While the world is growing wise, there’s still a lot of stigma surrounding disabilities. Visibly disabled people are regularly looked down upon, which makes it difficult for abled-passing people to pursue accommodations that would improve their livelihood. This mindset forces a lot of people to overextend themselves in everyday life, which can actually make a lot of conditions worse.
One such example is the use of mobility aids. Many establishments, despite boasting “handicapped accessible” infrastructure, don’t actually put thought or care into the ways a handicapped person would navigate it.
Studies at colleges across the country have explored this concept. An abled student spends the entire school day in a wheelchair, only accessing what they’d be able to if they did have a mobility issue. And almost every experiment has found the same conclusion. The world is built against the disabled because their success interrupts the narrative that they’re incapable of self-sufficiency.
There is something that people don’t want to talk about. Their worldview relies on the idea of disabled people inherently being beneath them. And if this is challenged, then the entire system falls apart. This is one of the reasons it’s so important to explore other points of view. It’s easy to miss bad things happening when they never happen to you.
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