Ann is on an innovative wave-length
Business woman Ann Johnson has embarked on a mission to create a fresh, new and exciting social marketing company in Shropshire. The Wave-length enterprise will endeavour to tune people in to a new way of thinking.
This passion has grown ever since Ann was told nine years ago that she would never walk again. While best efforts were to get herself onto her feet, she also wanted to show people she could still be successful in business.
She said: “Being a wheelchair user has certainly changed the way I perceive society and the way it perceives me. I have had difficulty in running my own business and have been at the receiving end of some negative attitudes to disability.”
This is what has made the remarkable woman’s thirst to change the way in which people view disability so strong. Wave-length’s quest is to show that a disability does not define a person.
The new social marketing company will encourage employers to look past an individual’s impairment and recognise them for their talents. This will be done through innovative, informative and widely accessible campaigns, events and social mediums.
Ann said: “I have often felt that the social model of disability is often seen to be an Act or a Law that needs to be applied, but it is people that change society, not pieces of paper.”
This drive of Ann’s has been strengthened due to particular findings. Realising that people with learning difficulties found it hard to get bank accounts; that often training courses were not appropriate for certain impairments; and that even employers found it hard to find sources of support when it came to reasonable adjustments and grants, just showed that change needed to be made.
Rong Radio station, a poem by Benjamin Zephaniah, was a big influence for Ann to take this step. She explained that the poem showed her that sometimes society and culture’s perception of an individual can have a huge, and sometimes negative influence on the way in which they view themselves.
Wave-length will strive to be an enterprise that people will want to be involved in, it will do its best to change people’s perception of disability from a very young age; it will encourage people to ask questions and not to fear difference; it’s vision: to disable disability.
