A disabled activist who was born completely blind has made a powerful call for change as he said: "It's our environment that disables us."
Tom Walker, 58, from Toxteth, is a podcaster and part-time Radio Merseyside reporter who lends his voice to the struggles of other visually impaired and disabled people as they try to adapt to a world which was not made for them.
He said: "It's very important that we don't depict disability as some kind of misfortune. It's just the way it is. We all have challenges, and the way I think of disability is that it presents us with environmental and social challenges.
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"The fact I'm visually impaired doesn't disable me. It's the fact that signage is usually inaccessible, or that there are obstacles in the street for me to trip over. If you're in a wheelchair, it's not the fact that you can't walk that's the disability - it's that there are still buildings with stairs and no ramps, and lifts that don't work.
"It's the environment that disables us. I do accept that there is a medical side to it, but that's not something that can be changed. It's society that needs to make the adjustments."
Tom, who was born totally blind and now has 3% vision in his right eye thanks to a series of childhood operations, said drastic changes needed to be made to support disabled people's inclusion in the workplace.
According to the Department of Work and Pensions, 52.7% of disabled people were employed in 2021, compared to 81.0% for non-disabled people. Disabled people are almost twice as likely to be unemployed as non-disabled people, and three times as likely to be economically inactive.
Meanwhile, disabled people face additional expenses, with families of disabled children facing extra costs of £581 a month on average, according to disability equality charity Scope.
Tom, who was a media manager for Wirral Council and Lancashire County Council before going freelance, said: "One of the reasons for this is the law. The Equality Act is very difficult for disabled people to enforce. If you have a complaint against an organisation they may well have the money and resources to defend themselves. There's an inbalance in fire-power. It's very difficult unless you get support from an organisation, which is very unlikely, and then you're on your own.
"One in four partially sighted people are in employment. That's 75% of people unemployed. Of the 25% that are in work, the majority, like me, are in freelance work. I find that is a preferable way of working, because I can't discriminate against myself.
"The attitudes come from the top and I think we need the Government to indicate that they really do want to include disabled people more completely in society and in the workplace, and they need to do that by strengthening the law and making it properly illegal to discriminate.
"More generally, when it suits people, they are supportive of disabled people. But when it doesn't suit them we're scroungers, on the dole, not pulling our weight, when nothing could be further from the truth.
"It's a very complicated issue. Many visually impaired people will go to school, get GCSEs and A-levels and go onto university. They leave university full of ambition, start applying for jobs, and very quickly realise they are not going to get one. They find ways of filling their time constructively and give up on employment, and that isn't their fault. It's just that society doesn't make it easy to find work."
He added: "It's kind of a vicious circle. If you don't know disabled people or have them working in your organisation, you're going to be nervous about employing them. It's about how you break that cycle that's a big issue. Somebody has to make a brave decision, to an extent, and that's very hard.
"The other thing that happens is that when we are in employment, we're held to much higher standards.
"I've been lucky; I've worked for some great organisations and I wouldn't have a bad word to say about them. Since I started working freelance I've had a lot of support. I think this should happen across the board.
"We as visually impared people have to take some responsibility, and I can see why we don't apply for jobs because we get disillusioned and knocked back. I'm not saying it's easy. I've got the confidence to get out there, and I freely admit that I was very lucky. Not everybody is like that. You get knocked back, you've got to dust yourself down and carry on. If you don't, you don't survive.
"The truth about benefits for disabled people is that it won't make you a millionaire, but you'll be OK, you'll just about survive. People will think 'I've had so many knock-backs and disadvantages, I'll accept work isn't for me', and that's tragic because it means that people with talent who could contribute to society aren't.
"What society is doing is depriving itself of an enormous reservoir of talent that's untapped, and that's an enormous tragedy."
Yesterday, Saturday, December 3, was International Day of Persons with Disabilities, you can find out more here.
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