Talk by Elliott, person with aniridia at Conference 2025

“Identifying privilege, embracing protest and challenging power have all been integral to a journey these 25 years that I could not have imagined.

“Fighting for a seat at the table for the most marginalised has morphed into a passion, although that has only been possible through recognising my own vulnerabilities and taking part in civil resistance.

“Aniridia has shaped who I am, and I have driven that into a vision for a future that carries hope and dignity for all.”

Elliott is a social activist and political campaigner who champions the most vulnerable. From a shy kid to a vocal advocate, he fearlessly confronts hate, the political status quo, and even has an arrest under his belt (from protesting). His mission? To ensure every voice is given its place at the table.

In this talk, Elliott tells us more about his journey and campaigning.

Transcript

[James] Okay, welcome back. We are going to continue with our next presentation now, and I’m very pleased to have Elliott Lee with us.

I spotted Elliott’s various social media postings about all the wonderful things that he was getting up to in life, and knowing that he was a person who had aniridia I was very keen for him to come along and tell his story, and inspire everyone among our members. So over to you Elliott.

[Elliott] Thank you, and I should first apologise for anyone who can see my camera. It’s very dark in this room, and my blue hair blends into the blue wall behind me, so I probably look like a floating head for anyone who can see me.

But hello, my name is Elliott. In my day job I support victims of modern slavery and human trafficking, and just about every other waking hour I spend as a political activist and social justice campaigner.

Now the two different responses I get to that intro are usually either “Damn, he must be tired” or “Damn he’s pretty woke isn’t he?” The answer to both is yes, but this is the life I chose and ultimately this is the life I love.

Now, I want to tell you a bit more about my life, but first I would should say it’s a privilege to be here, although that privilege is not something I’ve always embraced.

For context, I was born in 2000 with aniridia. My development through childhood was not always the quickest. My speech and balance held me back. Emotionally I would get upset over the smallest things and would struggle to make friends at school. It was fair to say that I had my own vulnerabilities and was very much aware of them. If it wasn’t the constant shadowing at school, it was the all too regular doctor appointments.

In fact I remember at a young age, whilst playing with a Hot Wheels set, being told for the very first time that I would never be able to drive. I was probably too focused on the Hot Wheels set at the time. But a part of me started to understand that this was going to define me.

So what’s this got to do with privilege? Well, being able to build self-awareness of my vulnerabilities, similar to how as a child we could identify our strengths and weaknesses, I was able to make space for identifying my unearned advantages. Like, I could see that I was from a loving family, that I was from a safe area.

But a defining moment for me, where I had a better grasp of my privilege, I remember when I learnt of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. Now, despite having not come to terms with my sexuality yet and being so far away removed from the tragedy, I was angry, I was crying, I was upset.

But it so clearly lit a passion in me to take a fight to hate and inequality. I think we all have these moments in life, whether they be personal or external, that allow us to interrogate ourselves, to help us build on our character.

Recently, a moment I had like this was discovering I had a stem cell deficiency on my cornea. The experience allowed me to reflect on my vulnerabilities once again, see how my condition shaped me, and ultimately brought me back here feeling privileged.

It is what we do with privilege that is important. We know all too well how people exploit their privilege, but if we turn it on its head, well, we have protest.

Now don’t worry, I’m not about to encourage you to glue yourself to the roads. Only if you want to. That’s a joke, for legal purposes I’m sure.

For some people protest is different though. For some it’s holding up a sign, it could be wearing a pin, boycotting a certain brand. It could mean going to a rally expressing yourself differently. Being here today could be your protest, or for some people just existing is protest.

For me, the moment I could identify my passion in fighting hate and inequality, protest became a part of my journey. For me, protest has come in many forms – standing up to an unsupportive teacher, malicious compliance against a discriminatory employer and, more often than I like it, It comes in the form of writing a fierce complaint email demanding for improved services.

Protest is there for us to confront the status quo. It is there to give us a voice or a platform to those who otherwise could not speak up. It is part of our civil rights, which we could not have had without protest.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good protest, if you couldn’t tell. In fact, I was arrested at one in 2023. Some may question why I risked this. So did my parents. In fact, when I told them about it, they weren’t impressed, I can tell you that.

But all I needed to do was look back on how I viewed my privilege, and at how my vulnerabilities have moulded my core values, which by name are non-negotiable in life. By laying these out, we have power. And power itself seems to be a common denominator here, between privilege and protest. While it allows me to have a punchy title for this speech, it’s clear this comes hand in hand.

Anecdotally I’m reminded of some elections that I’ve been a part of recently. At university, I was part of just about every campaign society you could imagine, not to mention running about half of them.

So when the Student Union elections came up, it was almost natural for me to stand as the anti-establishment candidate, with a campaign focused heavily around accessibility and accountability, both of which built on previous months of work on the issues.

So you can imagine my surprise when my opponents made the claim that accessibility wasn’t actually an issue and accessibility had been nixed. Shocking. A completely comical suggestion that was gaslighting every disabled student at university.

Immediately my campaign went from passive to offensive. Why? Because this statement was the complete antithesis of my values. By this point in my life I had experience in social care and the charity sector, and was studying international development. Advocating and bringing value to people’s lives was part and parcel of who I was. So I was not going to sit there and accept such dangerous language.

