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Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Adapt The World podcast. This is the place where we'll be finding out the three things you'd like to change about the world to make it more adaptable for disabled people. For those of you who may not know me, I'm Katie from Radio 1's Life Hacks. And today I'm joined by my lovely co-host India. In just a minute, we're going to be joined by another great guest. But first let's find out more about you India for people who might not know you…

India: Hey everyone, I'm India and you may have hopefully came across my Tik Tok before. I have a rare congenital hand defect that I was born with called Symbrachydactyly. I make TikToks to encourage disability normalisation through humour and representation, which is so, so important. And joining us on the show today is a fellow TikToker. He is absolutely hilarious. It's Jacob Vickers, he has muscular dystrophy, but he doesn't have that stop him in any shape or form.

Katie: Hello Jacob.Ìý

Jacob: Hello, Nice. Nice to meet you.Ìý

Katie: Nice to meet you too. Thank you so much for joining us today. Can you start by telling us why you started making your tiktok?

Jacob: I started Tik Tok during Lockdown 2020 and it was just a way to make people feel less alone. And so disabled people can see another person online because, I never had that growing up. So like growing up all, all I had was Stephen Hawking, I had, I think his name was like Billy Ricky or whatever his name is on Vine. That was like the Tik TokÌý before Tik Tok. And then you had the undateables as well. And that's, basically all the disabled representation I had online. So since 2020, yeah, I've just been trying to make funny videos, make people feel better about themselves and just try to make people laugh really.

India: I like watching funny videos on tiktok and I love making them as well myself. So for anybody listening, what kind of videos would you have made that they might have seen or anything? Just to kind of give us an idea of what type of funny videos we can see if we go onto your page.

Jacob: So I try to make original content, so a lot of them are stitches. And for people who don't know what stitches are, they're like when you add on to the end of another video, you have the first 5 seconds of an original video and then you add your little flair you'd say on the end of the video.

Katie: Like your take on it sort of thing.

Jacob: Yeah my biggest one was, it's got something like 10 million views on it. And it's me stitching a guy saying, he said, the songs you manifest out loud, you manifest. And I end up singing, ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ by Bob Marley and ‘Walk It Like I Talk It’ by, what's his name, I don't remember his name…

Katie: I don’t even know, but we got, we get it. That it is very good, very funny. Yeah. Yeah, stitches are great, aren't they? Because you can just kind of have your own like of like sarcastic take or whatever over on what someone else has posted. And so there often the funniest videos in tiktok aren't they are when people love Stitch stuff like that.

India: Yeah, I absolutely love the type of humour that lastly, like we're kind of like, what do you call it, twin flames type of thing because I know for a fact the type of videos that you're talking about, I can just picture it in my head and I love, I live for those types of videos. They are the types of videos that I try and make as well. And I just feel like there's something about kind of, I don't know if you feel like this, but I feel like whenever you have a disability or something that kind of sets you apart from people, you have this really intense dark humour sometimes, it's yeah, it's just…Ìý

Jacob: It's just intense dark humour. Yes. It's just like whenever I try and make videos, it's always trying to like push the boundaries of what I can get away with. And it, and with dark humour, no one can, when you're disabled and making dark disabled jokes, you just, you kind of pushing the boundaries. And, and I guess that's why a lot of, lot of videos do block because they're quite controversial and shock factor.Ìý

Katie: And what that is what comedy is, isn't it? It's people taking the mick out of their own sort of situation. And that's why it works so well. Well, from the, from the comedy onto the, the serious stuff now, because we're going to change the world. What are the three things that you would do if you were to rebuild the world tomorrow and make it a better place for disabled people? Jacob, what’s your 1st one?

Jacob: My first pet peeve is filling in forms, so if you're able bodied, you fill in a lot of forms anyway, but once you're disabled, you're filling in forms all the time. Literally all the time.

Katie: Really, see that. See, this is something I didn't know. Why is there so much bloomin’ admin?

Jacob: Like, it's so bizarre, like the most bizarre time that I've had to fill in a form is on a night out.

Katie: What!

India: Seriously?

Jacob: Yeah, yeahÌý

Katie: To like what, get into a club?

