According to the United Nations, approximately 83 million people in China are estimated to have a disability.

The China Disabled Persons’ Federation (CDPF) was established in 1988; The ‘Laws on the Protection of Persons with Disabilities’, introduced in 1990, offer strong and wide-ranging protection of the civil rights of the disabled, guaranteeing employment, education, welfare, and access.

But despite the high concerns of the law, it’s still a long way to go to improve disabled living condition in China. Take a famous tourist city Hangzhou, which is the provincial capital of Zhejiang for example. There is a disabled accessibility requirement for new buildings but no requirement for renovation of older buildings. Thus, it is still a challenge for people in wheelchairs to access most of the restaurants. Until 2017, ten thousand old buildings have been decorated for disabled people to live conveniently in Zhejiang province.

There are also special education schools in Hangzhou, but the number of these schools is so limited that parents find it a challenge to find one that fits the need of a disabled child. In addition, once a special education school is chosen, many students have to move away from their families. Because of this, these children are isolated from the general population, often even from their own families. In fact, it’s not good for their growth. According to the News, 16 special education schools and 168 special facilities have been built in Jiangsu to ease the pressure. After their vocational course training, more than half of them have found suitable jobs to support themselves.

Due to a series of constructive administrative and legislative actions, in combination with the work of disability organizations, the overall living conditions and social status of people with disabilities in China have improved to a great degree compared to thirty years ago.

However, compared with adequate welfare support in western countries, disabled in China still face great challenge to live a better life. We hope that in the near future, special attention should be paid to the disabled people so that they could have more confidence to create their new life.

Most young children and students with additional needs attend mainstream nurseries, schools, colleges and universities, but there are also special school options available for them, and that’s the same in China. In UK, classes in mainstream schools may be supported by teaching assistants for part or all of the day. Most support staff have been trained in specific language interventions. In China, there are no assistant teachers in the classrooms in mainstream schools, but all the teachers would care more for the children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

There is extra support available to help children with (SEND) access the same opportunities as other children and prepare for school. Children and young people with SEND can get a Compass Card which gives them discounts and special offers on a huge range of leisure activities and events. The Department for Education has committed an extra £500,000 over the next three years for children and young people with SEND in Brighton and Hove.

There are also some special school in Brighton and Hove such as Downs View School, Hill Park School, Homewood College and Pupil Referral Units. Class sizes vary but children are taught in small groups with a high level of support from teaching assistants. As well as classrooms, the school may have a food technology room, library, hydrotherapy pool, sound and light studio, soft room, as well as an adventure playground and extensive playing fields outside. The students take part in a diverse range of extra-curricular activities which includes visiting to the cinema, ten pin bowling and outdoor pursuits and cultural activities. As for support and special schools, they are quite similar with China.

Her son studies in a primary school in Eastbourne and he has some difficulties with his handwriting because he can’t hold his pen properly. Therefore, the parent needs to communicate with the school about the boy’s disabilities proactively so that the school can help him with the problem. The schools react rather than initiate in UK, and that’s different in China. In China, it is the duty of schools to communicate with the parents  to know more about the disabled children so as to react appropriately.

We interviewed people with different careers about the welfare for disabilities in UK, from which we can find some differences from China, there is a variety of welfare in many aspects indeed.  

Facility support on campus

The university in UK makes sensible adjustments to provide access for both student and staff with disabilities. Within common sense, there are certain exceptions which are made in both directions. For example, wheelchair uses are not allowed at the top of the library because it won’t be possible for anyone’s access to the evacuation. This is permitted under the UK laws because the safety trumps the right of access. Obviously, we try to make things available and responsible for the people with disabilities. If, for example, there are several wheel chair staff teaching, the timetabling team try to ensure they put wheelchair users in the places which they can access. This does get tricky at times particularly with the student numbers and the number of teaching spaces. But we can usually find a way of accommodating the requirement for staff and students. Comparing with China, we do have a number of facilities for disabilities in public areas. But a large quantity of them are not in real use. Some are because of the occupation of other stuffs, such as cars and shops; and some are because of people’s ignorance. Nevertheless, there aren’t so many on campus.

Allowance for disabilities

The British government provides benefits and income for people with various mental and physical disabilities if they cannot find possible jobs. While in China, which is still a developing country, even though the government is always sparing its effort to support disabilities, still plenty of them cannot get the support because of the large population.

Financial support

From the report online, disabilities in UK can get financial support and work-related support through Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)

They’ll normally get the assessment rate for 13 weeks after their claim. This will be:

    Up to £57.90 a week if you’re aged under 25

·         up to £73.10 a week if you’re aged 25 or over

After that, if they’re entitled to ESA, they’ll be placed in one of 2 groups and will receive:

·         up to £73.10 a week if you’re in the work-related activity group

·         up to £110.75 a week if you’re in the support group

Financial support for older people

They could get £57.30 or £85.60 a week to help with personal support if they’re both:

·         physically or mentally disabled

·         aged 65 or over

The situation is quite similar in China, once the disabled people without restricted age get the disability certificate, they’ll get a certain amount of money. However, it is not given weekly necessarily. What’s more, it takes a long time to get the certificate because of complex procedures.

Britain is one of the birthplaces of the disability rights movement. Its legislation on disability rights such as barrier-free has been quite perfect. The law has long stipulated that all buildings must be barrier-free, including being able to allow wheelchair access. For the first time, UK law covered barrier-free facilities was the chronic diseases and disability act of 1970, which for the first time allowed disabled people equal access to new public buildings and places to study and work. The law also strengthens the role of local governments in adapting to the family, once emphasizing social care. For the first time, the act also required builders to provide disabled people with access to buildings and inside them, as well as special instructions for parking or access to toilets. The persons with disabilities act of 1979 required the local planning bureau, when approving planning permission, to remind developers of the relevant provisions of the 1970 merger and the relevant design guidance, and to encourage planners to negotiate with applicants on the provision of access and facilities for persons with disabilities.

So nowadays in the UK, Road junctions are generally sloped, with warning blind lanes. Barrier-free buses are popular in cities. 90% of buses in Brighton are barrier-free and low-riding buses equipped with lift and wheelchair.

Generally, there is a lifting platform in the train entrance and exit station. The voice prompt and video prompt in the station work for the blind and the hearing-impaired at the same time. Barrier-free facilities is also very science and technology, in order to satisfy the disorder to the desires of the family friend talking.

Specially designed for disabled people, the elevator is wider, and the button of the elevator is very low, can be touched with a hand, very convenient. In some of the supermarkets, shopping trolleys with wheelchairs are provided for those disabled people.

Brighton has imposed fines ranging from 30 to 60 pounds for the use of disabled parking Spaces in reference to parking violations.

At school. It is very convenient for disabled people who sit in wheelchairs to get in or out different places, such as the toilets, the computer pools, the Students Centre and the main doors of every building. As for the blind people, there are some Braille Alphabets on the middle of the door of the toilets, in order to remind them.

Welcome to our blog.

This blog is set up by our group: Lydia , Ashley, Mitty, Jocelyn and Flora. All of us are the teachers from China and we are studying linguistics in Brighton University.

During the stay here, we notice there are lots of facilities available to the disabled people and  we want to find more about the life of the disabled people in Britain. So we are going to do some research and surveys on the disabled people from the following three aspects: facilities, welfare support and education. At the same time, we are going to make a comparison between living condition of the disabled people in Brighton and Hangzhou (a big city in China).

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