Why Stories Change How Children See Disability

The book that sits on the shelf

Most children’s books that include a disabled character are written, in effect, for non-disabled children. The character is developed to teach themes like patience, courage, kindness or gratitude, and as soon as the lesson is delivered, the story moves on swiftly. The disabled character serves a specific plot point or a few dedicated scenes, not the whole storyline.

I understand why these books exist. Adults want to prepare children for a diverse world that includes disabled people, and a story is a good way to do just that. The intention is rarely the problem. What is important is what the disabled child on the other side of the page takes from it.

Presence is not representation

Publishing has become better at putting disabled characters on the page, but inclusion and authenticity aren’t the same as agency in the story. The useful questions and statements are simple. Who wants something? Who is leading or making the decisions? Who is allowed to be funny, wrong, strong, or difficult? A character whose main job is to be understood by everyone else is included, but they are not given the story.

My own position has not wavered across any of my work. Disabled characters belong in stories. Not only as a lesson or as the brave exception, but just there, being themselves, doing their thing, the same as anyone.

What a hero does that a lesson cannot

A hero stands for or wants something, makes mistakes and makes decisions that change what happens next and determines the story’s path. The child reading that story spends the length of that book willing them on. They feel what they want and they worry when they face trials. Understanding develops from that journey and the investment from within, rather than from instruction, which is why a child who has spent a book alongside a disabled character rarely needs an assembly on disability and acceptance afterwards.

For disabled readers, the impact is more subtle but arguably larger. Children’s books are among the first places children learn who gets to be at the centre of the plot; this is why I write stories the way I do, from lived experience. A child who never sees someone like themselves holding the map, globe, pendant, or crown is likely to assume these experiences aren’t meant for them.

What to look for in a book about disability representation

For parents, teachers, personal assistants, and librarians choosing books, these questions are more reliable than a label on a cover.

Who wants something?
If the disabled character has no goal of their own, they are there for another reason.
Who makes the decisions?
Look at who moves the plot. If the disabled character is always being helped, carried or explained, they are not leading it.
Is disability the plot or part of the person?
The strongest stories treat it as one fact or arc about a character who has plenty of others.
Is the character allowed to be flawed?
Heroes are impatient, stubborn and sometimes wrong. A character who is only good is a lesson in a costume.
Whose growth is the story about?
If the main change or trial happens to the people around the disabled character, the book is educating.

Where this leaves my own writing

These are the questions I follow when creating my own stories. The Anya series, illustrated by Alison Howard, is the latest place where I try to answer them. The latest book in the series, Anya and the Crown of Silence, will be published on the 12^th November 2026, and I would love for readers to judge it on these grounds and values.

Children work out early who stories are for. I would like more of them to find out it was them.

Everyone With Cerebral Palsy Is Different. Now What?

‘Everyone with cerebral palsy is different’ is completely true. It might also be the most useful sentence ever invented for not doing anything.
This year, World Cerebral Palsy Day (2026) is on Tuesday 6th October, and the theme is Unique and United, back for a second year. A year ago, on the same day, I became an ambassador for Cerebral Palsy Cymru. So I’ve had twelve months to think about what those two words really mean.

I walk, go to the gym, and work out within my own limits. Lately my hamstrings have been tightening up more often, and on those days my body can use up to three times the energy of a non-disabled person’s to do the same things.
A while back, I started using a wheelchair again. ‘Again’ is a word that sometimes surprises people. When I was a child, my hamstrings tightened so quickly when I walked that I sometimes used a wheelchair on our caravan holidays in Devon, so we could get around quicker and stay out longer. Then for years you wouldn’t see me in one. I would go through the pain barrier some days to stay out playing with friends.
People expect disability to go in one direction. They perceive that your disabilities improve over time, which makes a nice story, or that you get worse, which makes a sad one. Going back to using a wheelchair as an adult doesn’t fit either, so people assume the worst. They ask what’s happened. Nothing’s happened. My body is doing what it has always done. I’ve just stopped pretending that energy is free.
Using the chair for mobility isn’t me giving up on walking. I still walk; I just use my powered wheelchair when walking costs me the rest of the day, so I can leave a bit of energy in the tank.
So that’s one man who walks, uses a wheelchair and talks with a device, sometimes all in the same week, and looked completely different on paper ten years ago. If cerebral palsy can be that different inside one person, ‘unique’ is underselling it.
Another person with cerebral palsy might do none of that. They might be able to walk farther than I can, or not at all. They might speak more clearly than I can, be nonverbal, or use eyegaze or switches. An injury to the developing brain causes cerebral palsy, but everyone’s experience of it is unique. So yes. Unique.
The trouble is what people do with that. ‘Every case is different’ sounds respectful, and it’s usually said kindly. But listen to where it often leads. We’ll take it as it comes. We’ll sort the access on the day. We’ll work out the communication when they get here. We’ll see, and the ‘we’ll see’ tends to mean the disabled person turns up and does the planning on the spot, in front of everyone. Sending my accessibility rider out in advance is meant to cut that bit out. It doesn’t always.
This isn’t treating someone as unique. It’s treating difference as a surprise, but the difference is the least surprising thing about us. If you know for certain that the next person with cerebral palsy through the door won’t need the same things as the last, you already know enough. More time on the clock and more than one way to answer. Allowing space for a wheelchair if someone is using it that day, or even someone who’s happy to wait a while for someone to form a sentence using their communication device.
None of that needs my diagnosis. It needs to consider everybody in all your planning processes.
Which brings me to ‘united’, and I think people misunderstand that word too. United doesn’t mean we’re the same. It certainly doesn’t mean we all agree. It means we keep walking, rolling and typing into the same unready rooms.
Last month I gave a talk at Communication Matters in Leeds. More than five hundred people attended. AAC users, families, and professionals. In a room like that, communicating differently isn’t odd. That’s the ‘united’ bit for me. A space that was built for us.
On World Cerebral Palsy Day, landmarks will light up green. Then on Wednesday, the lights will dim for another year, and somewhere, someone will tell a person with cerebral palsy that every case is different, mean it kindly, and leave it there.
It is. Every case is different. That was only ever meant to be the start of the sentence.

