking about this problem seem to reach for the same solution: a plastic card, or some kind of trinket like a sunflower lanyard.
There’s a range of them here in New Zealand. Just recently, Blind Low Vision NZ released a plastic card to signal that a guide dog is “official”.
But I have always held a fairly stubborn, perhaps pessimistic view of such solutions.
Basically, I do not want to carry around a plastic card in order to be treated with dignity and respect as a human being.
Respecting me, should not be contingent upon a chunk of plastic in my wallet. I have human rights because I am human, not because I hold a piece of plastic.
I also feel the same way about initiatives such as making disabled people wear sunflower lanyards to indicate invisible disability. I do not want accessible, dignified treatment to rely upon what trinket I choose to wear on a given day. I have seen, in New Zealand, examples where accessibility features of a building were restricted to people wearing sunflower lanyards. This is wrong.
I understand my views may not be shared by the entire disabled community. Some people might find these plastic cards and lanyards valuable. But for me, I don’t think they’re an ideal, or correct solution.
Imagine a business owner is so ill-informed they refuse access to a restaurant to a blind person with a guide dog. Is an “official” piece of plastic really going to change their mind and suddenly make them comply with the Human Rights Act? I doubt it. I think individuals who are ill-informed enough to treat disabled people that way, are unlikely to be swayed by a piece of plastic. The discrimination in such situations is more fundamental and deep-seated than that.
I foresee another problem that may arise. These plastic cards might become mandatory. If business owners learn about these cards, they might start demanding to see them of everyone with a guide dog. This means there’s an additional step guide dog owners must take in order to be treated with dignity — they must acquire, and continually carry a card, or else they risk being carded and denied entry for a lack of card.
If you’re a disability organisation, you should think long and hard about the implications of making disabled people carry around trinkets to be considered a “real disabled”. It might cause more harm than good.
— Callum