A Liverpool man is taking action so he can stop feeling "overlooked" when he goes out in public.
Harry Georgiou, from Woolton, is hoping to make a change for people living with disabilities through his campaign, Speak to Me. The “powerful movement” was born from his own experience - one that has seen him being ignored on several occasions throughout his life.
The initiative aims to raise awareness about instances when individuals with disabilities are not directly spoken to - something the youth advisor said happens more than expected.
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The 22-year-old co-production assistant for DFN Project SEARCH told the ECHO: “When I go out for dinner, servers sometimes don't want to speak to me. They look straight past me, even when I try to communicate directly with them. When they do listen they still respond to my parents or my carers. The same for when I go to doctor’s appointments. I am a human being at the end of the day. It is okay to speak to me.”
Harry has complex medical lifelong disabilities and learning disabilities. He also has a visual impairment and autism. The activist’s parents were told he wouldn’t be able to walk, talk or communicate “in any way whatsoever”.
The campaigner said: “Now, I do everything they thought I wouldn’t be able to. I prove people wrong every day and it's a great joy to me. It is about showing others that I am still a person - whether I have disabilities or not. I shouldn’t just be cut off straight away.
“Throughout all my life people have said ‘no, I can’t achieve that and I can’t achieve this’ because of my disabilities. But, I’ve always been the type of person to prove others wrong and show them that I can do it - with the right support.
“But when people were telling me ‘no’, it was always directed at my parents. It was never said to me and this angered me. It just showed how much they thought I wouldn’t be able to achieve by not even talking to me.”
Harry said the right support looks different for everyone but for him, it is made up of a job coach who is with him five days a week, carers who take him out into his local community, and his family network who help him with his reading and writing.
The 22-year-old also explained how when people with disabilities aren’t spoken to, but rather their parents or carers, it can leave them, including himself, feeling "overlooked and disregarded". He said like “Their voice and opinions do not matter”.
The Speak To Me campaign is hoping to stop these types of incidents moving forward and remind people that “we are all human”.
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