PACE blogger, journalist, disability rights campaigner.

I’m Sarah Ismail. I’m 27. I’ve lived in London for most of my life – I love the city and am proud to call it home.

I have Cerebral Palsy, which for me just means some difficulty walking. But I have good speech and as my friends will tell you, hardly shut up!

I used to be a member of PACE and have always thought they do very good work. I will always support them in any way I can, which is why I’m very pleased to be one of their bloggers.

I’ve always liked reading and writing and have always wanted to write a best-selling book. I’m working on one at the moment. It’s not as easy to write good books as it looks when you’re reading good books, but I hope it will be worth it in the end.

So, how did my love of reading and writing start, and how did I get to be who I am today?

I had a mainstream education from the age of 5, after spending a very short time at a special school, where I made lifelong friends and learnt, well, not very much. Not that I cared at the time- back then I loved that school.

Mainstream school wasn’t easy. It took me a very long time to make what I could call friends, and a very short time to lose touch with them. That was out of the classroom.

In the classroom, there wasn’t much I could do without support. But reading books was one of the few things that I found easy. Spelling was another, so writing seemed like a natural thing to do.

After passing GCSEs and A Levels, which took a lot of hard work and Learning Support but for me, was worth every minute, I went on to university and did English Literature and Creative Writing.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve realised that I want to help other disabled people by sharing my own experiences. I hope hearing about the way that I have done things will help others to see that they are not alone, and that they can do anything they find interesting, with or without a disability.

So, when I left university, I started writing about disability, my own experiences and current disability issues. Now, I run my own website, called Same Difference, about all disabilities and all disability issues. Through the site, I campaign for disability rights and improvements in our lives. I think I might have become just a little bit famous on Twitter!

But it’s not all boring. I also cover fun things, like movies and TV programmes about disability, and disabled characters in soaps (not that there are enough of them), and, of course, disability sport.

So, I will admit that having a disability has affected the dreams that I have been able to have in life, but stopped me achieving them? I’ll never let that happen.