United Kingdom

That this prejudice will follow these children into adulthood is perhaps the bleakest part.

This is the thing that horrifies me the most about this story. Adults, schools, and parents are setting an abominable example to these children.

I can only imagine the confusion and shame a child must experience when being told to hide their insulin pumps, their wheelchairs, their hearing aids, etc. And I'm frightened to think of the pupils who feel empowered to "other" their classmates because they are being "othered" by the adults. It's a clear example of how we teach children bigotry.

An experience from my childhood which still sticks with me to this day is from when attending an ultra-orthodox church. I was maybe 5 years old and tried to follow my dad into a restricted area and being stopped by the priest, being told "sorry, only boys are allowed back here".

As a child I was taught that adults are always right, and to listen to them. This may very well be my earliest memory of being taught sexism, which only got reinforced throughout my life due to trusting the adults at this church and through trusting my very religious right-wing father. Even as a kid I recognised that what I was witnessing was unfair, but I did not have the power, the understanding, nor the will to challenge this unfairness because the adults must know what they're doing... right?

This is a legitimately horrifying story. Victorian stuff, if this had happened even thirty years ago I'd have been shocked.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

As one teacher put it to me, “The reason I want to speak out is that the recent issue in Scotland is not a one-off mistake by a rogue photographer but rather a systemic culture of creating ‘perfect’ pictures without any disabilities shown.”

Barely a few hours before the school story broke, the actor Sally Phillips spoke of how her son Olly, who has Down’s syndrome, was denied access to a trampoline park.

The organisers – who allegedly told Phillips someone with his condition would need a letter from a GP to gain entry – said they were “deeply sorry” Olly could not take part and was left disappointed, and that they were following safety guidance from British Gymnastics.

These are the same attitudes that see Send pupils left to languish at home without a school place or a wheelchair user forced to wet herself on a train because public transport is still not accessible.

It is the man who leers at a woman sat in a wheelchair at a bar to inform her, “You’d be pretty if you weren’t in that chair, love.” It is the troll on X who sees a disabled celebrity on television and picks up his iPhone to tell her people like her shouldn’t be allowed out.

It sits in prejudice, digging and clawing its way into our culture until one day the nice man who is taking your child’s school photo asks her to hide her hearing aids.

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This is me in every ID photo where my glasses need to be removed:

When you take 20 seconds thinking about how a wheelchair user can get from A to B you quickly realize how much you take stairs for granted. All these ableist things are practically invisible until you really put yourself in their shoes.