Tag: disability

Access straw men

Real Social Skills

A lot of people are reluctant to change anything for the sake of accessibility, even if the change would be inexpensive and easy. Often, they resist even considering the possibility that there are changes they could make that would enable a broader range of people to participate.

Often, they set up access strawmen as a way to avoid negotiating access. 

Those conversations go like this:

  • The disabled person asks for a modification of some sort.
  • The resistant person ignores the actual request.
  • They instead describe something vaguely related that’s obviously unreasonable.
  • Then they insinuate that the disabled person asked them for the obviously unreasonable thing
  • They implore the disabled person to be more flexible and reasonable
  • The disabled person generally doesn’t get their needs met, and often ends up disoriented and feeling a lot of shame

An example:

  • Douglas: I can’t climb stairs. I need class to be held in a room on the first floor.
  • Roger: It sounds like what you really need is for all the buildings to be rebuilt for you. I can’t rebuild all the buildings; I have to focus on teaching.

Or sometimes:

  • Dawn: I can only read lips if people are looking at me. Can we talk about how to make class discussions work?
  • Robin: I can’t stop other students from talking to each other. Why don’t you take this opportunity to work on your listening skills?

When a person with a disability asks for an accommodation in school, work, a conference, or wherever, don’t set up a straw man to reject. Respond to the actual problem, and try to find a solution. Is there  a way to do the thing they’re asking for? If not, why not? Is there something else you *could* do that would work? Occasionally there is no good solution; more often, there is a way to make things work. When people in positions of responsibility are willing to look for access solutions and put effort into implementing them, a lot of things become possible.

“I don’t want him to feel different”

Real Social Skills

I’ve encountered a lot of parents and professionals who are reluctant to talk to disabled children about their disabilities.

People often believe that children with disabilities are innocent, and that they can protect their innocence with silence. They express concerns along the lines of “I don’t want him to think something is wrong with him,” or “I don’t want her to feel different,” or “I don’t want them to feel bad about themself.”

You can’t protect disabled kids this way. They know that they are different, and they know that this difference is perceived negatively.

Some examples of how kids figure out that they are different:

  • Kids watch what other kids do.
  • Typically developing younger siblings develop skills that they still haven’t mastered and may never master. They notice. They also notice how their parents react to this.
  • Kids with disabilities often see other kids their age doing something that looks fun, try to join in, and find that they can’t keep up. They notice, and they have feelings about this.
  • They also notice when other kids think they’re weird or boring and avoid them.
  • If they go to a special education program, they notice that other kids don’t take the short bus to school (and they hear what other kids say about the short bus, or they see it in their body language.)
  • They also notice that their school is really different from schools on TV and in stories.
  • All the kids their age on TV and in stories can do things that they can’t do. They notice.
  • Disabled kids often struggle to understand something that’s clear to everyone else in the room. They notice that this happens a lot.
  • Kids with disabilities get called the r-word, or the moral equivalent. 
  • Adults expect them to do things that they can’t on a regular basis. Other kids their age can. Adults are disappointed or angry. They notice.
  • Kids notice when they have to go to therapy and other kids don’t.
  • Kids notice when doctors hold them down for painful procedures while they struggle and cry. They notice that this doesn’t happen to kids in stories and that it’s not in any of the books about being a kid.
  • They notice that they have a lot of tests and that they’re talked to in ways that other kids aren’t.
  • They are often required to follow rules that other kids don’t have to follow. They notice that, too.
  • Parents talk about how tired, scared, and overwhelmed they are by their child’s needs or navigating the systems. Kids overhear. 
  • Many kids also eventually overhear the name of their condition and google it. 
  • And any number of other things.

Your silence doesn’t protect them from any of these experiences; it just isolates them. Kids are already bearing the pain of disability and of other people’s reactions to their disability. If no one will talk to them about it, they are also very, very alone. You can’t protect their innocence; you can break the silence that isolates them.