Jacob: Yeah, this was to get into a, yeah, casino with my mates.

Katie: No!

India: What was the form asking you? Like, what were they telling you you needed to do to go in?

Jacob: I was out with all my friends on his 21st birthday, and we're all pretty drunk at this point. So we went into a casino. First thing is, it's downstairs. So we get a whole entire hike round the building into the back entrance. You go down in one lift, service lift, go out that lift, into another lift, down that lift. And then as we got into reception, they pulled out all these forms. I was like, Oh, okay.Ìý And they're like, oh you're gonna have to sign all these before you go in. So I said to all my mates, these are all my able-body mates. You go in and I'll sort this out. So they went in, they're, they're on the roulette table. And I'm outside in the reception area doing an essay on fire safety.

Katie: Oh, that's awful.Ìý

India: It's just, you can see that there, they're trying to do something, but it's almost like completely setting you back.

Katie: And also fire safety is pretty important whoever you are.

Jacob: It's basically to say like, if you get caught in a fire, we're not your responsibility.Ìý

Katie: Right. It's like a risk assessment. I suppose them them sort of having their own backs in a way.Ìý

Jacob: Oh yeah. And when, when you're drunk like that, I don't want to be filling in like some GCSE like, essay.

Katie: No…

India: Well, I know, I can barely write my name myself sometimes when I go on a night out. So it's a lot to kind of ask, so it seems kind of like very selfish reasons. They're not getting you to fill out these forms that help you. It doesn't really come across that way. It does seem like they are just kind of, it's to cover their own backs.Ìý

Katie: Yeah.

India: Like we don't take responsibility for you being on the property and if anything happens, it's not our fault. Which seems completely backward.

Katie: Yeah, there should just be a fire safety plan in place that if there was a fire, they could get everyone out, whether disabled or not.

India: Yeah.Ìý

Katie: Yeah, you don't have to fill in a form.Ìý

Jacob: It should be universal. Yeah.Ìý

Katie: It should be that, you know, there's ways of getting everybody out the building. Not a sign here. Sign your life away.

Katie: So there we go. Less forms. A world with less forms is something we all want. What is the second thing that you would change Jacob?

Jacob: So the second thing I would like to change is sort of the disabled representation in the media. Basically, I don't see an awful lot of disabled people in sport. A lot of people, they've been talking to me recently about wheelchair rugby. That's been going on recently. And people speak to you like, if, you know, like you're part of the sport, they see you're in a wheelchair, they think, Oh, you must be doing this sport. I'm like, no, I don't want to do wheelchair rugby. It looks, looks really rough.

Katie: It looks brutal, doesn't it?Ìý

Jacob: Yeah brutal.

Katie: I watched a bit of it and I was like, wow this rugby is, pretty brutal sport, isn't it? Yeah, not for me.

Jacob: Yeah, I do play, so I play wheel, power wheelchair football. And yeah, a lot of these, like smaller sports, they're just not shown on telly.

India: I suppose it's also kind of even, like you know when you're talking about it kind of, on a smaller scale, like you don't necessarily have to be erm doing like this huge sport in the paralympics, for example, like even just going and doing the football and stuff. Like I feel like that's very hard, even if you wanted to go, to find somewhere near you to do. And then to have it actually promoted so that other people knew about it being done and then celebrated about the people who are doing it successfully. I think it's still something that's very underneath. It's not anywhere near as big as the mainstream types of sports.

Jacob: Yeah, like football is earning millions every year. And disabled sport is just so underfunded, so it's all charity led.

Katie: So it's kind of like, you know, we have the Paralympics. It's like, woohoo, the Paralympics. And there's a lot of fuss over disabled sport at that time. But actually what you want is more just day-to-day representation and those sports being shown on TV, more day to day as, you know, sports for people who aren't disabled are, you know, it's just all year round, isn't it? Whereas it feels like we just go, no, the Paralympics and then and then it's kind of forgotten about for a bit.

India: Yeah.

Jacob: yeah. And even the representation that is shown on TV is usually like, sort of in a feeling sorry for that person kind of light, I guess, in a lot of TV programs.

