January 2023 summary: Seeking a more sociable life

January 2023 has been a month of attempting to plan new goals and seek a more sociable life. It is fair to say I’ve given it a good go but have not been totally successful as yet.

Disability Horizons

I returned to work at Disability Horizons the second week in January after a nice and much-needed two and a half weeks off over Christmas and New Year.

I continue to work hard writing, editing and commissioning content for the online magazine.

One new thing is I’ve cut my days to four days a week so I can have an extra day to focus on life admin, blogging and potentially seek other forms of work.

Then earlier this week, we were told our current CEO and Editor-in-Chief will be taking indefinite leave from Disability Horizons to look after her health and wellbeing.

Therefore in simple terms – I’m now in sole charge of all content and managing the team at Disability Horizons.

This was somewhat unexpected as it was a last-minute decision but I had a feeling this moment would come eventually. I’m excited that I can run the magazine as I wish but nervous about being trusted with the business responsibilities.

Here are the articles I published and edited this month:

• 6 influential and versatile disabled drag queens you should follow on social media
• Comedians Johnny Vegas and Sue Perkins open up about their ADHD diagnosis
• 5 adaptive meal plans for disabled people
• 5 ways to maintain fitness in winter if you have a disability
• 6 ways to secure employment if you have a learning disability

All my Disability Horizons content is available to view in one place on the Emma Purcell Author’s page. This link can also be accessed on the “Disability Horizons” button on the menu page on the top of this site.

My featured content, product articles and sponsored posts for Disability Horizons can be viewed in my Journo Portfolio.

To read my latest news stories, interviews and featured articles regularly, as well as browse other content from the rest of the amazing DH team, subscribe to the Disability Horizons newsletter.

Care

Speaking of life admin, my least favourite task, but necessary, has begun again – seeking care!

Since moving back to my parents in June 2022, my mum has been doing my care full-time while I waited for my new direct payment budget to be decided.

Thankfully, I’ve got quite a generous care package and can continue paying mum in her home due to the “exceptional circumstances” I’ve faced with poor quality and unsafe care.

However, I still need to seek external care support so I can give mum a few hours break and time off to go on holiday.

Therefore, I spent the first week of January seeking local care agencies. One of the three I contacted said they were keen to support me and I had an assessment with the care manager.

During the assessment, I got the impression they’ve never worked with a working-aged adult with cerebral palsy or a similar disability.

However, one of the reasons I moved back to my parents was so that if the carer was having difficulties or unable to carry out parts of my care safely, mum can quickly step in and take over. Hence why I need to give this care agency a chance.

If and when I find a carer that is confident doing my care and I can trust them, then mum can go out and leave me home alone with the sole support of the carer.

I started trying out this agency on Wednesday 25th January and it turned out not as bad as I expected. The carer was on time and appeared confident and friendly. I won’t know for sure how good they’ll be until they do my care by themselves.

Drama

In May 2022, I had to say goodbye to my fellow actors at the West End Centre in Aldershot because I was moving away from the area.

I was hoping to find a new drama group local to Waterlooville in autumn 2022 but due to my workload and other life commitments, I ran out of time.

Eventually, over my Christmas break, I researched and contacted a few drama groups and in early January, I tried out a couple.

The first group was called Extant, which is dedicated to working with actors, performers and creatives with sight loss.

Unfortunately, the nearest in-person group to me was in Bournemouth, which is over an hour’s drive from Waterlooville.

Luckily, they also do monthly virtual sessions on Zoom. I attended the first session of the year and it was great fun. We did a mixture of memory games, truth or lie and improvisation.

The group were really nice and friendly and made me feel; welcome. Plus, it was great how accessible every game was because we all had different degrees of sight loss and it was a rare occasion where I did not have to remind people I’m blind.

The only downside with this group as I can’t take part in or rehearse in-person productions. However, it is a great space to practice my acting skills and meet like-minded people with the same impairment as me.

I do plan to attend future virtual sessions with Extant but sadly I can’t attend the February session as I’m going to a music gig in Bristol that night. But I will return in March.

The second drama group I tried was a local amateur group in Hourndean, a mile from my home. Sadly, I was very disappointed with this group and felt it wasn’t the right group for me and I won’t be returning.

The people were friendly and welcoming but I basically spent two and a half hours sitting in the same spot chatting to people and did no acting at all.