Uncertain abilities and the right to fail

Real Social Skills

Being disabled often means being unable to reliably predict what you will and won’t be able to do. Or whether something will be hard or easy. Sometimes this is for physical reasons; sometimes it’s because of how people treat us; often it’s both.

For instance, taking a class might involve uncertainty about any or all of these things (and lots of other things that I didn’t think of):

  • Am I cognitively capable of learning the material?
  • Am I physically capable of doing everything the class requires?
  • Will anyone be willing to do the group work with me in a way that makes it possible?
  • Will I be well enough to come to class regularly?
  • Will I live long enough to get the chance to apply what I learn in the class to my work?
  • Do I have the executive functioning to do this when I’m also doing other things?
  • Will the class material be so triggering that I dissociate frequently and miss a lot of what’s going on?
  • If I miss material for disability-related reasons, will there be a way to make it up?
  • Will I be able to get into the classroom?
  • Will I be able to stay in the classroom safely?
  • Will the teacher want me there?
  • Will they get me accessible materials in a timely manner?
  • Will they teacher have the skills to figure out how to teach me?
  • Will they allowed to be flexible in the ways I need them to be?
  • Will I have to fight for what I need? Will the fight be successful?

Disability typically involves a lot of uncertainty. It means that it’s often completely unknowable whether or not you will be able to do something. This means that the risk of failure is often much higher than it is for people without disabilities. If we try new things, we’ll usually fail at more of them than people without disabilities.

Sometimes people take that to mean that we should only be allowed to do things that are definitely within our abilities, to spare us the pain of failure. Or, to spare them and us the pain of having to notice that we’re disabled and that there are things we can’t do, no matter how hard we try.

This has disastrous consequences for children in special education and adults who live in the system, who may never be allowed to attempt anything harder than preschool curriculum. And, when we’re allowed in mainstream settings, we’re often terrified that failure may mean that we’ll be kicked out and sent to segregated settings.

When we’re not allowed to fail, we’re also not allowed to succeed. Because for all people, success rests on a lot of failed attempts. And because disability typically involves uncertain abilities, we usually need to make a lot more failed attempts than nondisabled people as we figure it out. Watching our peers succeed at things we fail at can be painful. So can trying really hard and finding that something we wanted to do is not possible for us. So can finding that something is dramatically more difficult for us than anyone else we know. That pain is real; it’s also bearable. We can fail and be ok. We can bump up against our limitations and be ok. We don’t need to live in cages full of easy tasks to avoid these things.

Short version: Being disabled means we often can’t reliably predict what we can and can’t do. (Or how hard something will be.) Finding the things we can do well often involves trying and failing at a lot of things.  The only way to find out is by trying things. Sometimes people try to prevent us from ever trying anything because they think that the pain of failure is unbearable. When we’re not allowed to fail, we’re not allowed to succeed either. We need space to fail without shame or punishment, so that we can find the things that we can do. It’s ok to be disabled. It’s ok to not know what you can do. It’s ok to try things that you might fail at. It’s ok to fail and keep trying, or to give up and try something else. It’s ok to decide that it’s not a good time to take those kinds of risks. We all learn to calibrate when to take these risks and when not to, and these are decisions that we need to be allowed to make.

People with disabilities are worthy of money and effort

Real Social Skills

In the part of special education community that promotes inclusive education, I often hear advocates say things like “inclusion doesn’t have to be hard,” “inclusion doesn’t have to be expensive,” and “inclusion doesn’t require special skills.”

This isn’t really true, unless we exclude a lot of people from “inclusion”. Some access needs are easy to meet; many are not. We can bring some people in without too much trouble. In order to commit to full inclusion, we’re going to have to be willing to spend money, acquire expertise, do hard things, and make changes.

