Playing the 'Disabled Role' in Local TravelAuthor(s): Alison PorterSource: Area, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 41-48Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20004035 .

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Area (2000) 32.1, 41-48

Playing the 'disabled role' in local travel

Alison Porter Department of Geography, University of Wales, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP.

Email: a.m.porter swansea.ac.uk

Revised manuscript received 3 March 1999.

Summary This paper describes how people with a range of physical impairments use the 'disabled role' to enable them to make local journeys in Swansea. It examines the processes

by which interaction between people and social institutions serves to overcome transport disability and to reinforce prevailing meanings and structures of disability.

Introduction

The freedom to travel is generally thought of as an essential part of modern life. For many people with physical or sensory impairments, their experience of travel is not one of freedom, but of constraint and compromise. Bearing this in mind, it is surprising how little attention has been paid to travel by the growing number of geographers with an interest in disability (Park et al 1998). Where geographers have turned their attention to travel and disability, their interest has tended to be on clear-cut situations of segregation to specialist transport services (Gant 1992) or of exclusion from public transport (and the consequences of this (Lawrence 1995; Kitchin 1998).

The focus on these two politically charged pro cesses reflects vigorous street campaigns in the UK for full access to buses and alternative public trans port for wheelchair users and other mobility impaired people. The publicity gained by members of the Direct Action Network (DAN) chaining them selves to buses has been backed up by the work of such organizations as Buses for All, which campaigns for changes in the legal requirements placed on bus operators. In the US, the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transport (ADAPT) have used simi lar techniques in their campaigning (Gleeson 1999).

Such organizations have tapped into the iconic significance of public transport, its very name reflect ing the values of the equity and open access which the reality so clearly fails to deliver. But in taking a cue from such campaigns, it is important not to overemphasize the practical significance of public

transport. Public transport is part of a much broader picture of travel, which includes driving, getting lifts, walking, wheeling and taxis, as well as specialist services targeted at disabled people and operating under such names as Dial-a-Ride.

Moreover, transport is itself part of a much broader picture. It is no use having a fully accessible bus service to take you to the shops if you cannot get through the door when you arrive, or up the kerb to the bus stop in the first place. Meadows (1992) has described this as the transport chain, a break in any of whose links will prevent someone making a journey. Issues of access to buildings and to the outdoor built environment have interested geogra phers, from Hahn's (1986) seminal paper on Los Angeles to Vujakovic and Matthews' (1994) work on how people learn about and experience disabling barriers, and lmrie's (1996) studies of the processes by which disabling environments are created or modified. These show the importance of linking ideas about access to locations to any work on access to transport.

This broad perspective on what is involved in travel and transport provided the context for research work in Swansea on the local travel experi ence of disabled people, which forms the basis of this paper. It places an emphasis on process rather than structure, exploring the strategies people use in order to travel through a world full of disabling barriers, restrictions and limitations; one of these was playing the 'disabled role'. This paper describes what happens when people fit themselves into the defini tions and rules of disability operated by administra tive bodies in order to qualify for certain benefits or

ISSN 0004-0894 ? Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2000

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42 Porter

services. It considers the ambiguities of a process that can be read as a 'bread and circuses' compen sation for exclusion and, at the same time, as a practical means of making travel possible. First, though, the process needs to be put in context by considering some theoretical perspectives on disability.

Perspectives on disability In the expanding field of the geography of disability, the social oppression model has become a dominant form of analysis. It makes a fundamental distinction between impairment as an aspect of the body and disability as a form of exclusion and oppression experienced by people with impairments (Abberley 1987; Oliver 1990; 1996). It provides an analytically strong and politically powerful lens through which to understand what goes on when people with impair ments experience and move through the social and built environment. It is routinely perceived in oppo sition to the traditional individual model of disability,

with its location of the problem in the person, its stress on the medical definition and treatment of disability, and its emotional and cultural embracing of 'personal tragedy' (Oliver 1990). Although there have been calls for reappraisals of the social model, for example to reintroduce greater emphasis on the bodily experience of disability (Crow 1995; French 1993; Hall 1998), the insight it contains in divorcing disability and impairment has yet to be challenged convincingly (Shakespeare and Watson 1997).