Because it was their first session of the new year, they were doing auditions for their new production. As I was a new member, I could not audition that night as I’d never read the script and couldn’t read the script there as I needed it in an accessible format.

However, I still hoped they’d start the session with some warm-up games or improvisation activities.

Also, even if I couldn’t audition as a specific character, I wouldn’t have minded doing an improv-style audition if they gave me a type of character, but I had no opportunity to suggest it.

Instead, people who auditioned went into another room so we couldn’t watch them and the rest of us just sat in the main room chatting.

While we were talking, I did ask other members what I can usually expect in these sessions and if we all get roles. Depending on the number of characters in a play, not everyone will get a part.

For instance, there are approximately 20 members but only 10 characters in the play so only 10 actors are cast. So the remaining 10 actors do behind-the-scenes jobs such as stage management, props, ticket sales etc.

That is great if you like doing backstage jobs but I’m not particularly keen on it and a majority of it I probably can’t do because of my disability. I came to do acting because I enjoy acting!

I will continue searching for another drama group but it has been a struggle so far. Most groups I’ve found online are either too professional, too far away, not accessible or targeted at children or people with learning disabilities.

If you can suggest a suitable drama group in southeast Hampshire, please let me know.

Birthday

Being a winter baby who relies on care support, my birthdays rarely go to plan or are spectacular.

Because my friend Pluggy lives in Wales and I am already scheduled to meet my other friends in Bristol at the beginning of February, I had to compromise with my mother that I wouldn’t travel to west England/Wales twice in three weeks (the joys of relying on others!).

Initially, I was hoping to meet Pluggy in Bristol too but then found out she wasn’t available then. So, we decided to meet up the weekend before my birthday in Swindon, which is halfway between us.

But, of course, typical British weather ruined that plan as that was the weekend we had torrential rain that flooded roads and train lines. So, Pluggy and I had to settle for a video call instead.

My actual birthday on the 18th of January was nice and relaxed – cheeky Nando’s, homemade brownies, hot chocolate, a movie and a nice collection of gifts and cards.

The celebrations will continue on Thursday 2nd February when I head to Bristol to see The Editors live in concert with friends and a fun-filled Friday at the Bristol Harbourside.

Donations 2022

Thank you to everyone who donated to Rock For Disability this year, which funds my future content. Plus, 20% of every donation goes to a disability organisation at the end of each year.

In 2022, I’ve chosen to donate to the lABLEd Podcast as a thank you for their amazing work over the past two years and to support their future plans. This donation includes the 20% from blog readers plus an additional amount from me.

My donation page is now open for 2023. If you enjoy reading my content and happy to support disability communities, I’d appreciate you giving anything you can and 20% of all donations will go to another worthy disability organisation at the end of the year.

Head to the Donations page to donate. You can make a one-off payment or a monthly donation, which will go straight to the Rock For Disability PayPal account. 20% of each donation will be given to a disability charity at the end of each year. You can pay via PayPal or by card.

Books

I’ve just finished book two of The School For Good and Evil and just began book three.

The third story sees the two female protagonists in their separate worlds – Sophie with the schoolmaster at the school of evil and Agatha with her Prince back in her hometown – and it is expected their fairy tale story will be rewritten again to save the schools and rescue Sophie from the schoolmaster.

TV

I’ve managed to watch a lot of TV this month, despite my busy work life. Here is a list of the shows I watched and a mini-review of each:

• One Of Us Is Lying – a Netflix murder mystery set in an American high school. It was binge-worthy, suspenseful and dramatic.
• Ginny & Georgia – the second series of this Netflix show was released on 5th January. I re-watched series one and then went straight into series two. It’s another binge-worthy series full of drama, humour and anticipation.
• Echoes – a strange and complex drama series on Netflix about female twins who switch lives every year on their birthday. It was hard to follow and not very enjoyable but I was keen to know how it ends.
• Sue Perkins: Perfectly Legal – I came across this Netflix series when Sue Perkins did an interview on The John Bishop Show. In the three-part travel show, Sue confronts middle age by taking an adventure through Latin America where she takes on things you’d never be allowed to do in the UK, such as being deliberately shot while wearing a bulletproof vest, being attacked by fireworks, taking drugs and performing extremely offensive rap.
• Waterloo Road – a BBC school-based drama, which returned for a new series after 8 years. It’s full of drama, humour, relevant issues and some predictability at times.
• The Vampire Diaries – a fantasy-fiction series currently streaming on Amazon Prime. It’s basically like a modern-day version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’ve just finished series one and am onto series two now.

