On Monday I went to see Mark the Disability Services Manager so that he could ring Kingston Council and give them a thorough LARTing for the incredibly rude letter they sent me. The first thing we ascertained was that the person who'd signed the letter had not, in fact, read it – she sounded somewhat dismayed when I read the letter out to her. She passed us on to the colleague who had actually written it, who turned out to be possibly the most clueless about disability individual I have encountered in a while. Her opening gambit was “Lots of people have allergies”, thus revealing that she had not, in fact, READ my form or doctor's letter properly. Duh.

So Mark launched his TALK attack, which as I have previously noted rivals only my mother for sheer ability to speak non-stop without drawing breath or letting the enemy get a word in edgeways. (If real life was indeed an RPG, then the TALK attack would make the enemy miss 3 turns, get confused and possibly fall asleep.) When she asked what I did want in the way of support, he started saying “Well, it is not up to me as the Disability Services Manager or for the student herself to decide what she needs, that is the job of the independent Access Centre, but in cases of students with similar disabilities they have required...” + $long_list. Honestly, I think he talked for 6 minutes continuously without pausing to breathe. Finally, having beaten her into a grudging state of “I'll think about it and call you back”, he told her “By the way, I'm blind, so it might take me a bit longer to access the documents than a sighted person”. And you could hear the silence at the other end as she realised she had unbeknowingly been talking to a highly intelligent and articulate disabled person all that time, without putting on her special “talking to the disabilified” voice, and her brain exploded.

On Tuesday the woman's manager phoned Mark back and was slightly apologetic – apparently once the idiot had referred my case to her, she agreed to the funding straight away. So I have an appointment at an Access Centre on 2nd December. I shall not be terribly excited until I have the letter from the council confirming the funding in my hand, but it's a good start.

Tags: college, disability
Current Mood: okay