Rosie Jones always wears earphones when she’s out alone. She jokes it is for pleasurable reasons – “a chance to listen to Steps” – but it is actually to block out something much more menacing: when strangers see her walk down the street with her movement affected by cerebral palsy, they shout abuse at her.
Jones, 33, doesn’t need to go outside to be harassed. As one of the few disabled women regularly on British television, Jones can be in her north-east London flat and get a similar reaction on Twitter, where she has 220,000 followers. “I try to have a healthy relationship with social media, but there’s this ableist abuse,” she says. “You can’t avoid it.”