So how did I react? Every day, every event, every hustings, every conversation, sometimes twice, I would call them out. Yes, I became that protest candidate, but if that’s what it took, then so be it.

Now sadly, I did not win that election. But something interesting happened. Because the more I spoke up, the more conversations I had, the more backroom conversations I was having, by the end of the election nearly every other candidate had an accessibility point in their manifesto. And why was this? Yes, simply because I did not shut up about it. Now that’s what you call protest.

Now, I also stood in the general election last year. I got 3,107 votes. No, it wasn’t a small turnout, I didn’t win. You probably see a common factor here. But let me get to the point. Elections are very much a platform to speak truth to power.

In this campaign, I called out my local MP for going ahead with the two-child benefit cap, I challenged a private school for not investing in to SEND education, and I was able to talk confidently about my experience with the NHS when it got attacked. Yes, another election lost, but the power that came out of the privilege to stand was just as impactful.

So I want to leave you with a quote from a politician that I highly respect. Hard to find I know. So the quote goes: “If they find us so inspirational, then why don’t they put us at the table of power?” But I want to go one step further. We know we can be inspirational.”

So make noise, bang on the door if you need to, help others to the table, check your privilege, protest, and whether you take a seat or glue yourself to the tabletop, your voice deserves to be heard, because your voice is power. Thank you.

[James] Amazing Elliott, thank you very much. I think everyone will have got from that. I think I can hear a lot of the things that you’ve done there and some of the things I’ve done as well in speaking as an accessibility professional. It’s brilliant to hear your anecdote there about getting the other candidates to talk about the same issues. That’s a massive achievement, well done. Katie.

[Katie] Yeah, I was just gonna ask Elliott how much do you think specifically having aniridia has affected the work that you do? Obviously you’re passionate about a variety of different causes, but what do you think you could specifically link to having aniridia or a visual impairment, how that influenced the work that you do?

[Elliott] Yeah I would very much say that having aniridia, with my visual impairment, it’s almost ironically opened my eyes to the injustice that is experienced throughout. I guess it kind of started through SEND education, where I spent a lot of time as a kid obviously.

But that very much pushed me towards wanting to work within social care, the charity sector. So it very much pushed me towards working with people, and I think that’s how it started. And it escalated, and it’s got to the point where I spend every waking hour infused about activism and just wanting to see how I can best work with others to improve lives.

[Katie] Do you think having a disability, and the challenges that come along with that, then makes you more open to hearing the experiences of other people that are experiencing other challenges for different reasons, that perhaps don’t affect you personally?

Because I’ve found that, for me, I can see parallels between, say, disability discrimination and something like racism, or many different things. But just that idea of being in one group that’s facing discrimination or challenges makes you more open to hearing the experience of other groups?

[Elliott] Yeah, absolutely. It reminds me of the first time I experienced homophobia at school, or when I experienced misogyny against another student or racism. You’ll sit there and you’ll see that this person is experiencing the same kind of marginalisation that you’ve been experiencing yourself. So yeah, very much there is a good degree that I think people with disabilities are able to identify that.

Everybody has different lived experiences, and I talked about privilege there. I’m not always going to fully understand the lived experience of someone who is not white. I’m never gonna fully understand the lived experiences of someone who was born female at birth. But you’re very much set up to start to understand and identify when discrimination has occurred.

[James] Any other questions? Anyone want to stick their hand up and ask a question? Any comments? Anyone want to follow in Elliott’s footsteps and stand for election or make a difference?

[Elliott] Everyone should say yes.

[Anita] I was gonna say, yeah, it’s good to actually hear that people of your… I’m much older than you Elliott, but it’s good to hear that actually you’re so forward to do those things and create a voice, not only for you but for other people.

Because it can take a lot of courage and confidence for people to put themselves out there, because they get worried about what other people will think and how they might be judged. And so it’s good that you’ve been able to do that and you’ve had that confidence and that ability and that willpower and that want to do that. And it is very inspiring to see that young people are doing that.

Because, like you, I’ve stood, I’ve been a councillor in my local area. and I’ve stood in parliamentary elections and assembly elections and things like that. And I learned a lot from that. And it is something that once you start doing those kind of things and you’ve got the right support network around you, it isn’t actually as daunting as it feels. So well done on you for doing that

[Elliott] Thank you, and thank you as well for standing yourself. And I think although I very much talk about power in the sense of standing for elections, power comes in many different forms and there’s many different ways we can use it in life. So you can be powerful in your workplace, you can be an influence over a charity if you become a trustee.

There’s many different ways you can use your power in life, other than standing in elections. Just talking up, speaking up about your experiences is, like, all we know is just so powerful.

[James] Super, thank you very much. So we’ve also started doing some work with Elliott. We are working on a safeguarding policy for an Aridia network at the moment, one of the things that Elliott is hopefully going to help us with, which will just put us on a more surer legal footing and also just benefit the way that we handle interactions. things like at conferences and these kind of events, and social media and things like that. Make sure that we’re looking out for people, and treating people as they should, and dealing with any incidents that might arise properly.

So yeah, looking forward to working with you on that and other things Elliott. Thank you very much.