Another crucial understanding follows from this dis tinction: if disability is created in society at large, then that is where it can also be eliminated. The social

model therefore provides a clear agenda for action: identify the ways in which people are excluded, and look for means of removing them.

Priestley (1998) clarified current debates about the nature of disability by introducing a fourfold

matrix of theoretical positions. This adds to the distinction between the individual and social per spectives an additional divergence between idealist and materialist modes of explanation. Priestley's Position 1 is the individual-materialist position com monly identified as the medical model. This equates disability with an individual's arthritic knees or miss ing arm. His Position 2 is individual-idealist, and focuses on people's experiences and interaction

with others, disability being the sum of these experi ences. Position 3 is socio-materialist, identifying dis ability with the disabling barriers resulting from the

playing out of power relations within contemporary society. In contrast to this social creationism is the social constructionist view of Position 4. This identi fies disability as a collective idea, a label devised and ascribed by a particular society.

Priestley points out that these four positions are not necessarily incompatible or mutually exclusive. Later in this article, I will show how the four different positions can be drawn upon to provide insights into what happens when people with impairments travel.

The 'disabled role' in Swansea

The discussion that follows describes findings from research among people with a range of physical and sensory impairments, looking at their experience of local travel in Swansea, a typical medium-sized British city. The broad aim of the research was to find out what improvements or additions to public trans port were required by participants. This led to an exploration of existing travel habits, and what made participants content or dissatisfied; this covered pub lic, private and voluntary transport services, walking and wheeling, and the use of non-transport alterna tives such as catalogue shopping. As well as a range of substantive information, the research produced more general insights into the strategies that people used to enable them to travel, one of which was playing the disabled role.

The section of research described here consisted of individual interviews, group discussions and par ticipant observation on trips to and around town. Eleven people took part, whose ages ranged from early thirties to early sixties. One was blind, while others had a range of physical impairments. Four used manual wheelchairs full-time, one used an electric wheelchair and two used manual wheel chairs from time to time. One person had a physical impairment (lupus) that varied in its intensity, while another's impairment was not immediately apparent to the observer. The names used in this paper to describe participants are pseudonyms.

'Playing the disabled role' is defined here as accepting and conforming to the definition of 'dis abled' as imposed by others, in return for certain privileges. It also entails going along with the rules of the organization offering the privileges, which might limit or constrain their use. For participants the role is dual: there is an active element of playing the role, and a passive one of being awarded a label. Although issues of role-playing and disability identity

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Playing the 'disabled role' in local travel 43

feature in all aspects of life, the discussion here relates to a definition of playing the disabled role in relation to organizations with some power or auth ority. It is a contested role, and participants' experi ence showed that there is resistance to the role and to the process of labelling, from both within and

without. Participants played the disabled role in relation to

a range of organizations: national government, local government, charitable bodies and, to a lesser extent, commercial enterprises. They adopted the role in order to gain entitlement to:

* benefits in cash such as the Mobility component of Disability Living Allowance, administered by the Benefits Agency (a branch of national government)

* benefits in kind such as a guide dog lent by the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association (a charity)

* reduced charges and fares on local buses through the issue of a bus pass, funded and administered by the local authority

* exemption from certain rules or restrictions such as the right to park on yellow lines, granted through a locally administered system of parking permits known as the Orange Badge scheme

* access to exclusive areas such as certain city centre car parks reserved for Orange Badge holders

* access to exclusive services such as community transport schemes whose use is limited to elderly and disabled people

Each of the participants played the role in a number of different contexts, dealing with authorities who might operate different definitions of disability. For example, the qualifying criteria for Orange Badges are such that many more people are issued with them than receive the Mobility component of Dis

ability Living Allowance. Both have rules that are written by branches of government, yet define dis ability in their own way to suit the purposes of the scheme. However, anyone who meets the narrower

Mobility criteria is automatically given a 'passport' to an Orange Badge, without having to do anything further to prove entitlement.

