Last month the Government marked the beginning of Disability History Month, which goes from November 20 to December 20. And Wednesday, December 3 was the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, the theme for this year being “fostering disability-inclusive societies for advancing social progress”. As part of this, I wanted to contribute some of my thoughts and personal experiences to help stimulate awareness and discussion around disabilities.

I am someone who has what would be generally called an “invisible disability”, in that, other than the ravages of middle age, I do not have an obvious physical disability. What I have is within the constellation of dyslexia, dyspraxia and dyscalculia. They are not severe, although they were more pronounced in my childhood; with age I have learnt a mix of coping and masking strategies to the effect that at most I come across as prone to typos and some shyness, along with a strong dislike of irrational authority and injustice.

In my undergraduate studies, at Trent University in Ontario, I was able to get some assistance from their Student Accessibility Services, and through that I learnt that in the upcoming student elections there was a position for a Special Needs Representative, as it was termed at the time. A mix of Canadian and international students had just relaunched the Trent Socialists student club, and we decided to run a slate in these elections, with me contesting the Special Needs Representative position. As chance would have it, I was the only successful candidate of the Trent Socialists, and so had the dual task of advocating on all things disability and representing the Trent Socialists, while also pursuing my studies in biology and anthropology. This experience was central to my development, in terms of activism, thoughts on politics and my understanding of socialist thinking.

At that time, in 1997, the idea of disability studies was only really beginning — for example, only in 1994 was the first disability studies programme established in the United States, at Syracuse University, and 1997 was the year of the publication of the first edition of the Disabilities Studies Reader — which I did not have access to until years later. As such, I didn’t really know much about disability politics or theory when I started this position. Instead, my thinking was largely based on a discussion in The Dialectical Biologist concerning the interplay of tuberculosis and the mode of production in determining the probability and severity of tuberculosis outbreaks. In short, yes, the bacterium is a causal agent; however, so is the mode of production inasmuch as it effects one’s immune system (through diet and exhaustion) as well as increasing the rate of infection (in factories and slums).

From this, and my own observations, I came to the position that one has to make a distinction between an “impairment” and the idea of a “disability”. That is to say, one may have an impairment, but that impairment becomes a disability only when it interacts with society, and that disability is then primarily socially caused. As an illustration of what I mean, take the example of someone who has a temporary impairment, such as a broken leg. This impairment alone does not make them disabled. It is only when they are confronted by the lack of, for example, an elevator, and several flights of stairs that they become “disabled”. That is, society is disabling, not the impairment; disability is something that is imposed on top of an impairment. And to what degree society chooses not to be accessible is the degree to which society is disabling — as well as to what impairments society chooses to “make” into a disability. From this, it follows that people with disabilities are an oppressed group in society.

The built environment at Trent was not very accessible to those with physical disabilities, especially for those with motility issues. During my time there we were able to get some accessibility ramps installed; however, as recently as August 2024 the student newspaper, The Arthur, was highlighting that there has been virtually no progress on accessibility issues in the past 25 years — and what does exist is poorly maintained.

The biggest challenge I encountered was that of indifference at best, and outright hostility at worst. As a result, the bulk of my activism at the time centred on raising awareness, while also working to build links of solidarity with other groups. In particular, I engaged in conversations with representatives of various unions and women’s groups, both on campus and off. Trent famously was one of the pioneers of gender studies and indigenous studies in Canada, and I gained some key insights from engaging with students and faculty in those areas. I was also active in the Trent African & Caribbean Students Union, and through that learnt of the racism that non-White students were encountering. This helped me understand the concept of intersectionality, as I was finding myself understanding that a focus on disability alone was insufficient; that students with disabilities who were also workers — international students could work on campus — women and non-White where experiencing multiple layers of oppression.

The lessons I learnt then were that systems of oppression are a social choice, and can thus be resisted and changed, and that systems of oppression often intersected — and thus resistance had been based on solidarity across axes of oppression. Another lesson I learnt was the importance of autonomy. I found that a lot of decisions being made for people with disabilities were without the consent or even input of people with disabilities. More often than not, the decisions made were either not beneficial or were outright oppressive towards people with disabilities. And the only small wins that actually made life better for people with disabilities were those they fought — and won — for themselves.

Additionally, that activism by people with disabilities, acting for their own rights and interests, and in solidarity with other groups and interests, fundamentally changed the perceptions of both people with disabilities about themselves and perceptions of others about people with disabilities. There is an inherent value in being “out there”, of “being seen”. And there is also the reality that in activism one changes oneself. One becomes empowered.

Countless times I encountered people with disabilities who had internalised their oppression, either believing that nothing could be done to change their lived reality, or actually blaming themselves for their disability. But through collective action, their world view changed. They discovered that, actually, the world could be made better and that their impairments were not so much disabilities as much as society was choosing to be disabling towards them. Collective action in solidarity with others is a transformative process of empowerment. People start off believing they are powerless, but in collective action they are able to confront and resist oppression — and not only change things for the better, but change themselves in the process.

We still live in an ableist world. People with disabilities are still confronted by a disabling world, and what advances have been made are facing an assault globally, especially in the US. Nonetheless, a better world is possible; however, it is one that has to be fought for, with each generation fighting to both defend past gains and to win a better future.

• Jonathan Starling is a socialist writer with an MSc in Ecological Economics from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning from Heriot-Watt University