Access-Ability
This project titled Access-Ability was intended to interrogate the representation of those with either physical or learning disabilities in the media, and specifically focusing on those with disabilities within relationships. The mass media routinely neglect to portray those with disabilities, and when they do it is often a fully able-bodied and good-looking actor playing the role, such as Daniel Day-Lewis portraying Christy Brown in My Left Foot. This project focuses on the misrepresentation of people with disabilities as being asexual beings, symbolised most effectively by the fact that able-bodied public toilets are quite clearly gendered, whereas disabled toilets are stripped of their sex and merged into one location devoid of gender. This notion crosses over into the sexual lives of those with disabilities being unfairly denied the same worthiness of a full loving sexual relationship. These couples, where one or both partners have a physical or learning disability, are portrayed in a warm and loving manner to dispel these misconceptions.