The definition of the disabled role presented here relates to the work of Stone (1984) on disability as an administrative convenience, a theoretical position in the social-constructionist tradition identified by Priestley (1998) as Position 4. Stone describes how the welfare state uses it for setting the boundaries of

who is entitled to receive benefits or privileges in response to their need rather than in reward for their labour. She provides a useful analysis of the artifici ality of the category, the complexities and ambigui ties of the processes by which people are admitted to it, and in particular the role of the medical profession in acting as gatekeepers. However, her analysis is almost exclusively about the disabled role in relation to benefits that act as wage substitutes,

whereas what she would term 'the privileges of disability' can take many other forms and are not all dependent on being out of work. Transport provides a fruitful field in which to explore her idea of state responses to impairment as 'privileges', since (as outlined above) there is such a range of financial and practical responses, and parallels can also be traced in non-state institutions.

French (1 994) and Sutherland (1 981 ) have written on the disabled role from an individual-idealist per spective, emphasizing the ways in which disabled people are expected to fulfil stereotypes, such as being cooperative and undemanding. They looked at the ways in which these stereotypes are propagated and reinforced through interaction between people, and at how disabled people learn their role through being conditioned to accept and conform to the stereotypes. While such processes are not the centre of attention in this paper, they inevitably influence and are influenced by more formal constructions of the disabled role.

The roots of the disabled role as defined here lie in Parsons' (1951) 'sick role'. Parsons suggested that people playing the sick role have two major rights: to be considered not responsible for their illness and to be relieved of normal social responsibilities. How ever, these are balanced by two major obligations: to view their condition as undesirable and to seek and cooperate with competent medical help (French 1994). If the person playing the sick role fails to comply with the obligations, they risk the disapproval of society and the loss of their rights. The concept of making a deal is crucial to the role, and has been transferred to this consideration of the disabled role. It allows the role to be considered an active strategy in which people with impairments choose to participate rather than simply having the role imposed on them. It is in this sense that the word 'playing' is used; it should not be interpreted as implying any element of pretence in the role. It is, though, a construction, and one which is contested both from within and without, as the later discussion will show.

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44 Porter

The effectiveness of the disabled role

Participants' comments about playing the disabled role suggest that it is something that people want to do and will struggle to achieve, because they find it effective in enabling them to travel. Pamela Samuel described the effect on her and her husband of assuming the disabled role in explicitly geographical terms:

We met four years ago. And for that first eighteen months we had no money to catch a bus anywhere. And so literally all we could do was what we could walk to from the flat, that's all we could get to. Um, so money first of all was a big barrier. Then, as Dave got treated he felt that he could actually some days get on the bus.

And ... we, by this time had, this was sort of a year into his diagnosis, we had fought for a Community Psychi atric Nurse, and the CPN then signed for him and my social worker signed for me to have a bus pass, OK? So that began our being able to get out of the only space

we had, and we could actually make that a bit bigger, we could actually go outside. And now, having the money, because we get some Disability Living Allowance as well.

However, all the participants have found that playing the disabled role can mean accepting limitations in the scope of what is offered, which in turn represent limitations in its effectiveness as a strategy for travel.

Angharad Jones had signed up to playing the role of the disabled employee through participating in the government-sponsored Access to Work scheme. This allowed her cash payments of up to a total of f22 000 over five years to reflect the additional costs associated with her visual impairment. The scheme reimbursed up to two-thirds of her taxi fares, and the money was also intended to cover specialist equipment such as Braille printers. Angharad was able to choose what to spend it on. The scheme was

superficially empowering in that it gave her control of the money, yet in ascribing the means and responsibility to overcome disabling barriers to

Angharad, it worked very clearly within the individual ized model of disability. The more immediately problematical reality was that the money did not cover the cost of everything. As a result, Angharad described these limitations of the scheme as constraints, as

much as if strict rules were imposed on her:

I'm only allowed to take a taxi one way, um, I can't

really say that I'm not allowed to take a taxi, though, because that wouldn't strictly be true, but, I was, um, it

would have been a problem for me to get a taxi home

. . . I either have to get a lift from somebody who works

here, or wherever else I can get one, really.