It’s Not a Workaround. It’s How I Communicate Differently

More often than not, my TalkPad starts with a witty one-liner. It breaks the ice, and people never know what to expect when I pull out my TalkPad. A one-liner in my AI voice tends to sort that out quickly. I sound Welsh in my head. The voice doesn’t sound quite like me, but I am okay with that, because the joke is still authentically mine.

My relationship with AAC started in my last year of junior school, and for a long time it was love-hate. My first device was a Lightwriter, and the keys were so stiff that pressing them felt like a workout, and I had to haul the bulky device everywhere. These days I use a TalkPad 8, a tablet, which is a lot easier to live with. I’m turning love-hate into love-love. I’m getting there.

Some of that is down to what it lets me do on my own. The things I usually need to say at the post office or grocery store are saved as quick answers on my TalkPad, so they are ready before I reach the counter assistant. My answers for TV, radio and podcast interviews are recorded in advance. So are my introductions at networking events and my inspirational and author talks, so none of it relies on someone else speaking for me.

That last part matters more than it sounds. Not long after my first book came out, I went on an American podcast without telling the host about my speech impairment. They said hello, I said hello back, and their face went blank. My publisher at the time was on the call and ended up doing all the talking for an hour about my book, while I sat there. I haven’t let that happen since. I don’t go anywhere without my TalkPad and laptop now, and when I’m on a show or on stage for an inspirational talk, the words are mine.

It’s October, which means it’s AAC Awareness Month, which means there are a lot of posts explaining what AAC actually is. Augmentative and alternative communication: letter boards, symbols, sign language, apps, devices, pointing, even facial expressions. That’s all useful. But I think people get one thing wrong. They see someone using AAC and assume they are watching a workaround, the second-best option for someone who can’t communicate as effectively as they’d like to. It’s not. It’s an accessible tool and how I get to communicate for myself.

The other thing people misunderstand is that the device only does half the job. The other half is being patient when listening. When I met a Member of the Senedd to talk about getting Max and the Magic Wish into Welsh schools, I played her a response I'd recorded on my communication aid. She listened to every word. No glancing at whoever was with me, no hurrying it along. It was a good meeting, and a lot of that was down to her. Years before that, the lady who became my first publisher met me outside a local pub. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. It wasn’t the most conventional way to meet a book publisher, but that’s truthfully where I met them. My mum came along in case the publisher couldn't understand me. We chatted for a while. A few days later, I found myself stepping onto a journey to becoming a published author.

It isn't all smooth. My friends reckon they understand my actual speech better after I've had a drink. Most people slur. Apparently, I get clearer. I'm still working out whether that's a breakthrough or a problem.

But the good conversations far outnumber the bad ones, and they have something in common. The person on the other side isn't doing me a favour. They're just waiting for me to finish, the same as they would for anyone.

The voice doesn't sound like me. When someone waits for the whole sentence, they still hear me.

Communication Matters Conference

The Communication Matters Conference 2026: Reflection, AI, agency, and an auditorium full of people who understood me.

I've had a few days to think about the Communication Matters Conference in Leeds, and what I keep coming back to isn't just the fantastic post-reaction surrounding my plenary talk. It's the conversation that's happening around it.

First though, the conference itself. Forty years of Communication Matters, more than 500 AAC users, professionals, and exhibitors, all gathered at the University of Leeds under the theme of limitless communication. I've been to plenty of events over the last few years, but I've never been in a space quite like that one.