Audio Description petition

I’ve had a lot of luck and bad luck with accessing audio description this month.

I was excited to find out the new series of Waterloo Road would be airing in January. I watched the first episode live on the 3rd of January, which was fab. It then said you could watch the rest of the series on BBC iPlayer.

I went onto the streaming service only to discover that none of the other episodes had audio description available.

Why is it that sighted people can binge-watch series at their leisure and yet blind and visually impaired people have to wait each week for a new episode with audio description?

Plus, why isn’t the rest of the Waterloo Road series from previous years not audio described? I tweeted the streaming service and the show twice and sent a formal complaint to the BBC to raise this issue.

This was their first response:

“I understand you are asking us about audio description being available on Waterloo Road on iPlayer, for the new series and the old. Hopefully, I can help.

AD only gets added once it’s been broadcast. Please check out all the upcoming broadcasts to see when the AD will be added for each episode on the programme page.

Once they are available in AD they will be available for the same length of time as the non-accessible version, for example, if the non-accessible version was available for 30 days, the AD version will be available for 30 days from their broadcast date. This can mean the non-accessible version usually expires first leaving only the AD version available on iPlayer.

The reason the older series of Waterloo Road don’t have AD is because they have been on iPlayer, expired and then have come straight onto iPlayer without being broadcast on TV.”

I replied saying this is still unfair and mentioned that other new series such as His Dark Materials did have AD on iPlayer before each episode was broadcast on TV. So, why can’t all new series have AD available straight on iPlayer? I requested to speak to someone at the BBC who works in the accessibility team.

Their second response simply said:

“Due to how subtitles and audio description are delivered via the BBC’s broadcasting pipeline, we’re not able to make AD available for new episodes until their TV broadcast.

Some box sets/day-one drops are available on iPlayer from day one with AD attached, however, this varies from series to series based on how they are delivered.

Unfortunately, we can’t give you a contact for our Accessibility team, however, you can view the BBC accessibility policies [online]”

I strongly feel this is not good enough and I’m disappointed the BBC do not want to work or cooperate with me to resolve this. I understand this issue can’t be fully fixed overnight but changes are needed to provide full access to all audiences fairly and equally.

I found the same issue with the new series of Bad Education, where you can stream the full series on iPlayer but have to wait each week for audio description.

If you, or someone you know, works for the BBC, another TV channel or a production company and could put me in touch with their accessibility teams to discuss the issues of accessing audio description, I’d really appreciate it.

On the plus side, I finally found The Vampire Diaries with audio description on Amazon Prime. I’ve been wanting to watch it for years but never got the chance until now because there was no audio description available.

In the meantime, my campaign for audio description has continued throughout January 2023 and the petition has now gained a total of 3662 signatures, which is incredible!

But I’m eager to reach thousands more. The more signatures we get, the more likely changes will be made within the TV and film industries. Please, please, PLEASE continue to sign & share my petition!

Guest Bloggers Wanted

I’m still eager to collaborate with even more bloggers in 2023. So, if you’re a lifestyle, disability and/or music blogger, send me your blog stories. Plus let me know if you’d like me to feature on your blog as a guest blogger.

I’m flexible with any type of blog post – life story, disability awareness, music event, musician promotion – basically anything to do with life, disability or music!

In addition, I have a guest blog series called “RFD Question Time with…” where I interview disabled people and/or bloggers. If you’d like to be interviewed in this series, please also contact me.

Blog post roundup

In case you missed any of my blog posts this month, here is a roundup of them:

1. Music Interview: The Rift
2. 10 perks of being a disabled person
3. 10 “braw” Scottish bands and artists from the millennial era and beyond

5 favourite blog posts

 Here are my 5 favourite blog posts I’ve read this month: 

1. 2022: The Yearly Recap at A Life On Wheels
2. Freelancing With A Chronic Illness: Reflecting On My Third Year As Self-Employed at Life of Pippa
3. Disproportionate Representation Discrimination on TV at Ability Access
4. 16 Quotes To Empower You To Write Your New Year at Invisibly Me
5. Launching Purple Power by Martyn Sibley

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