May Cross played the role in a different way, travel ling around the Swansea area with a community transport scheme that provided low-cost journeys. It

was funded by the local council and the Welsh Office (which put some constraints on its operation), but was managed by a voluntary committee. Using the scheme opened up affordable possibilities, but also imposed its own set of restrictions, which May felt limited her. She had to book two days in advance, and was not able to travel with the scheme at all at weekends or in the evenings. Even when the scheme was available, it did not meet all of May's requirements for a safe and comfortable transport service. Although purpose-designed, the 'Pope

mobile', as she called the scheme vehicle, made May feel insecure:

There's a big open space in front of you. You're up here and the driver's down there, and it's a horrible feeling. You feel you might fall on the driver's head, or through the window.

Similarly, Linda Evans and Sue Liffey found that the specialist, wheelchair-accessible minibuses that Social Services provided to take them to and from the day centre and on trips provided an uncomfort able journey, with too many seats crammed into the available space despite the fact that they did not run fully laden:

SL: I'm all right as long as I can sit in the front, cause I've

gotta have leg room, haven't I? If my legs are crunched up, I can't move. I seizes up.

LE: You've got to be about four foot two to fit in there, and skinny. You've got to be about six stone and four foot two.

The Orange Badge scheme of parking permits was used by virtually all the participants. It too came with rules and limitations that did not take full account of

what people actually needed. Jill Rees reported that only very few of the parking bays designated for disabled people were wide enough to allow her to transfer in and out of her wheelchair, and these spaces were not specifically reserved for wheelchair users. When parking in a pay-and-display car park, Diana Butler was unable to buy a ticket herself since the machine was on a plinth, which meant she could not reach it in her wheelchair; she had to take a

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Playing the 'disabled role' in local travel 45

travelling companion with her simply to buy the

ticket and avoid a fine. Because of this problem with

machines, another wheelchair user, Keith Morgan,

chose instead to park on yellow lines, where it is

mandatory to display an adjustable disc to show the

time of parking. Although he could drive, he did not

have the manual dexterity to adjust the disc, so had to rely on a travelling companion doing it for him.

Although the authorizing bodies grant benefits

and privileges for particular purposes and particular reasons, participants found ways to subvert these.

The Mobility component of the Disability Living

Allowance is a cash sum paid weekly, which recipi

ents are expected to spend on public transport or

taxi fares, or the cost of leasing or running a car.

However, there is no obligation on them to do so.

Carolyn Powell spent her allowance on household

bills, arguing that her increased electricity costs

resulted directly from her being stuck in the house.

May had a similar analysis:

I couldn't have had that computer if I hadn't had Mobility Allowance. I use it to entertain myself, not to live on. They shouldn't call it Mobility Allowance. If you can't get out and about so much, that component pays for things to improve your quality of life-TV, video . . .

Even though playing the disabled role can go some

way towards overcoming transport disability, none of

the participants saw it as providing the opportunity to travel as much as they wanted without problems or inconvenience. In some cases it provided only a

partial, limited solution; in others, a solution which was not entirely appropriate to people's needs. Either way, the opportunities opened up by the

playing of the disabled role existed within the con text of a broader world full of barriers that people had to negotiate on their own.

Qualifying for the disabled role

Qualifying to play the disabled role can entail a

certain amount of negotiation with those who

administer the role on behalf of the authorities. It is a

process of limiting the numbers of those who qualify

for rationed resources. As Lipsky (1980) showed in

his work on 'street-level bureaucrats', those who deal with the public on behalf of authorities have considerable power, through their opportunities to exercise discretion. Among the Swansea participants, Carolyn described the process she went through to

get her general practitioner-functioning as gate

keeper on behalf of an administrative board-to

authorize that she was eligible for the Mobility

component of Disability Living Allowance:

I had to ask for my rights. What I said to [him], I said, 'Look, doctor, I've been fighting for my Mobility.' 'Oh,' he said, 'I'm on that board, I wouldn't give it to you.' I said, 'Are you trying to say that I can walk" 'No,' he said, 'I'm not trying to say that, you are terrible. But look,' he said, 'they won't give it to you.' So I said, 'You don't need to fight it.' So I said I was in Arthritis Care and wrote a letter and they got me on Welfare Rights. They took me to a solicitor ... I had it for a year when I first

had it, then I went to five, then I had it for life.

