A perspective on ageism from the Disabled people's movement

Over the past 15 months, I have had the pleasure of being a community co-curator for an exhibition called Nothing About Us Without Us. This is now showing at the People's History Museum, the 'museum of ideas worth fighting for'. The exhibition charts the campaign for rights for Disabled people, and highlights the fact that, until 1995, there wasn't even a legal definition of disability, much less any protections for Disabled people. The efforts my community took to draw society's attention to the lack of consideration of Disabled people is enshrined on the museum's walls, which is great.

It seems to me, disablism is clearly a 'thing' in our society. But does ageism exist? There is evidence that young people are discriminated against on the basis of their age. As a young, Disabled person attending mainstream school, I had a lonely existence. On Saturdays, I wandered round the museums and art galleries of my home city at will. When my son was a teenager, I was surprised to find that many art galleries and museums banned the under-18s from unaccompanied visits. A clear example of ageism in my view. However, I have some questions about ageism as it affects older people. Where does ageism start and disablism* end? Are the attitudinal barriers experienced by older people ageism, or actually disablism?

I once met a 96-year-old woman in a respite care facility. Sheila, when she was 90, lived independently. She regularly took part in fundraising activities for her local charity. She showed me the newspaper cuttings with a photograph of her completing a sponsored bed push. Six years later, Sheila lived a very different lifestyle. Dementia had encroached, necessitating a transition to living with carers. The barriers to independent living only kicked in when she acquired an impairment.

Watch the coverage of any marathon and you will see interviews with participants over the age of 80, running their umpteenth marathon. These people are used as examples of 'ageing well'. This seems to mean ageing without acquiring an impairment, as if that is something we can control. But I can't 'decide' not to get dementia, or arthritis, or Parkinson's. Statistics show that people over the age of 65 are much more likely to be disabled than the rest of the population.

I was born deaf. I was encouraged to wear hearing aids and speak English rather than British Sign Language. When I was 24, I was diagnosed with epilepsy, which left me with a memory impairment. So, in my 20s, I had two impairments that were associated with older people. The memory impairment, in particular, caused significant problems for me. I had to fight to get my memory assessed. The MOMI assessment that is routinely conducted with older people did not accommodate my kind of memory impairment. I could happily count back from 100 taking 7 away, and confidently assert that a kangaroo is a marsupial, to take just two of the questions from this test.

Now I'm 55, officially 'mature', my contemporaries have caught up with me. I am no longer considered odd for not being able to remember things that happened last week (whilst being able to remember my childhood clearly). Now, it doesn't seem incongruous to me that the memory support service in my area is run by Age UK, although the sessions are during the day, no good for people who work.

There's still an assumption that only older people have memory impairments, and that such impairments necessarily spell the end of working life – neither of which have any basis in the truth. In my youth I spoke to many older people using hearing aids for the first time about adjusting to life as a hearing aid user. Lots of people of my age now sport digital hearing aids. I feel like I have a peer group at last.

Are older people sneered at because we are more likely to be disabled and therefore we have become 'invalid'? Or is ageism real, exacerbated by additional disablism? I think that ageism is undeniable, but there is a need to acknowledge the disablism that many older people face as well.

Nothing About Us Without Us is showing until 15th October 2023 at the People's History Museum, Left Bank, Manchester.

[NB I prefer to use the term disablism to refer to the discrimination experienced by disabled people, as the social model of disability precludes use of the word 'able'.]

The views and opinions expressed in this guest blog are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the policy or positions of the Centre for Ageing Better.