Children with disabilities

Imagine looking at a family picture with your brothers, sisters, mum and dad all standing poised and smiling. Suddenly you notice something very odd - you are missing from the picture. In fact, you are missing from every family portrait your family have ever done. Welcome to the world of the disabled child, writes Ross Watson

Including disabled people in our society

People with disabilities account for ten million of the UK population yet there is still a lack of visibility of their presence in stuff we take for granted.

The social battle for inclusion that disabled people are often forced to deal with starts at an early age. In a child's early learning years, the picture book is a particularly useful tool, as it enables the child to familiarise his or herself with images and stories they can then relate to their own experiences in real life.

However, it is very difficult to find books which depict disabled children in any images or stories.

Last year national disability charity Scope launched an innovative Big Lottery funded-project - In the Picture. The aim of the project is to change the face of the picture book market by encouraging the representation of disabilities in the stories and ultimately the illustrations. This is not in an attempt to point out the challenges children with disabilities face, but rather to promote inclusion in modern society.

‘The need to find disabled children appearing casually in both image and storyline is important,' says Susan Clow, project manager for In the Picture. ‘This point has been made time and again by all sorts of people.'

In the Picture campaign

The project has been drumming up support over the past year, while providing a practical resource via their website at childreninthepicture.org.uk. It enables everyone including parents, publishers, authors, illustrators and teachers to come together, discuss the project and sign up to the ‘Ten Guiding Principles' (see box). These are the project's very own Ten Commandments, rooted in the ‘Social Model of Disability' - which says that disability is caused by the way society is organised, rather than by a person's impairment or difference.

The website also includes stories created with the help of children's workshops in the North West and written by children's author Margaret Stewart. Kathryn Wilson, artist and illustrator of the stories, explains: ‘We're not producing a set of illustrated medical encyclopaedias; we are writing children's books that just happen to include disabled people, that they are there is just an incidental detail and that's the whole point.'

One of the more unique characteristics of the site is undoubtedly the downloadable pictures, drawn by artist Fred Chevalier, available for children to colour in - one is of a boy going up the ramp of a play bus with a frame and another is of Louisa, who is oxygen dependent, playing in a nursery. The children's area is something Susan is particularly proud of: ‘What better way to absorb the idea that disability is okay than casually colouring in an oxygen line?'

Perhaps most important is the ever-growing image bank, providing illustrations depicting disabled children in positive and, in pictures including more than one child, inclusive and equal situations. Alongside the comments in the guestbook, this is the source of inspiration for illustrators to take the message of In the Picture to the next step, and begin to infiltrate the market with stories referring to, including and featuring children with disabilities. Books like Peek-a-Boo epitomise what In the Picture is striving for as there is no mention of disability in the book, simply a variety of illustrations depicting children and parents playing, some of whom happen to be disabled.

In The Picture is not working in isolation. Mainstream book organisation Booktrust ran a project, courtesy of the Quentin Blake Award, conducting a series of workshops in a selection of UK schools last summer in order to find out what children thought about disability in children's books. The feedback makes for fascinating reading and the report can be accessed via their website at booktrust.org.uk.

The overriding response was that the current lack of representation in books exacerbates the feeling that someone who is disabled is ‘different'. Most pupils - both disabled and non-disabled - could not name more than two books which included characters with disabilities, and were generally of the opinion that disability needs more exposure but not necessarily in a way that makes it stand out from the crowd. See the box, ‘Comments from the kids'.

Although we are discussing disability within the seemingly safe confines of the Special Educational Needs section, in this case the impetus is not on the disabled children, but rather on society - to embrace all children and treat them each the same. According to the legendary illustrator himself, Quentin Blake, ‘This far-sighted project will enrich the lives of children as well as the lives of all of us who work with books for them.'