For instance, people who can’t rely on speech as their primary means of communication need support learning to communicate. This is inherently expensive:

  • They usually need expensive devices
  • (The cheapest good option is an iPad with a $200 app; some people need dedicated devices that cost upwards of $10,000.)
  • They also usually need therapy
  • Having a communication device doesn’t solve all of someone’s problems; they also have to learn how to use it
  • (And they usually need help learning how)
  • Or they need something like RPM, which is low-tech but requires twice-daily 1:1 lessons which use scripts that generally have to be prepared in advance specifically for that student.
  • If they are in school, they need teachers who know how to teach them (which generally means that experts have to teach their teachers how.)
  • AAC communication is slower, and can be hard to interpret
  • Inclusion doesn’t happen automatically; teachers have to learn how to make sure AAC users are able to participate and be heard in class
  • (Eg: If someone isn’t using complete sentences yet, it can be hard to know what they mean. You have to be willing and able to do the work of helping them to clarify).
  • (And: if someone responds slowly, you have to proactively make sure they get a chance to express their thoughts in class discussions)
  • All of this requires money, expertise, effort, and willingness to change
  • If we’re only willing to consider cheap options, people who need communication support are left behind

Another example: People need to be able to get into the building

  • Many buildings were built incorrectly
  • They may have large flights of stairs at all entrances
  • They may have many floors that can only be reached by stairs
  • They may not have any accessible bathrooms
  • The bathrooms may all be too small to enter in a wheelchair (which means there’s no way to fix them without moving walls)
  • All of the doors may be big and heavy
  • Often, there’s no cheap way to fix this
  • There may be inexpensive starting places; we can’t stop there
  • If we care about including people with mobility disabilities, we have to be willing to spend money to fix buildings
  • We have to hire architects who have expertise in accessibility
  • We have to make sure that people with mobility disabilities are part of the conversation, even if no one with a mobility disability has expressed interest in accessing the building recently
  • We have to be willing to make changes that make the building look different, in ways that may mean changing or destroying things that longtime users of the building are emotionally attached to.

We can start with the low hanging fruit; we should not pretend that all fruit is low-hanging. A lot of access needs are inherently expensive. There are a lot of needs that no one even knows how to meet yet; the expertise we need does not yet exist. If we want to commit to full inclusion of children with disabilities in schools; if we want to fully include adults in all aspects of society, we need to be in it for the long haul.

Short version: In order to stop excluding people with disabilities, we’re going to have to spend money. We’re going to have to bring in expertise and develop expertise. We’re going to have to do difficult things. We’re going to have to make changes. We’re going to have to start seeing this as normal. People with disabilities are worthy of money and effort.

Diagnosis only goes so far

Real Social Skills

The way medical diagnosis works can often make disabled people feel fake. (Any kind of disabled people, including people with mental illness or chronic illness). There’s a widespread culture misperception that real disabled people have a clear professional diagnosis, and that everyone else is just faking it for attention or something. It doesn’t actually work that way. Diagnosis is more complicated than that.

People with disabilities are disabled whether or not anyone has diagnosed their disability. Diagnosis is an attempt to recognize the underlying reality (and often an attempt to get someone access to medical treatment or services.) But it doesn’t change the reality. Someone diagnosed today was already disabled yesterday. Many people are disabled for years or decades before they get access to accurate diagnosis. Being undiagnosed doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not disabled. It just means you haven’t been diagnosed with anything.

In addition, some conditions aren’t currently diagnosable, because they have not yet been identified and named by doctors. If a condition was discovered for the first time today, someone had probably already had it yesterday. And last year. And back and back and back. Being undiagnosed and currently-undiagnosable doesn’t mean that you’re fake. It just means that you don’t have an answer.

Even when there is a diagnosis, there is not always an explanation. Some diagnostic categories are vague and unsatisfying. Some diagnoses amount to a list of symptoms you already knew you had. These kinds of diagnoses allow your doctor to bill your insurance and may get you access to treatment, but they don’t always give you answers. Being diagnosed with something vague doesn’t mean you’re fake either. It just means that you don’t have an answer.
In addition, diagnostic categories are often approximations that don’t quite describe reality for everyone. It’s fairly common to meet diagnostic criteria imperfectly. Or to have an atypical form of a condition. This doesn’t mean you’re fake either. It just means that reality is more complicated than textbooks. (Being similar to the textbook also doesn’t mean that you are fake; it just means that sometimes the textbooks are right about some people.)