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Katie: Or maybe like a wow, can you believe they can do this?

Jacob: It's like a superhuman kind of thing. Yeah. I didn't really like how everyone was calling the Paralympics, like super humans, but they're just…Ìý

India: They're just living their reality. Yeah. Just looks slightly different from yours type thing.

Jacob: Yeah, yeah.

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Katie: You don't want to be patronised. You want it to be like, yeah, I'm just playing sport. Yeah, I get it. Jacob, what is the third thing you change about the world?

Jacob: Young people having access to housing, it's hard to get a house as a young person anyway, let alone being disabled is, is so difficult. Like even just to try and rent a place, but then find a place that is rentable and wheelchair accessible is near impossible to find. And let alone because there's so many people wanting to rent places. It's hard to even get that place as a disabled person. Like I've been like, I've been on the council, I was on the council list for, for housing for eight years now, I think. And it's just so difficult. Like I saw a fact the other day that the rate they're building like new buildings, accessible housing for wheelchair users, was something like at the rate they're building is a 47 year wait or something.

Katie: What?

Jacob: Yeah, that’s serious. Yeah.

Katie: What?

India: Surely not…

Katie: Like everyone will be dead by the time they get a house. You can look forward to that in your retirement can’t you, nice house for your retirement.

India: Yeah, even if you start when you're 18, how many years would that be when you're at a final age of getting your house? Like that's insane.

Jacob: But yeah, the thing is they save all these accessible housing for 55 plus.Ìý

Katie: Right, yeah.

Jacob: And it's like, do you turn 55 and then suddenly, Oh, I'm, I'm disabled.

Katie: Definitely not.

Jacob: No, there's so many young people out there that are wanting to live their life and have jobs and get somewhere. It's just so difficult to even get a place. So at the moment, I've managed to have two council housing properties. So the 1st one I got was I was on the list for four years. Obviously it changed, it was like a number system before. And then they changed it to a band system, because there were no properties on the system. They took me off the system because I couldn't find any accessible properties that were listed. So they took me off, didn't realise that they did take me off, had to reapply again, and they'll put me in the medium priority band. But at this point I was struggling to get out of my parents' house. Thing was that I had a stair lift. And they saw that as, yep, that's accessible. But they didn't realise I was falling off the stair lift, struggling to go to the toilet. I was sleeping on the sofa downstairs, because my stairlift would break down. And I didn't get funded for this stairlift. I had to pay out of my own money to basically build out scraps. And then I got to the point where I was struggling to even like to make it out the property.Ìý

I had no care at this point. And the thing is, I had no care. And my ex girlfriend and her family kind of took me in at the time because I was on the verge of homelessness. And yeah, they took me in, I think it's about four months. And at the time I was, I was applying on one council list, but then I applied on the council list that the area that she lived in, which probably your not supposed to do but even applying on that council list, they were saying that it was a two year wait. Like they didn't want me on the list because I wasn't from the area. They said, Oh, you're not allowed on the list.Ìý

And yeah. They said, Oh, it's a two year wait. And there's so many people on the list. I spoke to the local councillor. Funny thing is, I used to drink down the same, we used to go down the same pub together. So I started to know the local councillor. So he went down to the office and had a word with them. And I managed to get a since applying for that property and getting the property. I had it in three weeks, literally three I was so quick. I had a brand new one bed bungalow in three weeks. Where the other council list I was on. It took me two months just to even get put on the council list.

India: So do you think it was him, that kind of,

Katie: Oh… right,

Jacob: It’s not who you know, rather than the systems not bad. It’s who you know then?Ìý

Katie: Yeah.Ìý

Jacob: What you know, and it's just constantly, have to constantly battle and fight with councils and all the authorities.

Katie: Well, it certainly sounds like that is a big problem, Jacob, and, and not good enough, but thank you so much for enlightening us today. I feel like you've brought to my attention three things that I mean, especially your first point and your last point there, I had no idea about. I had no idea that it was so difficult for young disabled people to get a house. And I had no idea about all the admin. So you've really, taught us a lot today. Thank you so much for being so honest and sharing your thoughts.

India: Thank you.Ìý

Jacob: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me.