Just read an article on the BBC by Rebecca Atkinson, a guest blogger on the BBC’s Ouch page.
The site focuses on disability and is usually a good read.
Rebecca asks us if it is time for the term Disabled to be given a makeover, which I believe means “be replaced”.
She’s the lady who campaigned for ToysLikeMe which encouraged manufacturers to include disabled kids in their dolly range. (fab idea and a good step towards inclusion and normalising disability)
By the end of her article she is swayed back to a neutral viewpoint by a conversation with Tom Shakespeare.
Tom is a favourite of mine. His articles and podcasts about disability are insightful and grounded.
He rightly pointed out that it isn’t the names that matter but the attitude that needs to shift.
I have to agree with him. Disability, or whatever you choose to call it is all around us.
Anything which stops us living a “normal” life is a disability. It might be slight, slowing us down or making movement a little more difficult or it could be completely debilitating, forcing us into a wheelchair or a hospital bed.
Unfortunately, society is becoming voyeuristic. The abnormal is seen as public property.
My son, Ashley, is gawped at by every passer by, some kindly, some I half expect to get their phones out and take a picture.
Evidence of society’s increasing voyeurism is the prevalent attitude or belief that disability is always visible. Folk getting out of a car in a disabled bay are chastised if they haven’t got a wheelchair or a cane or an obvious and oh-so-interesting disfigurement or missing limb.
This attitude, that a visible difference gives folk a right to stare, must end.
It places the disability above the person.
Call it what you will, be it disabled, challenged, special or (ick) a super power, when our bodies and minds are broken or malformed we are still essentially human beings. The strongest and most successful of “disabled” people often don’t see themselves as such. It does not define them. They see it as one aspect of their lives.
We should all learn this lesson.