Everywhere you turned, someone was communicating differently. Eyegaze users, switch users, people typing, people using BSL and symbols, people speaking with devices. Seeing this made me feel so much part of a community. Nobody batting an eyelid at any of it, just patient happiness and understanding.

For someone who has spent most of his life bracing for the moment the conversation moves on without him, three days of that melted my heart. A genuinely passionate, supportive community, and a forward-thinking one too. These are people actively building what comes next, not just sitting on what already exists.

Sarah, my PA, travelled up with me, and we both came home shattered and buzzing in equal measures.

The question nobody's asking nationally

King Charles has held an AI summit at Dumfries House, bringing together Nvidia, Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic alongside the UK's AI minister. He warned of the existential dangers and asked whether we need sufficient means of control before it's all too late.

Fair question. But it's not the only one worth asking. Four days earlier, at the University of Leeds, I was in rooms full of people asking something more specific. Not whether AI is dangerous in the abstract, but who it serves, and who stays in control of it, for people who now rely on it every single day just to be heard.

Day one of the Communication Matters Conference, I attended two discussions about how AI is beginning to change how AAC users communicate. There's more agency, certainly. Though I'd argue with varying amounts of authenticity, depending on how it's built and used. Those two things don't normally intertwine, and that's what I think gets missed when the conversation stays in the AAC world.

What technology I use, and why it matters

I use Smartbox's Text Talker AI beta within Grid3. Its Smart Prompt command takes keywords I've typed, fixes them, and expands them into full sentences, and even outputs them in different selected categorised moods. It lets me switch between two chats and store quick answers for question-and-answer sessions. That last one matters more than it sounds. When a child at a school visit asks me a question, I can answer quickly, instead of watching the moment pass while I type.

Smartbox's own position on this is that AI should support communication, never control it. Smart Prompt is built so the user stays in charge at every step. You opt in, choose from the responses offered. You can prompt it to try again, and the words that come out are still yours.

That distinction is the whole argument. AI that writes for you is a different thing entirely from AI that helps you communicate faster. One replaces your voice. The other removes a barrier that was never yours to begin with.

The authenticity question

I have been asked more than once whether AI makes my communication less authentic. My answer is straightforward. My thoughts were always my own. The delay has never been a lack of academic capability; it has just been about finding an accessible way to convey them at a quicker pace.

But I do think the sector needs to be vigilant. AI in AAC must be transparent, ethical, and legal. Users must know when AI is involved and how. They need genuine consent and to be clear on the terms of use. There needs to be a constant option to turn it off entirely.

Get this wrong, and you build something that speaks over AAC users rather than collaborating with them. Get it right, and you bring lots of people into the tempo of an ordinary conversation.

Being talked about before I'd said a word

Then there's the part I genuinely wasn't prepared for. Before I'd even taken the stage, I was told I'd been talked about in other people's presentations and discussions. My journey, being used by other people, to explain what's possible. I stood there flabbergasted. You spend years being underestimated, then you find out your story is being used as evidence in rooms you weren't in.

The plenary talk itself was on the final morning, in a fantastic auditorium at the University of Leeds, in front of hundreds of people.

The response I'm still getting my head around

Jamie Preece, a fellow AAC user, wrote in a social media comment that my presentation was one of the best he'd ever seen at a conference, and that he was still wiping tears away from it. When someone who communicates the same way you do tells you that, it hits differently. They know exactly what it takes to get there.

Angela messaged me to say she and her son attended. Her son is an eyegaze user, and it was their first conference. His speech and language therapist had been trying to get him to attend for years. They're glad they got the opportunity to listen to my talk.

Both of these responses have floored me. Somewhere in the audience, someone had felt so moved they felt the need to reach out, and a young man at his first-ever Communication Matters nearly didn't come.

Forty years, and the threads that connect

Simon has also got in touch about my reference to Toby Churchill, the man who invented the Lightwriter. My first AAC device was funded by my village, who dressed someone up as Father Christmas and locked him in a police cell until they hit the fundraising target. Simon mentioned he used to rant about the Lightwriter's design back in the nineties but came to see other perspectives on it eventually.

Forty years of Communication Matters, and the threads still connect like that. The device that was supposed to give me my first voice, the man who designed it, and a conversation about AI in 2026 that wouldn't exist without either of them.

I went to Leeds to give a talk. I came home having been part of something considerably bigger, and excited to find out where this journey takes me next.

Thank you, Communication Matters. Here's to the next forty years.

A Company Decided I Wasn’t The Disabled Writer Anymore

Locked out of my own files and the safe route couldn’t prove I was me

Something made me feel like I wasn’t. No, not a person, but a machine, owned by the company I use as my preferred cloud-based subscription and desktop writing go-to.

