really laughed when i was repping mentally ill patients in a meeting about the new crisis line service & i went ‘ok so what about ppl who can’t speak on the phone’

& they were like ‘what’

& i was like ‘when say an autistic is non speaking or a Deaf person is in crisis?’

and -

they honest to god said to me well that doesn’t happen very often, we don’t have the demand for that.

? how many, particularly Deaf, non-speaking or speech impaired folk but even hearing oral folks, would benefit from a text based alt to being vocally on the phone during crisis?

i told them that i have often been one of those ppl, unable to speak during a crisis, or ticcing so much that speech is exhausting, & the reason they believed they didn’t have a problem is that ppl like me are falling through the cracks that ableist structures had baked in

loool

this is precisely what i said to them, to be greeted with embarrassed silence around the room.

later, in private, some of the nhs heads of service (just 2 in a room of 14-16) approached & thanked me for challenging them. thing is none of them knew i was a former civil servant https://twitter.com/faryl/status/1306380959613243392

i delib didn’t let on that i understood a lot of their coded language and frameworks, more so than your average patient (coz i too had been part of a conversations like this in positions of relative power, creating new services etc, but for me w an accessibility-critical eye)

in fact my past work exp had probably led to me to being in the room at all, & in a position to be advocating & challenging.

but mostly i bit back a lot & just sat back & watched it play out. & it was clear that so many of these heads/directors had lost touch w patient needs