Even when diagnosis gives you a lot of answers, it often won’t give you all the answers you would like to have. Mostly disabilities are fairly poorly understood. For most people, disability involves significant amounts of uncertainty, and many unanswered questions.

I don’t want to overstate this. Sometimes diagnosis does get you real answers. Even when it doesn’t, it can be very important. Often, even without answers, diagnosis can make your life a lot better by getting you access to treatment, support, or accommodations. Diagnosis can also mean that someone gets treatment or support that keeps them alive. Diagnosis is often very important for any number of reasons. It’s just not the ultimate decider of who is and isn’t really disabled. Disabled people who aren’t diagnosed with something that fully explains their symptoms are real disabled people, and their needs matter just as much as anyone else’s do.

Short version: Disabled people are disabled whether or not they are diagnosed. Diagnosis recognizes reality; it doesn’t create it. There are a lot of reasons why some disabled people aren’t diagnosed, or aren’t fully diagnosed. Scroll up for more explanation of why that is.

“Choosing to be disabled”

Real Social Skills

Ableists often believe that “choosing to be disabled” is a major social problem. They aggressively believe that most disabilities aren’t real, and that people could stop being disabled if they’d just make better choices. They think most disabled people are fakers who just stay disabled out of laziness.

They may see accessibility and accommodations as “enabling”, and try to get them taken away. Or, they may try to force people into treatment (whether or not safe and effective treatment actually exists.) Or they may just be mean and hostile towards disabled people they encounter. Or any number of other things. This hurts all disabled people badly.

People with disabilities often feel like they have to prove that they are not faking, and that their disability isn’t a choice. This can lead us to worry a lot about whether we’re somehow doing this on purpose. In this state of mind, it’s really easy to find things that feel like evidence that we’re fake.

Disability usually involves tradeoffs. We can’t choose to have all of the same abilities as nondisabled people, but we often can make some choices about which abilities to prioritize. This can superficially look like “choosing to be disabled” if you don’t understand how disability works.
For instance:

Medications:

  • All medications have side effects
  • Managing the condition and the side effects can involve complicated tradeoffs
  • There is usually more than one option
  • It can often be a choice of what abilities you prioritize most, and which impairments are most tolerable
  • You may be able to choose to make any particular impairment go away
  • That doesn’t mean you could choose to be unimpaired
  • Ableists will think you are faking no matter which choices you make. They are wrong.

Mobility equipment:

  • People with mobility impairments often have more than one option, and there can be complex tradeoffs.
  • Eg, which is more important to someone?
  • Being able to go further without fatigue (in a power chair) or being able to ride in a regular car (with a collapsable wheelchair)?
  • Being able to travel a mile on the sidewalk (in a wheelchair), or being able to use all of the subway stops (by walking)?
  • Being able to get into inaccessible buildings (by walking), or being able to go out without being in pain (in a wheelchair)?
  • Retaining the ability to walk (by spending a lot of time doing physical therapy) or being able to take a full course load in college (by spending that time on studying and losing the ability to walk)?
  • No matter which choice you make, ableists who don’t understand disability will see it as “choosing to be disabled”. They are wrong.

There are any number of other examples, for every type of disability. This affects every kind of disability, including physical, sensory, cognitive, psychiatric, chronic illness, and the categories I forgot to mention.

Short version: We all have to make choices about how to manage our disabilities, and there are often complicated tradeoffs. No matter which choices we make, ableists will think we’re making the wrong ones. No matter which choices we make, ableists will think that we are faking.

In the face of this kind of hostility, it is easy to start doubting ourselves and believing that we’re fake and terrible. It helps to remember that the ableists don’t know what they are talking about (even if they are disabled themselves). Making choices about how to manage disability is just part of life. The ableists are not experts in how you should be living you life; they are wrong and they are mean.

