(If you could look into the camera, would that be OK?)
Can you show me where the camera is?
How do you have sex has probably got to be the number one.
The most stupidest question is "can you read braille?"
There was a girl in my primary school and she came up to me and asked me if my arms drowns when it goes
underwater when I'm swimming?
When I went surfing and I was swimming in the sea, then someone came and started talking to me
I said, "I'm really sorry, I can't hear you I'm deaf so I need to lip read you."
"Oh can you hear under the water?"
Sometimes I can be quite sarcastic with it, it's like "what do you do in your spare time?"
Oh, long jump.
Well actually I can. I can speak to fish and blow bubbles with the fish.
People just say stupid things like there's nothing wrong with you.
I get told a lot, "You don't look visually impaired?"
"But you don't look deaf?"
But you think how are deaf people supposed to look?
People love to play the ophthalmologist, like putting their fingers in front of me
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
Men will come up to you in a bar and think that it's totally appropriate to ask you if you can have sex.
Is my girlfriend in a wheelchair, does she have a disability?
and she doesn't she's not in a wheelchair, doesn't have a disability
She's five foot six and I'm four foot ten and it works out a treat because she's always got a bad back, bless her.
My boyfriend actually googled how to kiss a wheelchair user before we met.
(When people say like "how do you have sex," what do you say to them?)
(Laughs)
I'd show you
My family forget that I have one hand and so they will say
"Oh so what hand are you?" Or, "Can I give you a hand" and then It pauses for an awkward silence
because they forget.
I walk into the men's toilets quite often.
Just yesterday the delivery man delivered my boyfriend a treadmill and I answered the door
and you should have seen his face. He was so so worried that this treadmill was for me.
If someone said "How are you?" and I would think they were saying how old are you?
So I would be like "Fifteen" and they would be like "No, how are you?"
I'll be like, Oh crap.
When they go to shake your hand.
Ooooooh,
Cos, cos what normally happens is people like shake my hand first and I'm like right handed
so I immediately just go like that and then they go to shake Grace's hand
and it's just a bit like.
The "deaf and dumb" term really
a lot of people still use it even in like newspaper articles.
There was somebody who once added me on Facebook and then decided to comment
pretty cripple on one of my pictures.
I've been called spastic, mongs, weirdo, freaks.
"You'll never achieve anything."
So, that's probably the most offensive thing somebody said to me.
It's not a word that we get called it's a word the gets throw out during conversation
and that's the word normal.
Or normals.
"We'll go up the stairs like normal people"
and I'll go get the lift then, ok.
You know, like a not normal person.
I'm not quite for the whole
"Disabled people are so inspiring"
"Oh look at them they're doing such amazing things with what they've got."
"You're so brave."
I'm a Hindu...
I don't have beef with anyone
Being in a wheelchair, I wouldn't change for the world.
Lots of people ask me, like "Would you, if you could chose to have two hands would you?"
and I've always answered like "no, I am happy to have one hand and I would never want two hands"
and people find that really hard to understand.
Sometimes you wish that if I didn't have a disability life would be a lot easier but...
Yeah I'm, yeah. It's made me the person who I am, yeah.
It's kind of like it was meant to be because it's lead to so many really great things that I've been able to do
because I've been able to say, Hi I'm Emily and I'm disabled.
If we could go back to when the word disabled was originally founded and used...
I'd love a redo.
(What word would you prefer?)
Jack?