Letter: Cost of disability

Cost of disability

VIRTUALLY all the discussion of disability, whether by official spokesman or by unofficial commentators, misses the point. What most of us need is not a higher income, whether from allowances or from salaries, but a better opportunity to lead a normal life.

For example, my disability living allowance doesn't help me to do my job, because the obstacles are not financial but physical. It is difficult and often impossible for me to use public streets and public transport, buildings and offices, and so on, because they have little or no wheelchair access.

Despite the inevitable cries of protest from pressure groups and political sects, the best way forward would be a combination of radical reform of the clumsy system of benefits, so that they would be based on genuine need and subject to reasonable tax, and of a real programme of providing a decent environment to live and work in.

NICOLAS WALTER

London N1