My mobile phone contract had ended, and it was time to upgrade. I went to my local and trusted communications store and discussed my upgrade options with the person I have dealt with for years. They advised me on the best phone to upgrade to, the one with the best quality camera and most storage due to me being a disability advocate and filming content en masse, everything went smoothly, until I got home and transferred everything from my old phone to the new one. I had then, at this point, been logged out of my cloud-based subscription on both my mobile and laptop, and went to log back in on both devices, but they just wouldn’t let me, and I had foolishly wiped off my old phone where my authenticator app was. My bad! I hold my hands up.

All my files were behind a wall I had apparently built myself. To get back in, I had to prove it was me, and yes, you’ve guessed correctly; it handed me a chatbot.

The accessible option that wasn’t

If you are new to my blog or haven’t read my autobiography yet (spoiler, the purchase link is on this website). I have cerebral palsy and a severe speech impairment. On paper, the preferred accessible option is text, a direct live chat, or email, not voice chat or phone call, no thirty-second timeout where an automated person asking me to say my name in full. It just never works for me due to the severity of my speech impairment. Instead, it puts me in an impossible loop, ‘let’s try that again!’ Looking back, I was so anxious to get my protected work back; I don’t know why I was even trying to speak to this chatbot, because if I did connect to a human, they probably wouldn’t have understood me anyway.

The part that nobody sees

So what do you do when the accessible route isn't accessible? You ask someone, and in this case, I ask my mother because my Personal Assistant was on holiday.
But here's what they don't tell you. The moment someone kindly helps you, the system dehumanises them too. They have to pass the security checks and being asked to prove who they are, why they're speaking on my behalf, what legal rights they have to access my account, as if helping a disabled person is something you need to be a barrister to conduct. We're both sat there, me unable to say the words as clearly or type the words into my communication device quick enough so the machine can understand, mum is being interrogated for the crime of trying to help me, both of us arguing with not only a chatbot, but each other. It's embarrassing and the stress doesn't halve when there's two of you; it doubles.

That's the bit that hurts and frustrates me. The barrier doesn't stop with me; it just transfers to whoever is there trying to help me. My independence inevitably becomes their inconvenience; me being locked out becomes their interrogation. Non-disabled people get to be locked out on their own. I never will.

What people misunderstand

They think the solution for accessibility is more channels. Add a chat option or a text service just to tick the box. But a channel or method that can’t do the actual job isn’t access, it’s just another inaccessible service that adds to the barriers, anxiety, and frustration disabled people face daily. A chatbot that only knows how to answer the questions or hear the clear-toned voice it was expecting is fine right up until your situation isn’t one of the expected ones. Living with a disability throws you unexpected challenges quite often, ones that non-disabled people aren’t aware of or are trained to deal with. The chatbot wasn’t failing because I am disabled. It just couldn’t cope with the unscripted nature of having to deal with someone who needs to communicate in other ways.
It turns out the trap has a name
I did what I always do when something gets under my skin. I went and read about it and scrolled through social media afterwards. It turns out the trap I’d fallen into has a name. Researchers call it the accessibility-to-security failure pathway, which is a technical term for a simple idea. When the safe route doesn’t work, you don’t give up; you try to go around it, and going around it makes you feel like an afterthought in all these processes and end up feeling excluded too.
Here’s the part that annoyed me. This is a solved problem, and the big players, the same names you’d expect, already have built the way back in. Backup codes, a recovery email, a trusted device you set up in advance, then a human at the end of it if all else fails. No single-entry point, so that no single door can trap you. The technology to not do this HAS to exist. It’s there, ready to be implemented by companies like the one that did it to me.

What I’d Want

The frustration wasn’t being locked out. Things break. It was the inaccessibility of the process for getting my Multifactor Authentication reset, and every supposed way back in was a smooth, well-designed platform with no empathy for people who can’t communicate clearly like me. The chat that didn’t chat. The help that didn’t initially understand an accessible way to deal with my speech impairment. A system confident enough to lock me out and too much like Fort Knox to let me back in. I eventually gained access to my files again after many stressful days. I wouldn’t strike this one off as a win.

If you build systems or manage the people who do, don’t add another channel and call it access. Please consult with the people you are excluding before building an accessible way back in. If you can’t tell me, hand on heart, how someone with a speech impairment gets their account back, then you haven’t thoroughly thought of the whole process without consulting the disability community. You’ve built another inaccessible system.

I’m The Disabled Writer, and I’d quite like to stay that way.

The City That Runs on Luck

Lee Ridley is more widely known as The Lost Voice Guy after winning Britain's Got Talent in 2018. But after a recent gig, he couldn't get home from Cardiff.

He’d done two nights at the Glee Club. Sold out, most likely; he’s one of the best comics in the country. Then he tried to get an accessible taxi to the station and rang five companies. Not one could help. In the end, he took his chances at a rank, hoping a wheelchair-accessible vehicle would turn up before his train left. In the capital city of Wales on a Saturday night.

I read that and felt it in my bones. Not because it surprised me; it didn’t. I've also experienced the madness of trying to get a decent taxi home from Cardiff on a Saturday night, let alone an accessible one.

