Recently I was having a chat with someone and they were surprised by how I spoke and portrayed myself as they were expecting me to be and act different because I have a disability. So I thought I’d share with you 5 things I want non-disabled people to know from myself as a disabled person.
This post is not meant to cause offence, it is simply done to share my thoughts. I know my thoughts, feelings and options do not relate to everyone in the disabled community. It’s important to remember that no one is the same regardless of if they have a disability or not.
I hope this post is informative and raises awareness of some misconceptions that can be surrounded by disability.
As a disabled person their have been times were I felt that the world was just not made for people with disabilities. Therefore I often face barriers in our everyday life that my peers don’t. This can make me feel excluded in certain aspects of society. It’s important to remember that making adjustments for disabled people is vital and can make a huge difference. These adjustments don’t always have to be “big” it can simply be needing extra time to get off a ride at the theme park.
There are many misconceptions surrounding the subject of disability. One of them being that having a disability can have a negative impact on someone’s life. Don’t get me wrong their have been times when I wished I wasn’t disabled and that I wished I was like everyone else. Maybe I wouldn’t have got extremely badly bullied. However having a disability has helped me think outside the box when problem solving. I wouldn’t have met some of the amazing people and animals I have in my life if I wasn’t disabled I can’t imagine a world without the charities Riding for the Disabled and The Theatre Shed. Also my disability has lead me to opportunities that I believe I would have if I wasn’t disabled for example starting this blog.
People sometimes tell me “ you don’t look disabled” and I know they mean it as a compliment but it doesn’t always come across like that. Sometimes it makes me have thoughts like “ what did you expect me to look like?”. My disability looks invisible so I also get people telling me that I’m “your so lucky your disability is invisible”. However having a disability that is invisible can be hard as people think your stupid and slow but that’s a blog post in its self so I’ll write about it in more depth in a future post.
We may not always share it but disabled people and their family and careers are usually fighting some sort of battle weather it’s to do with education, funding, transport or employment to name a few. We may need adaptations to help us but these don’t take away the barriers we face. Adaptations help us to carry out everyday tasks like everyone else. Funding for people to help us like support workers is also vital as this allows us to be more independent but still safe as we don’t always want to do activities with our parents supporting us 24/7. We want to grow and feel like our peers but with the extra support we may need from someone who is not related to us instead.
Just because someone is disabled that doesn’t mean that they don’t want to be happy, achieve things. having goals and ambitions. We may need to do things slightly differently , it might take a bit longer and we may need a bit more support along the way to do what we want to do. But that doesn’t mean we can’t, we will get where we want to be. If you can dream it you can achieve it!
defeatingdisability.com 