Open letter to disability professionals

Real Social Skills

Dear disability professionals,

I’m not sure why, but I keep encountering disability professionals who try to deny that disability exists, or to downplay its importance.

It’s so extreme that disability professionals often try to convince people with disabilities that we are just like everybody else. Even when our differences are the reason that you have a job.

We are not just like everyone else. We are alike in that we are all human, with the same basic needs and capacities that go along with humanity. We are also different, in that we have disabilities and most people do not.

Disability exists. Disability is important. People with disabilities are different from most people people in ways that matter. And we need those differences to be speakable.

Our bodies are different. We can’t make this go away by smiling, being brave, and trying hard.

The differences in our bodies matter. Most people can do things that are physically impossible for us. Most people can do some things easily that are excruciatingly difficult for us. The specifics of which things these are depend on the person and the disability. They always exist. That’s what disability means, it means having a different kind of body, a body that can’t do certain kinds of things easily or at all.

For everyone, with and without disabilities, understanding the limits of what our bodies can do is a key life skill. Everyone’s safety depends on understanding that they do not have wings, and that they can’t fly. My safety also depends on understanding that I have impaired vision, motor coordination, and executive functioning. Understanding these things means I have chosen not to drive, and that I have found adaptive strategies that enable me to cook safely.

From my perspective, the fact that I don’t concentrate hard and try to drive isn’t so different from the fact that I don’t flap my wings and try to fly. All I’m doing is acknowledging physical reality, and making choices that fit with my understanding of reality. Some of the physical limitations on what my body can do are the normal limits that apply to all human bodies. Other physical limitations come from my disability. They’re all just physical facts, they’re all just things I need to take into account when I make decisions. 

But as a person with a disability, I learned young that only some limitations are ok to talk about. If I say “I can’t fly”, no one contradicts me. If I say “I can’t catch”, people say “just keep trying”. Both are physically impossible for me. Trying hard will not make either possible. Neither will being brave, smiling, or believing in myself.

For some reason, many disability professionals seem to believe that honesty about our limitations will somehow destroy our self esteem. Actually, the opposite is the case. They want us to believe that if we just smile and keep trying, we can do anything that we put our minds to. But it’s a lie, and we get hurt badly when we believe it.

When professionals refuse to accept our limitations, they force us to attempt impossible tasks over and over. There is nothing positive about this experience. We try and fail, and we watch others our age succeed at the same tasks. If we believe that we can do whatever we put our minds to, then we feel like it’s our fault for not trying hard enough.

It hurts when people yell at us for failing, and it hurts when people plaster on smiles and urge us to smile and keep trying. “Come on, you can do it!” doesn’t sound like encouragement when you know that you will fail. It feels like being told that you’re somehow screwing up on purpose, and that if you would just decide to be a better person, you’d suddenly be about to do it. This kind of thing can go on for years, and it leaves scars. We often come to feel like we are unworthy people, and that there’s something deeply flawed about who we are. 

It’s very, very important that people with disabilities understand that we are disabled. We need to know that our bodies are different, and that some things that are possible for most other people aren’t possible for us. We can’t stop being disabled through an act of will. Our bodies limit us. That is not a moral failing. It’s just a fact of physical reality. And it needs to be speakable.

Our bodies and our disabilities are nothing to be ashamed of.  We don’t have to be different to be good enough. We don’t have to be nondisabled to do things that matter. We don’t have to do impossible things to be worthy of love and respect. We’re people, and who we are is ok.

And for professionals – please understand that when you refuse to acknowledge disability, you are teaching people with disabilities to be ashamed of themselves. This is probably not your intention, but it’s an inevitable consequence of making disability unspeakable.