Lee has cerebral palsy. So do I. But here’s the thing that should stop people in their tracks. He is one of the most recognisable disabled people in Britain. A BGT winner, he writes for the BBC. If it can happen to him, standing outside a comedy club he’s just headlined, it can happen to anyone. That’s not a story about one bad night. That’s the system working exactly as it has been built.

It’s Never One Thing

People hear ‘couldn’t get a taxi’ and think bad luck; it’s the same for most people. But it’s never one thing. It’s the taxi, and then it’s the step into the venue, and the toilet that’s technically there but on the wrong side of a locked door or being used as a storeroom.

I worked at a newspaper for years. I eventually got a disabled parking space, and another employee kept using it, so I’d turn up for a full day’s work and end up parked somewhere I couldn’t manage, or in a no-parking zone right in front of the office. There were no ramps at the main entrance to the office. No automatic doors, and the only accessible toilet was out in the customer reception area. So, every time I needed it, I went back through a security door, down a step, and past a queue of clients. I was a member of staff, not a visitor passing through. I said nothing and got on with it, because that’s what you learn to do.

None of those things were designed to keep me out. That's the point. Nobody sat in a meeting and decided disabled people weren't welcome. There were no villains. It's worse than that, in a way. We simply weren't in the room when the decisions were made. Not excluded on purpose; we were just never thought of. The person drawing up the office plan imagined someone walking in, using the stairs, picking up the phone. They weren't cruel. They just didn't think of me, because they'd never had to. When you're never thought about, you end up bolted on afterwards, a toilet wedged in wherever there was space, a parking bay nobody polices. The exclusion was the default, and the default is what does the damage, precisely because nobody has to defend it. You can't argue with a decision that was never actually made.

Who Else Uses the Ramp

Here’s what the people who fund, design and implement these decisions never seem to grasp. Fix it for us, and you fix it for far more than us.

The accessible taxi that gets Lee to his train? It’s the same one that takes the bloke home from A&E with his leg in plaster. The parking space that actually works? Used by the new mum with a baby seat and three bags, and by the eighty-year-old who can’t walk far anymore. The ramp goes under the wheelchair, yes, and under the suitcase, the pushchair, the delivery trolley, the dodgy knee everyone gets eventually. Level access isn’t a favour to a minority. It’s a city that works for the day everybody, sooner or later, needs it to.

Everyone bangs on about disabled access like it’s a cost. It isn’t in the long run. It’s the version of the place that’s ready for people having normal days, prams, crutches, shopping, and getting older. We’re just the ones who need it first, and hardest, and every single day.

Luck Runs Out

So, I’m not asking Cardiff to be kind to disabled people. Kindness depends on who’s driving. I’m asking for a city where getting to the station doesn’t come down to whether a driver happens to feel generous that evening.

Lee said he’ll keep calling it out until it improves. So will I. Not because we enjoy the sound of our own complaining; trust me, we’d rather just get the train and get home safe and sound; but because ‘we’ll rely on luck’ is the actual, current transport plan for disabled people in the capital of Wales.

Lee deserved better than crossed fingers. So does everyone standing at that rank, long after the posts have stopped doing the rounds, watching taxi after taxi pull up that they can't get into.

Holding Out for a Supportive Kind of Hero

Everyone has been singing Total Eclipse of the Heart this week. Fair enough. It's one of the most iconic songs of all time, has been covered by many artists, and has been featured dozens of times onscreen in movies, television shows, and commercials. It’s seven minutes long and worth every one of them.

When Bonnie Tyler died on Wednesday, the 8^th of July 2026, the tributes came fast. The Prime Minister. Rod Stewart. Catherine Zeta-Jones. Every one of them talked about the voice. That gravel, and unforgettable roar. Rightly so. There was nobody else who sounded like her, and there probably will never be again. Bonnie was an icon engraved in Welsh folklore for eternity.

I read many of those tributes, and the one that touched me personally is one from another of my heroes, Rod Stewart. He didn't write an essay. Just a few lines on Instagram, white text on a black background. He said they had a similar way of singing, that she was a good pal, and that he sings It's a Heartache every night on tour. Then, the same day the news broke, he got up with Jools Holland and sang it for her. That's the part that tugged on my emotional strings and brought a tear to my eye. He's been singing her song every night for years anyway. He never needed her to die to start honouring her. Still, amongst all of these tributes, I was looking for two words that barely appeared anywhere – CEREBRAL PALSY.

Here's what most people never knew. From the 1990s, Bonnie Tyler was a patron of the Bobath Children's Therapy Centre in Cardiff, the charity now known as Cerebral Palsy Cymru. That's thirty years, give or take. In 2013, she campaigned for the centre to be recognised at the Pride of Britain Awards. She backed appeals and fundraising campaigns while touring the world. No press push or campaign video with sad piano music. She just kept on giving her unwavering support, raising much needed awareness, and making a difference with her unique voice.

