Watch with Irish Sign Language
Watch without background sounds
skip visual descriptions and go straight to spoken content
Opening
As the sound of water flows in the background, the video opens on a purple coloured screen. Symbols representing disability and accessibility surround blank space in the centre.
As the narrator begins to speak, her words fill the empty space with large white text. When we move to the individual speakers, they fill the screen.
Adam, Jeanne, and Caroline all have relatively simple backgrounds, while Steven is in a homely office with a bookshelf, photos, and a guitar mounted on the wall.
Narrator (Bobbie)
When you think of a disabled person, what do you think of?
What do they dream about?
What do they do all day?
And, what scares them?
Adam
So as a child, one of my biggest fears was going anywhere that was busy or crowded or where there was lots of smells and noises and tastes in the environment.
As I got a little bit older, as I was a teenager, one of my main fears was being treated differently or not being seen as Adam, but by being defined by other people.
Jeanne
I feared what people thought of me because I wasn’t acting the way all my peers were and I feared people would shun me as a result.
Stephen
My biggest fear now is not having the impact in the world that we’ve spoken about through our company and that is my purpose and my reason to get out of bed.
It’s impacting that 1.3 billion people.
Caroline
My biggest fear as a child was, I actually can’t remember, but my biggest fear now is birds and a small cluster of holes.
It’s called trypophobia.
Adam
My biggest fear now is that we’re moving backwards, not forwards, in terms of challenging misinformation around autism.
Stephen
Another goal that I have for myself and my wife is that in the future we live somewhere warm.
Heat is incredibly therapeutic with a spinal cord injury and that’s something that would make a significant difference to our standard of living.
Caroline
A goal I’ve set for the future is to be financially secure and in a position where I can pick and choose when I want to work.
Adam
A goal I have for the future is to get my own dog.
Jeanne
A lot of people comment on my hair and I have a hidden disability but when they hear I have a disability, the disability jumps to the fore and I’d be far happier to be known for having big hair than having a disability if that’s what they consider important because I think anyone who puts the disability first is doing that from a place of stigma and they’re seeing you as lesser or less able and so I guess that’s, yeah, it’s not being able to understand that it’s only one part of the whole.
Caroline
Something I wish that everyone knew about having a disability is understanding that access fatigue is real.
So what I mean by that is constantly having to ask for things and requesting can be absolutely exhausting.
Adam
We need people who think differently to make our society as great as it can be.
Credits (narrated by Bobbie)
This video was directed by Bobbie Hickey and David Redmond.
Narration and interviews by Bobbie Hickey.
Editing and production assistance by David Redmond.
The contributors were Caroline McGrotty, Stephen Cluskey, Jeanne McDonagh and Adam Harris.
Irish Sign Language translation by Sarah Jane O’Regan
Description: Credits are displayed on the same purple background from the beginning of the video
David Redmond 