Lara's quest for crip chic

Asked to open Naidex South-East, the big disability trade show at London's ExCel centre, with her mum, Debbie Moore, founder of Pineapple Dance Studios, Lara Masters used the opportunity of having an audience of OTs, local authority employees and disabled people to explore whether having a disability is made harder psychologically when the equipment you have to use makes your home environment alienating and hospital-like and makes you feel like a medical case

Any disabled person knows that there are lots of aids available for us – shower-chairs, commodes, delightfully Dalek-esque “grabbers”; all very useful – but are there products that prioritise form as well as function? Do manufacturers for the disabled market recognise their customers as the style hounds that many of us disabled folks are? My style mission this month was to explore Naidex and find out.

I can sniff out a classy piece of kit from a hundred paces/wheel revolutions and I wended my way around the multitude of wet-room options and bum-blitzing bidets (too clunky and perfunctorily-designed to be buffing my behind) , and I homed in on anything that wasn’t beige, grey or “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” chic.

Things got off to a surprising start when a cool-looking black guy handed me a flyer for a dating website for disabled people; FreeMyAbility.com. I said I had a boyfriend thank you, and he responded: “It’s for couples too.”

Well, I thought, of course a dating site is “for couples” – for one to become two – but then I realised he was actually referring to, erm, two becoming three, or four…or, gulp, more.

Really?! There’s a full-on disabled swinging scene?! How jolly modern! And as I’m all about equality and inclusivity I took the leaflet simply to show solidarity but did suddenly rather feel like a little sit down, metaphorically speaking.

Fortuitously, I found a stall of swanky looking automated recline-to-stand chairs (camelotfurniture.co.uk) which are made-to-measure and come in a variety of finishes including sexy, matt black leather – which would fit right in with my sitting room decor – a vast improvement on the burgundy corduroy monstrosities I’ve often seen advertised. There were also some funky-looking, beanbag seats from specialisedorthoticservices.co.uk (SOS) called ‘P’ Pods (although they don’t have a commode function!) With neon-coloured, supportive inserts, disabled types, especially kids and teenagers, can chill with their homiez without ruining their rep by ending up sprawled on the floor. SOS also make customised, postural seating for wheelchairs and leisure-chairs with an impressive amount of design and colour choice.

Another fun and functional find was the heatinaclick.com stand – hot, squishy hand-warmers shaped as hearts, teddies, pandas etc and larger pouches for feet, back, neck, bum... I have circulation problems so bought the lot in various corset-matching hues. These hotties would be most welcome if you were halfway up a mountain on a skiing holiday with the German girls at freizeit-pso.com who were there advertising all-accessible Alpine adventures. I’m more of an après-ski kinda gal but it’s good to know I could bomb down a snow-covered mountainside if the fancy should ever take me. Which it won’t.

For a host of accessible activities I noted website disabledgo.com and have since checked it out. You can look for jobs there too but it might need a bit more time to get interesting, as at the moment the job vacancies in London are mainly for positions in Wandsworth council!

Overall, it has to be said that Naidex wasn’t an overwhelming avalanche of sparkling stylish nuggets for me to share with my style section readers but it was not total tumbleweed.

Some of the OTs and service users told me that better looking equipment was starting to filter into some areas of the UK and being offered to disabled people in a few boroughs. But it was children’s charity meru.org.uk whom I came across at Naidex that I felt really understood and epitomised the idea that social barriers can be dissolved and physical restrictions made easier through the clever use of aesthetics.

MERU specialise in custom-making cool-looking, innovative equipment for young disabled people and I’m certainly ordering one of their black skulls with diamante eyes to use as my wheelchair joystick.

It’s time more disability-focused businesses got on board with the fact that disabled people are no different to able-bodied consumers and when products we depend upon are designed to look good they also make us feel good. Simples.