I know all this because last October, on World Cerebral Palsy Day, I became an ambassador for the same charity. Her name was already on that page when mine was added. I won't pretend that it didn't mean something special.

Obituaries are a list of loud things. Chart positions, record sales, even Eurovision. The quiet things don't make the edit, and not because they didn't matter; they don't make the edit because they were never designed to be recognised in the first place.

There's a version of advocacy that's all noise. Placards, hashtags, arguments won on television. My whole approach has been to effect positive change by using words. It turns out one of the biggest voices Wales ever produced did her disability work the same way. The woman who could out-sing a hurricane chose, for thirty years, to whisper.

That kind of work doesn't get noticed. It's not meant to. There's just a therapy centre in Cardiff that kept its doors open, year after year, partly because a global star decided it mattered, and never made a fuss about it.

Total Eclipse of the Heart will be played forever. At weddings, at karaoke nights, at every solar eclipse until the end of time. The other thing she did never charted. It was never supposed to. The real chart-topper is that fabulous state-of-the-art therapy centre in the heart of Cardiff, and a child with cerebral palsy is getting therapy her name helped make possible. That child may never know the song, but that's alright. I don't think Bonnie was doing it to be remembered, but one thing I do know is that her legacy will never be totally eclipsed; it will shine bright endlessly, because at some point in our lives, we all need a hero.

Why is there a wheelchair on the cover?

Why is there a wheelchair on the cover

People ask me about this a lot. The cover of Max and the Magic Wish shows a child in a wheelchair, and most people who meet me haven't seen me use one for years. There's usually a pause before they ask. Sometimes they never quite get to the question, and I can see it stirring there behind their eyes.
Here's the thing. It's a true story.

Max and the Magic Wish is based on a family holiday. A touring caravan pitched at a holiday park in South Devon, and a fortune teller I met on the seafront at Dawlish Warren. As children, we did the caravan thing every year. Pool, fishing lake, beach days, and a whole lot more.

The wheelchair on the cover is from that particular chapter of my life. My hamstrings used to tighten up so fast when I walked that my parents put me in a wheelchair just so we could get around quicker and stay out longer. That was just how holidays worked for us. Nobody made a speech about it. We wanted to see more of Devon, so we used a wheelchair.

For years after that, you wouldn't see me in one. I exercised, and I still go to the gym and work out within my own limits. I got a physio when things played up, and I still do. I've recently had a chiropractic session.

Recently, I've started to notice my hamstrings begin to tighten up again more often, resulting in my body using up to three times more energy than non-disabled people more frequently these days. That's ok.

It's not a decline or a setback. It's a body doing what bodies do, and mine has always kept its own schedule.

What's changed isn't my legs. It's how long it takes me to admit when they've had enough, and I write about this in my autobiography, about my stubbornness, but most recently, I am starting to know my body’s limits a lot more often. I used to walk through the pain barrier. Push on to the car park, get to the end of the platform, and try to prove something to nobody in particular.
Now I think about the wheelchair on that cover differently. A younger me wasn't giving anything up in Devon. He was getting more day, enjoying more seafronts, more fishing lake, more fortune teller. The chair bought him time, and he spent it.
I don't know when I decided that was something to grow out of, and looking back, I now know that I should have let go of my stubborn streak a long time ago.

What people get wrong

The question underneath the question is usually this: If you CAN walk, why do you need a wheelchair?
Nobody says it like that. But it's what they mean. There's an assumption that a wheelchair is a permanent state, that you're either in one or you're not, and the picture on my book cover should match the man standing in front of them.
That's not how bodies work. Not mine, anyway. Cerebral palsy isn't a fixed disability. Some days I walk fine. Some days my hamstrings decide otherwise. The wheelchair was a tool that got us further down the seafront.

The bit people don't clock about Max

It looks like a fun adventure story, and it is. But the imagery on the front was inspired by a childhood photo of me in Devon, in a chair, having a very good week.
The fortune teller story arc is all true, too. She even handed me six lottery numbers on a scrap of paper. We lost it years ago.

This could have been a very different article if we hadn't.

I don't think of that cover as a statement about identity at any one time in my life. I think of it as a holiday photo that happened to end up on the cover of a book about disability and acceptance. But other people can't see it that way, and I've stopped trying to make them. A child in a wheelchair on a children's book cover is still a message, even when it's just a memory.

Disability Pride Isn't a Month. It's What Happens When You Stop Hiding.

I had no professional support since I left comprehensive school.

