Disability Topics
Disability Articles of Interest
Articles on topics concerning People with Disabilities, our lives and activities.
One of the facts Disability Writer will always present is the forms of disabilities people experience are merely a part of who we are as a person. As people with disabilities we recognize this basic fact; nondisabled persons in society sometimes don’t. We do not define ourselves by the forms of disabilities we have. Instead, we recognize that we are in no way responsible for these disabilities, taking responsibility for our own success and happiness. The disabilities we experience are just an aspect of who we are as people.
People who experience forms of disabilities in society are people who have a range of aspects to who they are. The disabilities that are also a part of their lives do not comprise the entirety of who they are as a person; this is a crucial point to remember. Medical, charity, and pity models of disability which have been prevalent in societies around the world have failed to recognize the range of humanity, skills, and abilities every person with a disability has, something that has led to the exclusion of people with disabilities in many instances.
Dear House Majority Leader,
The purpose of this letter is to raise your awareness of a dangerous situation that is costing lives and causing needless suffering among patients and residents of persons in Nursing Homes, In-Home care situations, and Hospitals in our State.
We are all aware that there is a Health Care Crisis in America today, but are we aware of the crisis among the very base of our providers, the Nurses and Nursing Assistants who are the, “hands-on,” caregivers to the patients in our Nation? Apparently not – we continue to staff our medical facilities at dangerously low levels, based on a system which places Nurses and Nursing Assistant on the floors of Hospitals and Long-Term Care facilities in ratio to the numbers of patients instead of by patient needs, or their, “acuity.”
Defining disability can be difficult, and I have chosen to pursue the views of people like Marta Russell and Paul Longmore in an attempt to better understand a definition of disability. The Americans with Disabilities Act has also provided one take on what disability is, and I have used it to aid me in my own understanding of disability. In this section, however, I chose to start with some thoughts from Joseph Shapiro, a person without what might be considered a disability, concerning what disability might be.
Understanding how design, systems and persons with disabilities might have something to do with each other is a challenge. I went to Bela Banathy for some understanding of what design is, and to Draper Kauffman Jr. for an understanding of what a system is. I pursued the Whole Systems Design program at Antioch University. Along the way, I have found that I have something to say about systems theory and design in relation to disability.
Disability Culture is a continuously changing, wonderfully entrancing part of understanding who persons with disabilities are. To understand Disability Culture, I reached for some understanding of the subject from the likes of Barbara McKee, Stephen Brown and Cheryl Marie Wade. In this section, I respond to each of these people and their statements on Disability Culture, I also present my own writings on Disability Culture.
Disability myths may change or stagnate over time. The rate of change from what are often negative myths to ones that portray people who have disabilities in a sense that is seen as more positive by them is often slow, but not always. In speaking about a woman named Deborah who has Schizophrenia, Rollo May states that, "…myths are necessary ways of bridging the gap between our biological and our personal lives….
As I have pursued the Whole Systems Design degree, I have found myself examining my sense of spirituality. Spirituality means different things to different people. I have found that efforts to relate myself and what I do in nature to be a spiritual activity. I will present that spirituality through a comparison between some Taoist thought and reflections on people with disabilities.
For many persons with disabilities, the hardships that many nondisabled Americans are feeling today is an everyday, all the time experience that they would gladly accept in exchange for what they live in now. Even with the current unemployment experienced by nondisabled persons today, they are still far more employed than persons with disabilities. In this section of my paper I present examples of corporate discrimination and oppression concerning persons with disabilities and employment.
Getting to work means more than jumping the "A" train for persons with disabilities. Often, persons with disabilities cannot even get into buildings to apply for work. The idea of inclusive building design points out that there are some problems with designing a truly accessible building, and that you can't make "special" access – it creates social divisions. There are some barriers of inclusion in building inclusively, and there is no such thing as a generic building.
Part of understanding persons with disabilities is knowing who is not to be considered disabled. Marta Russell has something to say about the word, "normal," and the term, "nondisabled," and I have a greater understanding of those words because of her. The struggle between nondisabled persons and persons with disabilities, for understanding of disability, is partly reflected through events like the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon. In this section I present a statement by Mr. Lewis, and responses from disability culture leaders.
Personal Mastery is a process of living that involves some specific points. Creative tension, emotional tension, conflict, vision, honesty, openness, shared vision, and complexity are all parts of personal mastery. I approach the parts of personal mastery in relation to persons with disabilities in this section of my paper. While reading about personal mastery, I found myself thinking, "this could really be a tool for persons with disabilities."
The determination of a rating in regards to a person’s level of disability on the parts of organizations in America is something that can be considered necessary, or it can be considered discriminatory; depending upon your particular perspective. One of the most noticeable rating systems in relation to disability in our nation is the Veterans Administration, which regularly rates veterans with disabilities according to an antiquated model from decades past. Another government organization that rates people according to their level of disability is the Social Security Administration, placing people in either the SSI or SSDI programs, or denying people coverage in either program entirely, based upon their perception of the person’s level of disability.
One person cannot possibly know everything, there is too much to experience in life. We are all individuals, and collective knowledge must be experienced through a sharing process. The sharing process itself is expressed through such things as writing, speaking, the arts, and other forms of communication. Efforts to communicate with one another to promote shared knowledge concerning experiences in life must be done with all honesty, openness, and as much individual ability as each one of us can muster from within.