Accessibility Is Freedom เข้าถึงและเท่าเทียม | Accessible and Equal
“We shall leave no one behind.” I believe this is rather a famous line you might have heard about it through media. I, too, have come to embrace the line especially serious when I jumped in myself on this journey for equality.
The line transcends beyond a national value. It, however, is initiated from the UN to escalate the issue globally and make everyone more equal than ever. That being said, lot of countries throughout on this world are working hard to make it happen. Thailand, as part of it, must comply to this new global value.
In all honesty, I didn’t work with previous Thai governments at all. So I have no information to speak with. However, I got a chance to sometimes work with current Thai government.
Today I would like to give you my personal story as a child from a dirt poor, remote village in northeastern Thailand. Throughout years of struggling, failing, learning, and succeeding from childhood to baldhood, I’ve witnessed the extreme inequality between Bangkok and the rest of Thailand.
I divide it into 4 parts.
1) When I was a kid I was infected a Poliovirus, making my left leg was a weak one. You could say that it’s my 1st version of disability. Although I was far from having ‘normal’ physicality, I still could lead a normal live, similar to everyone else.
2) When I turned 24, I had a motor accident which made some part of my spinal cord damaged. It’s my 2nd version of disability which survives to this day. Now, it entirely changed my lifestyle and I needed to adapt to it physically, mentally, and socially. A wheelchair now becomes part of my body. It goes with me everywhere I go, so do the eyes of everyone else.
Flashing back further to my educational background, I was educated in a local school nearby my village. When I was in high school, I and my friends were usually biking back and forth to school about 16 km. (10 miles).
Now you might pop up a question about the availability of public transport and basic accessible facilities so I could navigate myself easily? The answer, as you may guess, is that there was NONE at all. Period.
3) When I was in grade 9, I was given aids by a NGO of which I later went through a series of medical operation, and thus, my ability to walk enhanced greatly.
4) Finishing high school, I had to work and study at the same time as my family was so impoverished. Yet I did it with ambition and tried to constantly self-improve. I was a bit auspicious that a NGO stepped in to give hands. Years passed, when I started working I had a mindset that “If you want to excel at something, you must experience it firsthand.”
I never exclude myself from society. Quite opposite, I tried to blend and include myself as part of the society and the world of business competition. My body was suffered, but my mind goes stronger.
As such, I don’t know much about the welfare benefits and benevolent helps as a disabled person shall get. But as far as I know, those welfare benefits are obviously insufficient and needs a structural change for the betterment.
Fast forward to present day of Covid-19 as I’m writing this, I isolated myself at a small hut back in my hometown. I am so happy with this simple, stress-free life. Yet when I look around, things are almost the same as in the past as if there is no progressive development at all.
I mean, yes, there are new, bigger buildings with some extravagant features. But all those basic infrastructure are in poor conditions as they always are. In fact, there is no availability of accessible facilities as same as since I was young.
I write this because I usually give special lectures to university students every year about social, welfare and supporting system. Yet what witnesses before our eyes in Thailand never reflects what things should have be done theoretically. People with disabilities still cannot go out their homes with safety and comfort. They are not just leaved behind, they are kicked away the ladder. Then we need more and more and more others supporting system and it will never end. What should we do? To my mind, I just want those authorities in power to just do their jobs, and do it right to the proper standard by law. That would make a huge difference.
“Leaving someone behind” causes a great societal impact which eventually would go back to hurt everyone else in the end, making everything worse off.
I keep shouting out very loud as always and I need you together to be a part of this.
“DO NOT LEAVE ME BEHIND”, all of us can make it happen.