Where It Actually Started For Me

Let that sink in for a little while. Pride didn’t begin for me at some representative parade, but when someone finally told me I was allowed to ask what I needed.
When I worked at the newspaper, my colleagues were brilliant. I had more support from them than I ever got from any official system or scheme. But the building itself had a different story. I eventually got an accessible parking space, but other employees regularly used it, so I'd arrive for work and find myself parked in a non-accessible space. There were no ramps and no automatic doors. For some reason, there was no accessible toilet inside the office. The only one was in the customer reception area, which meant every time I needed the toilet, I had to go back through a security door, down a step, and through queues of clients. I was an employee who worked long hours there. Not an occasional visitor. I also couldn’t use the telephone at all, and I used to get blisters on my wrists from typing all day. That was people being decent, not a formal support package. Looking back, I should have pushed for one. I was reluctant to ask. My stubbornness got the better of me. I thought asking for adjustments would make me look like I couldn’t manage. So, I said nothing and got on with it. Then, some years later, I went self-employed, and there was nothing. No support worker, no signposting, no one sitting me down and asking what I needed. Just me, figuring it out on my own.
That's what you do when no one tells you there's another option.
After I was made redundant, I began writing Max and the Magic Wish. I’d spent most of my adult life refusing to accept my disabilities, I still do occasionally. But working on the book, seeing myself become a character, crying when I first saw the illustrations, that’s when something deeper started to ignite. I describe it in my autobiography as the start of an open-road journey toward accepting myself as a disabled adult and falling in love with who I am.
I’m still on that road. But I know where I’m going now.

Then I met Jamie McAnsh.

Jamie is a motivational speaker and adaptive athlete, the kind of person whose energy gets into the room before he does. He asked me a simple question: What support was I getting as a disabled self-employed person?
Back when he directly asked me this question on the spot. I couldn’t answer him because no one had told me what kind of support existed. I literally assumed that I wasn’t entitled to support when I transitioned to a self-publishing, self-employed author and writer, and inspirational speaker using AI-Voice.
He asked if I'd heard of the Access to Work scheme. I hadn't. Not properly anyway. When he explained it, I felt two things at once: relieved and angry. Because this scheme had been sitting there, open to people like me, and in all those years, nobody had ever mentioned it. Not once.
I'd spent years blaming myself for not being independent enough. For needing too much. For not managing things better. The truth was that I was never the problem. I wasn’t provided the appropriate support.
That's when the realisation finally sank in. During a conversation where someone finally said. This exists, and you’re allowed to ask for it.
That was only part of the journey. Learning to ask for help and learning to accept yourself aren’t the same thing. I’d spent most of my adult life refusing to accept my disabilities, and there are still days when I still do. Even after things started improving, even after I’d got support in place. The real progression came later.
Working on Max and the Magic Wish, seeing myself become a character, crying when I first saw the illustrations. I describe it in my autobiography as the start of an open road journey to accepting myself as a disabled adult and falling in love with who I am.
I’m still on that road. But I know where I’m going now.

What People Get Wrong About Disability Pride Month

The Disability Pride Flag was designed by Ann Magill. A writer with cerebral palsy.
Her original design featured bright zigzagging stripes on a black background, the zigzag representing the barriers disabled people face. But the design itself caused visual disturbance for some people in the community she was designing it for.
So, the community flagged it. She listened, went back to it, straightened the stripes, and muted the colours. Then she waived her copyright so anyone could use it.
A disabled creative makes something, gets some of it wrong, the community helps fix it, and the result belongs to everyone.

Here’s what each part of the current flag represents:
Charcoal grey background: Mourning and rage for disabled people lost to ableist violence, abuse, and neglect
Red: Physical disabilities, including mobility impairments, limb differences, and chronic pain
Pale gold: Cognitive and intellectual disabilities
Pale grey: Invisible and undiagnosed disabilities
Light blue: Psychiatric disabilities, including anxiety and depression
Green: Sensory disabilities, including blindness and deafness
The diagonal stripes aren't just a design choice. They represent cutting across the barriers that keep disabled people apart from the rest of society. Not going around them, but through them.

Why Books Like Mine Matter

I’ve had parents tell me they’ve been searching for a children’s book like Max and the Magic Wish. A book where a disabled child is just the main character. Not a lesson or a source of inspiration for everyone else. Just a child who happens to have a disability, getting on with life.
Max doesn’t wish his disability away. Disability is part of who he is, and that’s fine. That’s the whole point.
A disabled child who sees themselves in a story gets something really important from that. They see that it’s okay to be different, and when a non-disabled child who reads about a disabled character just getting on with their lives learns something that stays with them for a long time. That’s how we educate others and make a difference along the way.
Cerebral Palsy and Me is for adults. The parents who want to understand what their child might be going through. The people who’ve lived with a disability their whole lives and just want to see their experience written down honestly. It’s unfiltered and open, and it doesn’t pretend everything is straightforward. Because it isn’t always. But it is always worth it. Like i say in Cerebral Palsy and Me: Life is a rollercoaster journey.
Together, the two books cover both ends of the same journey. One for the child just starting out. One for the adult who is still navigating life. If this month is about the world working better with us in it, that starts with us being seen. In boardrooms, yes. In schools, yes. But first, in books.

