Disability: Whether physical, mental or learning, it's usually our society that makes individual circumstances disabling

Photograph: Wheelchair Parking from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

It isn't radical to acknowledge that our society, our infrastructure and the way we work, is built around the lives of non-disabled men. The experiences of women are testament to that: basic biology is often treated as an impediment to society's orderly functioning.

The same kind of exclusion is experienced by people with disabilities. This is even reflected in the language of disability, which has clear markers of being written from the point of view of 'able-bodied' men, complete with assumptions made based on the uncritical acceptance of how society is shaped. There are, of course, cultural and historical reasons for the way these things have developed.

However, change has been slow and inclusion still feels far away. And it's that failure to build otherness into our society that defines disability. The report this week into the government's failure to adequately fund school places for those children with special educational needs just exposes how much of an afterthought disability still is in societal decision-making. That's a sorry state of affairs.

This government has made big promises on inclusion but obstacles remain. It is easy to see the barriers to people with physical disabilities just by looking around you. Some of them are very literal. Steps are a big factor. Ramps and lifts still look like add-ons - with issues like the need for manual assistance, space for manoeuvring and limited access all the result of physical disability access being an afterthought.

For people with mental illness and learning difficulties, the impediments are often harder to see - less obvious than the conflict between wheels and stairs which is, nonetheless, still far too often overlooked. The needs of people with mental health problems are various, but often include things like quiet, routine and structure. In a working world growing increasingly loud and irregular, making accommodation for these needs is treated like a drag on efficiency.

A 'flexible' working environment is the buzzword of the moment, but all of the flexibility must come from the employee. Compassionate support is hard to find in a system of precarious work, that keeps people on edge, scrambling for uncertain shifts.

The public sector is not free from criticism. Funding for disability has taken a hit under austerity, with a harsh welfare regime, and even funding for school places for students with special educational needs has been critically inadequate.

All people, disabled or not, want independence. To get around without assistance. To be confident and seen as capable. To that end, successive governments have promised an 'independence revolution', to radically improve social inclusion. That project has not been completed. There is so much more work to do.

We must think carefully about our society: how we frame work and making a contribution; how we approach inclusion. People can live full lives with a full spectrum of conditions and circumstances. But only if the society they live in does not disable them, by failing to built support and inclusion into their framework.

Facts Illuminate: Trump can write his own story but it won't change the facts - he stood for exclusion, while his opponents march for a more egalitarian and inclusive America

Demonstrators in Washington DC. Photograph: DC Women's March by Liz Lemon (License)

Facts are what we can verifiably say about reality. We know that the sky is blue and the grass is green - or that the sky is grey and the pavement is also grey - because we can see them and can discuss it with others to reach a consensus.

We know, for instance, that in reality humans are very likely the cause of global warming, because a large body work exists on the subject. A lot of people have looked at it and discussed it with others to reach that consensus.

If you're not inclined to change your mind away from a preconceived position, having facts differ from your own views can be an inconvenience. But in politics this is usually treated as an inconvenience that can be negotiated - and 'perceived' reality is frequently rewritten.

The most recent part of reality that Donald Trump has found inconvenient is that not as many people as he wanted showed up for his inauguration - not even half as many as showed up to see Obama the first time around and maybe less even than the second. His ludicrous response was, with the collusion of his Press Secretary, to try and 'set right' reality - claiming the highest attendance anyway and denying photographic evidence to the contrary (BBC, 2017).

Those defending him spoke of 'alternative facts', a phrase that shows a profound misunderstanding of both the word 'alternative' and the word 'facts'. But facts in public life are not a hand at a poker table, inconvenient cards to be arranged, bluffed and played to your best advantage.

Romano Prodi, reminded us (Popham, 2006) - when he used the Scottish poet Andrew Lang's words to describe his opponent Silvio Berlusconi, another populist political opportunist - that the facts are there to guide us, not the other way around:

"He uses statistics like a drunk uses lamp-posts, more for support than illumination."

So in that spirit - instead of making the facts fit in a way that suits us - let's ask: what do the facts tell us?

Well, the turnout at the respective inaugurations of Obama and Trump indicate that perhaps the election of Barack Obama was the more significant milestone - one that perhaps even outstripped his own Presidency.

Yet Trump's election also says something. There is a lot of dissatisfaction in America. A lot of people bought Trump's salesmanship - he is, after all, more of a brand ambassador than a property tycoon. His pitch was above all was exclusionary, offering an exclusive society to people who felt they had been dispossessed - and his nationalistic rhetoric gave those people, predominantly white and male, scapegoats.

However, the day after his inauguration, millions turned out under the Women's March banner in direct opposition to the attitudes, particularly towards women, that he has espoused - even as many as one in a hundred in America alone. The people united under the Women's March banner were of all genders and ethnicities, many of them Trump's favoured scapegoats, and they turned out in what may be (real) record numbers in support of equality and inclusion on Saturday (Frostenson, 2017).

America is large and diverse. If Trump wants to pitch the idea of an exclusive America, the facts suggest he should get used to his opponents outnumbering his supporters - his opponents did win the popular vote in 2016, after all. Those opponents, the real alternative, are rallying to the idea of an a more egalitarian, inclusive America. They're being led by the facts (Scanlon, 2014; Wilkinson, 2011).