Will Pike

I was sat there and looking around and being like, oh, oh, okay.

This is who I'm with now.

Because my framework for disability had been spinal injury.

You sit in a disability section and it's like, it's everyone.

Yeah.

like complex disabilities, real complex disabilities, cognitive impairments.

But it was a real eye-opener for me to be there and go, wow, I'm part of this now.

When the people in the non-disability section look back with their curious eyes at the crip section, it took me time to kind of feel like I belong there.

And it took me time to kind of not feel a bit like...

I don't know what the word is, shy or just, yeah, just didn't belong.

But now I'm like, these are my brothers.

Yeah.

Like all of them.

Will goes around doing a lot of talks about his situation and about what he is now extremely passionate about in the disability space.

And as part of that, he has created what has been affectionately called the Disability Avengers, or as he calls it officially, the Disability Task Force.

quite organically through making a film myself to doing some more media around disability access I then was asked by one client you know whether or not because I talk about lived experience and how my lived experience means that I can't talk authentically about what it's like to be blind I could encourage and I can open people's eyes to the conversation but

I don't know, I'm disabled, but it's a singular strip of disability.

It's not the whole picture.

And he was like, well, what about if you had like a disability Avengers team that could provide insights across the breadth of disability?

And I was like, huh, quite a cool idea.