Come and Find Me in Cardiff This July

On Monday, 20th July, I’m doing a book reading and signing at Cardiff Central Library, in association with Scope. Free entry, 12 noon to 4 pm.
I'll be reading excerpts from both Max and the Magic Wish and Cerebral Palsy and Me. Both books will be available to buy and get signed on the day. Cardiff Libraries will also be stocking both titles from that date onwards, so if you can't make it, they'll be there.
This one is for:

• Families with children who don't often see themselves in books
• Teachers and librarians looking for titles that actually do the work
• Anyone in the disability community who fancies an afternoon out
• People who've never picked up a book about disability and are curious

One Last Thing…

Disability Pride Month works best when it produces something authentic. A conversation, a book on a shelf, a child who reads something and thinks, that's me.
I had no professional support from the time I left primary school. For a long time, I thought that was just how it was.
It wasn't, and if nobody's told you that yet, this is me telling you. You’re never alone.

What the Cerebral Palsy Cymru Family Fun Fiesta Reminded Me

There are events you attend because you're invited to, and there are events you attend because they mean something. May’s Cerebral Palsy Cymru Family Fun Fiesta in Cardiff was very firmly in the second category, and I've been thinking about why ever since.

Gavin Clifton pictured with a young lady, Sienna who is seated in a wheelchair and holding a copy of Anya and the enchanted Wheelchair

As a proud ambassador for Cerebral Palsy Cymru, I've been connected to this incredible organisation for a while now. Every time I walk into this incredible centre, and I'm in a room with the people they support, something ignites inside of me that's hard to put into words. This particular Saturday was no different, and in some ways, it was more than I expected.

The Setup

I arrived at Cerebral Palsy Cymru's Cardiff base in Llanishen with a table full of books, a banner, and the usual mix of excitement and mild anxiety that comes with any author event. Would people come? Would the books resonate? Would I manage to have the conversations I wanted to have?

The answer to all three, I'm happy to say, was yes.

The room filled up quickly with families, children, staff, and supporters, all there for an afternoon of family fun, face painting, arts and crafts, and the famous Teddy Tombola. The atmosphere was warm, busy and completely unpretentious, which is exactly what these events should be.

The Families

I've done a lot of events over the years, but there was something about the families I met that impacted me long after I'd packed up the books and headed home.

They were warm, funny, honest, and completely real, and every conversation I had reminded me of something I think about a lot but don't always say out loud, that when you walk into a room where cerebral palsy is just part of everyday life, where nobody needs to explain themselves or justify how they communicate, something in you relaxes that you didn't even know was tense. This is when you feel a huge wave of belonging and representation engulfing you all at once.

I met little ones who were curious and full of energy, parents who were navigating the journey with grace and humour, and families who were just getting on with it together in the most brilliant way. I signed copies of Max and the Magic Wish, Anya and the Enchanted Wheelchair, Paddy the Polar Bear Teddy and Cerebral Palsy and Me, had conversations about AAC and communication, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, I remembered exactly why I started writing in the first place.

One moment in particular stopped me in my tracks, a little girl in a wheelchair holding a copy of Anya and the Enchanted Wheelchair, a book about a disabled princess whose wheelchair is simply part of who she is. The look on her face as she held it was everything. Not because it was dramatic or emotional, just because it was right. She saw herself on that cover, and that's the whole point, and exactly why I wrote that book and experiencing that moment is one I will never forget.

Why Events Like This Matter

I've lived with cerebral palsy for over 40 years, and I use AAC to communicate every single day, so I understand firsthand what it means to be in a room where you don't have to explain yourself. For many families living with cerebral palsy, that experience is rarer than it should be, and what Cerebral Palsy Cymru does so brilliantly is create spaces where that's just normal.

That's not a small thing. It’s everything.

As a disabled author and AAC user, my work, the books, the speaking, the advocacy, is built around the same idea. That disabled children deserve to see themselves in stories, that disabled voices deserve to be heard, and that acceptance isn't something you have to earn, it's something you're entitled to from the very beginning.

This event was a reminder that when the right organisations, the right families, and the right community come together, it looks exactly like that in practice.

A Note of Gratitude

To everyone who came and said hello, THANK YOU. The families who shared their stories with me, thank you. To the incredible Hopcyn, who blew me kisses when he got home, and to Hari's dad, who sent me the kindest message at 5 am before heading to Old Trafford, you both made my weekend in ways I wasn't expecting.

Cerebral Palsy Cymru, thank you for building something that matters, and for letting me be part of it. I left Cardiff feeling genuinely inspired and complete, and that's entirely down to you.

If you're a family living with cerebral palsy and you're not yet connected to Cerebral Palsy Cymru, I'd encourage you to reach out, because they're doing brilliant work and the community they've built is something really special.

You can find them at www.cerebralpalsycymru.org.