The two organizations that Carolyn drew into her

campaign for the benefit were a voluntary group and a section of the local council's Social Services depart ment. Neither had the power to withhold or grant

any benefit, but they were necessary to Carolyn to

authorize the validity of her claim, a validity which

she alone did not have sufficient status to prove. The

doctor himself acknowledged the nature of the

disabled role as a construct, in making the distinction between what he and she agreed about her physical impairments and the limitations they put on her, and

what the authorizing board's categorization would be. The label 'disabled' was not a way of defining

what Carolyn was or was not; it was a ticket to

achieving a benefit, whose paradoxical dual effect was to reduce her transport disability while at the same time confirming 'disabled' as a label of her status. Carolyn was tough and persistent but others

might have given up more easily. The question of who gets to wear the label of

'disabled' was contentious not just among the

authorizing bodies. None of the participants men

tioned the Orange Badge scheme without also rais

ing the issue of abuse of the scheme. This, they

perceived, was reducing its effectiveness, by increas

ing the pressure on designated spaces and debasing its image, thus making traffic wardens less sympa thetic. The abuse came about partly by non-badge holders blatantly ignoring the rules or using bor rowed badges, but also by badges being issued to

people who did not meet the criteria of the scheme. In this latter perception, increased membership of the role reduced its value for the individual in

practical terms, through more competition for the limited number of parking spaces.

Most of the participants who commented on this were looking out from a position within the 'disabled club' at those who were trying falsely to cross its

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46 Porter

bounds. Pamela commented from a different per

spective: that of someone whose physical impair

ment is not immediately visible to outsiders and so

not an obvious sign of her eligibility for the disabled role:

Look at my feet, right, and I've got really disabled feet. They're all out of shape, they're really distorted. But because people just see you and they see a smile on the face, they see you as you are, you know, that's it ... [on the bus] we've often had the really frowning looks and, you know, 'it's about time you gave up your seat', that sort of thing, you know.

The very process of labelling, of ascribing the dis

abled role, presents itself clearly for what it is to the

people involved. Participants made clear their under standing of disability as a social construct, with all its

challenging, confusing and ambiguous associations. Diana's comments about the labelling process

revealed the divergence between the official view

and her own perception of herself:

AP: After you retire, will the Mobility for the car go on just the same? DB: Yes, because I'm still 100 per cent disabled, that will go on the same way ... I'm registered 100 per cent disabled. Because if you're in a wheelchair you are 100 per cent disabled. Even though I don't consider myself disabled. 25 per cent. Whereas anything else I can do. You can get anywhere. You can get everywhere. I'm not in pain. I'm well. So what?

Pamela and her husband had both spent years living

with conditions that limited their mobility before they

were assessed as being disabled, and as a result:

PB: We could wear that title, you know, which was really hard for us to wear.

Pamela's emotional struggle with the label of disabil

ity reflects not just the negative social stereotyping associated with disability, but also the permanency of the label once it has been ascribed-something for them to 'wear'.

The disabled role in context

The earlier discussion has shown that there are great limitations on the effectiveness of the disabled role in

enabling people to travel. These limitations were felt

by people who had applied to play the role and

passed the qualifying tests, but they are only a

proportion of the total number who are potentially

eligible. Berthoud (1998) estimated that up to a half of people who are eligible for benefits such as the

Mobility component of DLA do not even apply for it, either because they do not know they could qualify or because they are daunted by the system. Though there have been suggestions that an individual's ability and willingness to claim and fight for the benefits of the disabled role depend on class (Borsay 1986; Fulcher 1989) and age at onset of impairment

(Cormode 1997), the Swansea group did not pro vide a broad enough range of evidence to explore such ideas.

