Hello! I promise you I haven’t disappeared!
I have had some time off but I’ve been quite busy freelancing, promoting my book, completing a teaching course, and teaching. I still haven’t mastered the whole keeping social media up to date if I’m busy when I’ve done something with work. I’ve also been quite ill this year and when I’ve done something worthy of a post I have had very little energy to post, and before I know it it’s been too long…
I know, I know I should be updating my platforms with this but I just haven’t mastered it yet! Margaret and I are working closely on providing some more content though so watch this space… She says right before she probably disappears for another month or so until she hands her final uni coursework in!
Anyway, today I wanted to tell you more about the book now that it’s out!! It’s been over a month now and I still sometimes catch myself saying pre-order. After it just being this document on my computer for so long it feels surreal it’s out into the world. I’m still here to do some more promoting though – because why not..?
No the reason I wanted to do this post was to explain how accessible the book is to a wide variety of audiences.
Yes, of course, my book is quite occupational therapy heavy and yes there are parts of the book that have a few references and a bit more of an academic format but the tone of my book is far from academic. Of course, the book is slightly more specific to my professional field but when I wrote the book I wanted it to be accessible for all. So it’s been written this way – you don’t need to be an occupational therapist or any healthcare professional for that matter to understand it. In essence, just think of the book as 12 blogs!
Don’t get me wrong this was super hard and would have not have been as accessible if it wasn’t for my good friend and chief editor Georgina who isn’t a healthcare professional so could easily point something out if it didn’t make sense. Some of the more occupational therapy specific chapters needed long edits one chapter took a whole weekend where I stayed at Georgina’s and I still changed this a lot when I got occupational therapy colleagues to look at it! Of course I had Georgina look over is again after this for accessibility.
Yet, I was very passionate about making the book accessible to all as my blog is (I hope) so why shouldn’t my book be? Also this is a book designed to start some conversations about change, in which can’t be done if it’s written in jargon thats only understandable to some. Within the first section I talk about my diagnosis so I had to make this accessible to those new to the world of disability and who won’t just automatically know what I mean when I throw in acronyms such as EHCP (Educational Health & Care Plan).
Over the next few months, I will be breaking down the book more with the question about my wide variety of audience being a predominant one.
Why does everyone need to know about ableism in healthcare?
Let’s start with children’s services including families, health professionals, teachers, social workers and many more in some cases… I think it’s pretty important to make this accessible for all, don’t you?
For now, I just wanted to briefly get my passion across and my reason for this not being so occupational therapy specific (I’m sure I’ll get this across more). I hope you’re enjoying reading, let me know your thoughts and any questions you’d like me to answer in a future blog!
Georgia x
