"It's Just Who You Are!"
BTS: Disability Review Magazine x Hester Grainger
March is my favourite month of the year - and not just because it’s my birthday month. I celebrate each year, now, by doing something scary - as it was when I got out of quarantine, starting the process of Long Covid becoming a daily reality. We’ve made it another year! Let’s run with it!
Naidex is this month, a conference of everyone in the disability community I love in one room, for two days. It’s joyful, unifying - and I get to ‘work’ it? Yes please! Old friends who I see once a year are a part of this two day conference. I revert back to being a child again, backpack on, scurrying up to Euston and beyond as fast as my legs and cane can possibly carry me. This is like Christmas - the anticipation, the excitement of waiting for Santa to arrive, the stupidly wicked grin wide across my face. I absolutely love this part of my job.
I am also conducting a seminar on day one of this conference, devoted to the topic of how to get started as a freelance individual.
Get your free tickets by clicking the button below:
The new issue of Disability Review Magazine has landed - and will be available in print at the conference, too.
Hester Grainger (
on Substack) is this month’s cover star. A lot is being said about the ‘failure’ of disability, and the ‘need to get back to work’ by dint of government policy - so I wanted to pull something together to at least bust a few myths. The policies being espoused at the time of writing were in fact declared unlawful under the last government in a High Court battle; fraud detection on the benefits system was at 0%, as defined by - you guessed it - the Department for Work and Pensions, the body responsible for this administration. Yet more cuts are coming to PIP, as well as Universal Credit. Because get people back to work! Never mind the statistics! It has to be working in an office at all costs!Working as a freelance individual is just as valid - because money is money! We don’t all have to work in an office to be ‘legitimate’. *Sighs* Classism underpins this obnoxious notion..
While writing and editing this issue, I had a song on a loop inside my head: “Here come the girls, girls, girls, girls…” There’s a lot of women in this issue, designed with the theme of accomplishment in mind.
Hester Grainger is one half of Perfectly Autistic, a husband-wife Neurodiversity consultancy firm. We have been friends for a very long time; I interviewed her husband and daughter for my first book, and we have collaborated on a few projects, including previously making reels for AccessAble when we were ambassadors, together.
Later this year, she will be taking her first solo show on tour across the UK. ADHD Unmasked is set to be a landmark show - so I interviewed her all about it. (Tickets can be found here.)
This issue is a colourful, dophamine-filled editorial package, which I am very proud to have edited; this year marks a decade since I was diagnosed as Autistic, among multiple disabilities I have since accquired. I want to see bright colour, a few challenges to the perceived status quo, as well as myth busting as to what it means to be disabled in 2025. Disabled people are allowed nice things - it is a permission to be granted, to be gained.
Because, let’s be honest, aren’t we all sick of having our stories told by other people? We have
, Dr Amo Raju, a wonderful recipe from Mr Cookfulness, our travel columnist Carole Edrich from and so much more.We’re not going back - and we’ll do this for ourselves time and time again to prove that same point. So let’s be having you.
Love ALL of this! I'm excited about your magazine! I'm a former magazine editor and I think the cover looks fantastic. It grabbed my attention immediately. Kudos!
As someone with ADHD, CPTSD, autistic, with a foot disability and other issues, your article resonates with me.
Looking forward to more from you. 😊