Although the disabled role is often chosen because it is perceived as the only reasonable option, participants did not always play this role in

order to travel. For example, there were times when

they got lifts from family members in a way that was

outside the formalized disabled role, or travelled in commercial wheelchair-accessible taxis whose

only qualifying condition for use was paying the

appropriate fare. The playing of the role does more than just

provide a sketchily effective means of access to

travel. It reconfirms an individualized and medical ized conception of disability, particularly when peo

ple are going through the process of qualifying for

the role. It may be the playing out of disability as a

construct, a collective idea, but it reinforces a theor ization of disability as an individual 'problem', to be authorized through the medical profession. The

medical model of disability, Priestley's Position 1, can therefore be seen as underlying the social constructionist view of disability as a label in Position

4, rather than being in opposition to it.

While the focus of this study was not on the individual interactions that make up the experience

of disability (as outlined in Priestley's Position 2), it

did show the ways in which the process of labelling as 'disabled' can influence and be influenced by both people's perception of self, and their identity as

understood by others. It is Priestley's Position 3-disability as a social

creation-that sits most uneasily with the idea of the

disabled role, in that regarding disability as an elimi nable manifestation of oppression is in conflict with

the idea of disability as a label that people choose to

wear. This is a separate issue from whether or not

individuals wish to take pride in their impairment or

difference, or find strength through recognizing com mon oppression. The disabled role can be inter

preted as one element in what Gleeson (1997) calls

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Playing the 'disabled role' in local travel 47

welfarism: a way of compensating people for their oppression, rather than altering the oppression itself. An understanding of disability as a social creation sets an agenda for change: since the playing of the disabled role appears to perpetuate disability both as a social construct and as a form of exclusion, attempts should be make to reduce or eliminate it. Participants had their own suggestions for change to a more inclusionist set of transport services, designed to accommodate and welcome difference. Some were already involved in campaigning for such things as buses accessible to independent wheel chair users, and for all commercial taxis to be wheelchair-accessible; more generally, they wanted an end to having constantly to explain themselves and to specify their requirements.

In principle, any fully inclusive public transport system into which accessibility is built from the start rather than featuring as an additional cost ought to render obsolete the administrative category of the disabled role, though questions remain about the technical feasibility of vehicles designed to be truly accessible to all. May Cross suggested that if a fully accessible bus service was developed, then people

would risk losing the Mobility component of DLA, since it could no longer be justified on grounds of additional costs. It is a logical enough argument, but abolishing people's entitlement to a subsidy to pri vate motoring and suggesting instead that they go by bus would be a politically awkward move to make.

Conclusion

Disabled people's experience of local travel is con siderably more complex than simply exclusion from public transport services. It is broader than this in terms of the range of transport that people use, and also the processes that are going on. One of these is playing the disabled role, a way of achieving mobility that is partial and unsatisfactory but used by all the participants in this study, largely because it is chosen from a very limited set of options.

Focusing on the disabled role is useful not just because it allows an exploration of the complexity of individuals' action and experiences. It also obliges the researcher to consider what the role means for the authorizing bodies. Issues of defining who is and is not 'deserving' are increasingly important in the context of the decline of the welfare state and increasing demands on resources. Future research could usefully explore the ways in which the various forms of the disabled role are instigated as part of the

process of policy creation. Authorizing bodies such as local councils could gain from an understanding of their part in maintaining and sustaining the disabled role, of what the role means to disabled people, and in turn of the complexity of the effects of their transport-related policies.

The playing out of the disabled role in local travel gives an opportunity to examine how the nature of disability might be considered from each of Priestley's (1998) four positions, and to explore how the positions relate to one another. The role is presented as an administrative convenience, a col lective idea, but its existence in this form derives from and reinforces individual-materialist concep tions of disability. In turn, as people act out the disabled role, they live through (and at times struggle with) the individual experiences that make up disabil ity as a process of interaction. Finally, the disabled role can be read as a tool by which the social process of the exclusion of people with impairments is perpetuated and made legitimate.

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