About

I’m 34 years old and the founder and main writer for ATMac, Four Walls No Limits, No Pity City, and others. I’m bedridden with severe CFS/ME or perhaps a primary mitochondrial disorder – the doctors are not sure. When I’m not working on my websites I compose music, listen to audio books, design T-shirts, do other disability advocacy, watch TV with my flatmate, and enjoy my cat.

Here are some of my comments and thoughts about the philosophy and ethos that is behind the way that I design the gear available at No Pity City, and the website itself. I hope this page helps you to understand my thinking a little better …

Disability-Friendly Merchandise Is Essential

Can you make a regular T-shirt more or less disability-friendly? In my opinion and experience: Yes!

The shirts and other apparel available at No Pity City generally have the same slogans on the back and on the front. Yes, this means that some of the jokes that depend on the back/front of the T-Shirt for their merit are lost, but if you are using a wheelchair, a trolley, or a stretcher to get around, then these shirts are pretty useless anyway because one side of you is always covered up.

As a person who’s bedridden and forced to permanently lie on my back, I am tired of finding clothes where I love the slogan, but discovered that it was only available on the back of the shirt, where nobody could ever see it except when they were dressing me!

This lead to me thinking of other circumstances, most commonly a wheelchair user, where people’s backs are partially or fully obscured. Then I started to think of yet more situations where somebody’s front could be obscured, for example a trolley user who is lying on their stomach all day, or somebody using a standing frame.

No Cows Are Sacred

Some of these shirts are meant to be read in a rather ironic tone, eg "Keep staring … I might do a trick!" and the one about "Who defines normal?". Please laugh along with me, rather than being offended that another crip would design shirts like this! I believe that nothing is so sacred it can’t be joked about at an appropriate time and place (yes, I have a very black sense of humour at times!), and that all possible jokes should be written down somewhere … in this case, that often means I write it on a shirt.

No Pity City tries to feed people’s senses of humour by providing really funny disability shirts that break down the "us" and "them" stereotyping … We really believe that if you can laugh along with somebody – even if it’s just about a corny T-shirt slogan – then you can start to be their equal, and perhaps even their friend.