It is much better to tell the truth. It is much better to support us in understanding who we really are, than to push us to believe in an impossible dream. I could dream of flying or playing baseball, but it wouldn’t get me anywhere. By living in the real world and working with the body I actually have, I can do things that matter. And so can all of your clients. There is no need for silence, evasion, or shame. Disability is important, and it’s much easier to live with when we can face it honestly.

An example of both types of mental health stigma

Real Social Skills

Content note: This post contains both criticism of and respect for the mental health system. If you find either upsetting, it’s likely that this post will bother you.

I wrote recently about two distinct kinds of mental illness stigma. There’s dismissiveness, where people aggressively deny that someone’s mental illness is real. There’s dehumanization, where people believe that someone’s mental illness is real, and treat them as though their condition makes them less than fully human. Both are common, and people who have experienced one more than the other tend to have very different perceptions of the mental health system.

One example of difference in perception: Mental health advocates often say things like “Medication for mental illness is just like insulin for a diabetic”. People who have mostly faced dismissiveness often see this as validation; people who have mostly faced dehumanization often see it as a threat.

From the perspective of someone who has mostly experienced dismissiveness, it might sound like this:

  • I’m really glad that someone understands how serious my medical condition is
  • People have told me over and over that I don’t have a real problem
  • Or that medication is just a crutch I’m using to avoid dealing with things
  • Or that it’s whiny to want medication
  • Or they might say things like “You’re not sick. People with cancer are sick.”
  • My medication is really, really necessary
  • Or even: my medication saved my life, and I think I’d die if I stopped taking it.
  • I’ve had to fight my doctor, my family, or my insurance company to get access to the medication I need.
  • It messes up my life when people don’t take my need for medication seriously.
  • I’m glad someone gets it about how real my medical condition is, and how important it is for me to have access to medication.

For someone who has mostly faced dehumanization, a statement like that might sound more like this:

  • People have treated me like I’m not a person, and use analogies to physical conditions to justify it.
  • People have made me take medication I didn’t want to take, that did things to my brain and body that I didn’t like.
  • They’ve done this to me in order to change how I felt, thought, or behaved.
  • They’ve told me that what they were doing to me was just like giving insulin to a diabetic.
  • And that this meant I could not possibly have any valid reason to object to the treatment they wanted me to have.
  • But diabetes and mental illness aren’t actually all that similar.
  • Insulin-dependent diabetics who refuse treatment die. When I refused treatment, I didn’t die. It’s not the same. I’m not sick in that way.
  • The way I am is not the same as having a life-threatening physical condition with an obvious straightforward life-sustaining treatment.
  • It’s important that people understand the difference.
  • When they don’t understand the difference, they treat me as though I’m not a real person unless I am on the medication they want me to be on.
  • People say “unmedicated” like it means violent, dangerous, or incapable of understanding something. It doesn’t. It just means that someone isn’t taking medication. That doesn’t tell you anything in itself.
  • I need people to respect me as a person, and respect my right to make treatment decisions. When they don’t, things can get really bad really fast.

There are numerous other examples of things like this. Most things people say about mental health look very different to people who have primarily experienced dismissiveness than they do to people who have primarily experienced dehumanization. Neither perspective is right or wrong exactly; both are important and incomplete.

Access to psychiatric medication is important; respect for the humanity and human rights of people who have been diagnosed with mental health conditions is also important. Things aren’t great for anyone, and they could be a lot better for everyone.

Short version: Mental health discourse often looks very different depending on perspective. People who have mostly faced dismissiveness tend to see things one way; people who have mostly faced dehumanization tend to see things a different way. Scroll up for a concrete example.

Disability does not end where values begin

Real Social Skills

One of the most painful aspects of disability is that it can interfere with treating people the way we’d like to treat them, and doing what we’d like to do for them.

Disability makes some things hard, and other things impossible. Often, we have values that say it’s important to do the thing anyway. This does not actually make it possible to do the thing. Caring about others doesn’t make disability go away. Accepting and accommodating our limitations works a lot better. We can only do things that are possible, with the brains and bodies we actually have.

