Trisha Phan: Open Your Eyes

Open Your Eyes by Trisha Phan

Finding a place and integrating people with disabilities into society is major social issue that affects not only my community but society as a whole. Every culture has some sort of view point on people with disabilities when it comes to observing their role in society. My family and culture for instance, sees people with disabilities as something along the lines of pitiful. Those words obviously were not spoken out loud but their expressions when they see people or a child with a disability is nothing but sympathy.

Even today, I’ve always put myself at a distance from people with disabilities. I never really interacted with them and always left them with their caretakers and dropped a smile and a greeting now and then when I passed by. I hold no personal grudge or opinion about people with disabilities and had the mindset to handle them as if they all wore the sign ‘fragile, handle with care’ stamped on their foreheads. Many of us; parents who have a family member who has a disability or people who are labeled as disabled hate the idea of being 'invisible.' Society has placed the achievement bar for the disabled so low that they are given "awards" for completing a task that they perform every day. What may seem mundane to the person with a disability is seen as a progressive step forward for the ignorant. This level of thought is degrading and even insulting to people with disabilities.

It is time to stop seeing people with disabilities as a foreign subculture that should only be placed in the spotlight when they're hailed as an inspiration. They deserve to be recognized as a person. The fact that you see someone who has a disability should be a part of the norm in society. I have never opened my eyes to the world of the disabled and now that I have been given the opportunity to, it creates a whole new meaning for the world "disabled" or "handicapped." My community is home to an equal balance of citizens who have some sort of disability and those who aren't. Yet the lack of knowledge my community has on people with disabilities is worrisome. 

It's hard to straight out give a census number of people with disabilities. The word disability is now such a large umbrella that it's hard to give an absolute definition of what defines a person as "disabled." According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "53 million adults live with a disability." 

One of the first things that we have to realize and change is that we should not identify a person by their disability. Instead we should be using disability first person language.  Person first language, as defined by the Institute on Disability (2016) literally puts the person first instead of his or her disability. By referring to an individual as a person with a disability instead of a disabled person, you are providing an objective description instead of a label. 

Children with disabilities range far and wide over the world. Parents who have dreamed of their child growing up to achieve something great in the world or becoming the next president come to a screeching halt when they realize that their child has a disability. What about children who manage to finish schooling? How will they survive without the dependability they've always had? Wehman Paul states that making an effort to publicize the needs of people with disabilities will be, "helping individuals secure housing, meeting the specific needs of young people with a range of disabilities, and navigating the complex challenge of transition"(Wehman, 2006).
  

Priscilla Esquiza has a younger brother with an intellectual disability. Because of this, he is homeschooled and learns from what Priscilla teaches him. Priscilla's brother has enrolled into three different schools but had not been able to successfully integrate into his class. She states that the school does not do enough to properly aid her brother and so her family decided to pull him out of school. Priscilla wishes that people would take the issues surrounding people with disabilities more seriously so that society can take action to make people with disabilities' voices heard.

Guadalupe has not had many encounters with people with disabilties. The encounters she could remember was during her highschool year when inclusion was implemmented in general education classes. There were two students with mild intellectual disabilities who were considered a bit of an offcast from the rest of the class. One of the two students was very outspoken and passionate about any of the topics he spoke about. Guadalupe explained how the student could go on an on until he reached a fullout debate with whoever he was talking to. Guadalupe had chosen to become a teacher's assistant for theatre class and notieced how talkative the student was. The problem was that he spoke to everyone and would never be able to sit still. The student was never found in one place, he would move around from person to person and engaged in a quick conversation with the student before going to someone else. The second student was more of an outcast, his intellectul disability made him closed up and thus he fell back to the outer rings to of the class.

What Can Be Done To Help?

Even though i personally do not have a family member who has a disability, i know people who are close to my who have a disability. I have a church member who was struck with polio at the age of 17. The cheerfulness and bright attitude he had and how he could still smile and encourage others makes me wonder how even with a disability, he can be so happy and proud of himself. Yet he has every right to be. As an immigrant from Vietnam, he has accomplished so much. He has a job, two children, a stable income, a loving wife and a supporting group of people who have his back. 

There are many ways to join the cause. Charities, donations and volunteer in any position whether it's doing a charity drive or volunteering at your local schools with special education classes. I've seen videos of people with visual disabilities laugh whenever someone asks them "what do you see?" The obvious answer is that they can't see anything, but they're completely fine with that. We as non-disabled people may see people with disabilities as someone to have sympathy towards but why do we need to? Why would someone be sad that they cannot see or they cannot hear or speak when they've never had been able to, to begin with? They cannot miss something they've never had. Because of this, we seem to have two separate cultures and two different worlds: the world of the disabled and the world of the non-disabled. 

I'm ready to bridge this gap, will you cross it with me?

Reference

Wehman, Paul. (2006) Life beyond the Classroom: Transition Strategies for Young People with Disabilities, Fourth Edition. Brooke's Publishing Company (1). http://www.brookespublishing.com.

CDC: 53 million adults in the US live with a disability. (2015, July 30). Retrieved November 10, 2016, from http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2015/p0730-us-disability.html.

http://www.iod.unh.edu/Resources/resources-for-reporters/person_first_language.aspx