Fergus Finlay: Rose and Lizzie show outstanding ability in spite of discrimination on disability

Rose Ayling-Ellis performing on 'Strictly Come Dancing'. She is a dancer with a disability that ought to limit her as a dancer. But it doesn’t.

I have a small group of friends that I’ve known since my highly undistinguished years in University College Cork. Boys when I knew them first, they are wise old men now. Erudite, literary, artistic, and all deep-thinking philosophers. I am in awe of them.

We have a plan for a two-day lunch, at some indeterminate point in the future. All I know about it right now is that it will either start or end in the Long Valley Bar where Winthrop Street meets Oliver Plunkett Street. To be honest, it’s more their bar than mine — but the pubs I used to frequent back in the day are either gone or have failed to retain the character that drew me to them.

I don’t know when it will be — I’m guessing the latest variant of our pandemic may well push the date out even further. But a day will come (or two days) when the world will be put to rights.

As long as I can bear with their scorn, that is.

In terms of intellectual status and rigour, I am the low man on their totem pole. It was bad enough when I confessed to a deep pang of disappointment when Lizzie was voted out of the tent in the Great British Bake-Off. I was rooting for her to go all the way to the final, even though I could see she probably wasn’t the best baker.

But in terms of the esteem of my learned friends, I think I have plumbed the depths with my commitment to Strictly Come Dancing. 

We’ve followed it in our house since the early days, when Bruce Forsyth would spread a thick coating of cheese over every episode.

I still tell people (before they lose the will to live) to check out the cricketer Mark Ramprakash’s famous salsa. That was in 2006, so that’ll tell you how long I’ve been pathetic. Now I pass comment on how ill-suited the paso doble is to contestant A, or how contestant B should stick to Ballroom rather than Latin. Me, who can’t put one foot in front of the other.

But my commitment has, if anything, deepened in the course of the current series. The reason is Rose Ayling-Ellis.

She’s an actress. She’s graceful, beautiful, and a gutsy dancer, apparently willing to take on anything. And she’s deaf. She uses sign language as a primary language, and I simply don’t know how she has become such a good dancer — or how she manages to keep time with music that she can’t hear. She has said she relies on the beat, and on counting — that seems to me like double the work that even the professional dancers are doing.

But here’s the point. She is a dancer with a disability that ought to limit her as a dancer. But it doesn’t. A couple of weeks ago she and her professional partner did part of their dance, in front of millions of TV viewers, in complete silence. That was her statement and her tribute to the deaf community of which she is a proud member.

In my other favourite show, before she left the Bake-Off tent, Lizzie explained to the judges that she wanted to make a wild cake because it reflected her and what was important about her. She said she wanted to celebrate “brain fuzz” and revealed that she lived with a diagnosis of ADHD and dyslexia. The cake she made in celebration of her disabilities was astonishing.

Look it. I know my two favourite shows are often seen as trivial. But there’s nothing trivial in providing platforms to two young people with disabilities — in fact, it’s more than other “more serious” programmes have done. I have no doubt whatsoever that both of these young people have been discriminated against on the basis of difference in the past, and probably were warned they’d make fools of themselves if they tried.

But in acknowledging their disabilities, and then going on to transcend them, they are proving doubters and discriminators wrong. And they’re doing it in ways, and on platforms, that the rest of us can’t take our eyes off.

For years I’ve written and talked about how crucial it is to see ability alongside disability, how cruel it is to ignore potential in the face of disability, how life-changing it can be when someone with a disability gets a chance to show their stuff. I’d like to think some of that has gotten through. But I know that Rose and Lizzie in a couple of short weeks have probably made a bigger impact than all the writing and speech-making in the world.

The truth is that even in a world where attitudes are changing all the time, there’s no shortage of doubters and discriminators where disability is concerned.

All over the world nowadays, ideas of diversity and inclusion have become hot topics. It’s been a fascinating thing to watch. Companies used to pay lip service to these ideas — a little bit of petty cash or some of the public relations budget would be devoted to diversity and inclusion projects. Now, for many large enterprises, they are becoming core values.

But even companies that pride themselves on their ability to celebrate difference or to promote inclusion concentrate a lot of their efforts on breaking down barriers around colour, or gender or sexual orientation. It’s great to see, and it is increasingly helping to define the definition of a progressive enterprise.

But when you ask about disability, there’s a blankness. Disability, in any real sense, has yet to make it to a meaningful place in that agenda.

I’ve written here recently about Andrew Geary, who is fighting a hard battle to enable his profoundly deaf son, Callum, to be educated in his primary language, Irish sign language. That battle wouldn’t be necessary, in our inclusive world, if Callum was gay or his skin colour was different. It’s only disability that we can’t include.

In Ireland today — and this shouldn’t come as a surprise — there are a great many barriers between people with a disability and the chance to live a full and meaningful life. (And that’s despite the fact, often ignored, that people with a disability have exactly the same right to a full life as everyone else.) Issues such as transport, housing, income support all get in the way.

But the biggest single barrier is attitude. I’m talking about the attitudes of employers, educators, sports coaches, policymakers — and many more — who can’t see beyond the disability to recognise not just the right but the potential.

Even as public policy has begun to move beyond medical approaches to disability, it still often blindly pigeonholes people with a disability — sometimes to the point where they are relegated to the point of relying on condescension and charity.

If you’ve watched those trivial shows, it’s hard to imagine Rose and Lizzie being pigeonholed, isn’t it? You just want to cheer them on. But maybe, just maybe, you might also think “why the hell not”? Why shouldn’t we see potential more? Why shouldn’t we recognise strength of character? Why shouldn’t we acknowledge determination and resilience as genuine characteristics of leadership? Why the hell not indeed.