For instance, body language:

  • People communicate a lot of important things through body language
  • Some people can’t see well enough to understand body language
  • Others have insurmountable cognitive barriers to understanding body language
  • It’s important to listen to what people are saying. That doesn’t make it possible for everyone to understand body language.

Understanding speech:

  • Most people communicate a lot of important things through speech
  • Some people can’t understand speech
  • (Either because they can’t hear well enough, or for cognitive reasons)
  • It’s important to listen to people. That doesn’t make it possible for everyone to understand speech

Text communication:

  • There are often competing access needs in text communication
  • Some people can’t read walls of text, and need whitepsace
  • Some people aren’t capable of putting in line breaks (or aren’t reliably capable of doing so)
  • Some people need simple language to understand things
  • Others are incapable of changing their language use, and have to use big words in order to communicate
  • The importance of listening doesn’t make it possible for people to understand every kind of writing.
  • The importance of communicating in a way people can understand doesn’t make it possible for everyone to communicate in every way people need
  • Sometimes there needs to be an interpreter

Inaccessible buildings:

  • Some important meetings take place in inaccessible buildings
  • Some people can’t climb stairs (or can’t do so reliably)
  • The importance of the meeting doesn’t make it possible to climb the stairs
  • Even if someone you care about really, really needs your help with what’s going on at that meeting

Outdoor events:

  • Some people can’t be outside for extended periods safely
  • (For any number of reasons)
  • This is just as true when there’s an important protest. Caring about the issue doesn’t make being outside any safer.
  • Or when there’s a wedding or something. Caring about friends and family doesn’t make it any safer to be outside

Recognizing people:

  • Most people want people they know to recognize their face and remember their name
  • When people aren’t recognized, they often feel like no one cares about them
  • Some people can’t recognize faces
  • Some people can’t remember names
  • Understanding the importance of recognizing names/faces does not make it possible for everyone

Intermittent abilities:

  • Some people can do certain things only some of the time
  • They may be able to push really hard and do it in an emergency
  • Or it might fluctuate in ways they have no control over
  • That doesn’t mean they could do it reliably.
  • Caring about something doesn’t make it possible to do it all of the time.
  • Disability is real even when it’s intermittent.

There are any number of other examples. When something is physically or cognitively impossible, it’s still impossible when it’s important. When it’s dangerous, it’s still dangerous when it’s important. Caring about other people doesn’t make disability go away.

Whatever we do, we have to do as who we are.

Short version: Disability makes some things hard, and other things impossible. Often, we have values that say it’s important to do the thing anyway. This does not actually make it possible to do the thing. Caring about others doesn’t make disability go away. Accepting and accommodating our limitations works a lot better. We can only do things that are possible, with the brains and bodies we actually have.

Your role is not permision

Real Social Skills

Being a disability expert of some kind doesn’t give you the right to violate boundaries. People with disabilities are people. Being an expert of some kind doesn’t mean you have a relationship to them. It doesn’t mean you have any authority over them, either.

Being a parent of a disabled kid isn’t permission to take on a parental role with every disabled person you encounter.

Being a nurse doesn’t make it ok to ask people with disabilities invasive medical questions.

Being disabled doesn’t make it ok to tell other disabled people how to live their lives.

Being a special educator doesn’t give you the right to tell disabled people how their minds work. Or what they can and can’t do. Or to force them to make eye contact.

Being a therapist doesn’t make it ok to take on a therapeutic role with every disabled person you encounter. Treatment requires consent; being a therapist doesn’t make you an authority on anyone else’s life.

Being a researcher doesn’t give you the right to tell people with disabilities what they can or can’t do, or how they should live their lives.

Being disability staff doesn’t mean that random disabled people you encounter in public places need your help, or that you know how to help them, or that you have the right to tell them what to do (actually, that applies even when you *are* someone’s staff).

People with disabilities have the same rights to privacy and autonomy as anyone else. No matter what kind of expertise you have or think you have.