“If all those assumptions disappeared and people were more aware and more informed about everything, that would be great.”

Almost everyone wants to be healthy. No illnesses, no injuries, no pain. Most humans are also empathic beings, and we don’t want ourselves or others to hurt. So when we encounter people who suffer or seem to suffer from a disability or an injury, we pity them.

If you’re in a wheelchair, then you can’t walk. If you can’t walk, you might be in pain. At least something’s not right. Some people may try to imagine what it’s like not being able to walk, and think “Wow, that must really be hard! I could never get around without legs.” They can’t imagine to not being able to walk, so obviously it has to be very hard for the person in a wheelchair to live a normal life! So they pity the disabled person, and maybe they try to help them. How nice of them, isn’t it? The poor person in a wheelchair is a victim, and victims deserve to get help. Most people would want help if they needed it, and as a victim, you need help.

If you’ve got Down’s syndrome, there’s a big probability that you’ve got a intellectual disability. You can’t be expected to understand everything. So in a way, it’s not very surprising that many people treat people with a probable intellectual disability like they’re children. After all, children can’t be expected to understand everything, either. Even if the person doesn’t have an intellectual disability but just talks differently, it can be easily misinterpreted as if the person has reduced intelligence. Maybe some kind of instinct kicks in; children have to be taken cared of, just like people with Down’s syndrome or similar, or even some elderly people, really. (It happens quite a lot that people talk down to seniors, too.) So they all fall into a similar category, a “child-like” category.

Humans are herd animals, we like to belong in a group. When someone looks and/or acts differently we tend to notice. While I would like to believe that most of us don’t want to immediately shun or attack people because they’re different, it’s difficult not to stare. It’s a reflex to look at something that attracts attention after all. Since most people are (or at least look) normal (otherwise it wouldn’t be the norm), visibly disabled people attract attention. One could think that most people should have seen many people in wheelchairs, missing limbs, or having Down’s syndrome, but I think that since disabled people are in minority, they still look “exotic” enough to attract attention. Thus, it’s very hard not to stare, or at least give the person a few too many glances. In some circumstances you might expect the disabled person to want or need help from you. It can’t hurt to be on the alert for such a thing, right? Better keep an eye on the person to see if they’ll need help.

In the video “Disability, the Truth” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ4JOomkyNI), we get another viewpoint, the one of disabled people. We learn that attitude is everything. It’s not about what you can’t do, but what you can. Disabled people still live their lives, they just do it in a slightly different way than most of us. They don’t constantly need help, they manage well enough on their own. As one person says in the video: “People think that I can’t live independently as a deaf person, that I can’t drive, that I can’t speak and other things like that, which I actually can do.”

I think that this is one of the biggest issues with the stigmatizing of disabled people: ‘Abled’ people lack understanding of the capabilities of disabled people. They see the problems, what they CAN’T do, instead of what they CAN do. It’s quite understandable, though. Not everyone knows a disabled person, many just have their own lives to compare with. Personally, I can’t imagine how I would live life as usual if I were blind, but as we see in the video it’s entirely possible: “[…] it’s like they don’t think that blind people can cook.” I think that there would be a lot less stigmatization if the public was given more information about this, just like the video provides. Perhaps it could be shown in elementary school, and the teachers could have a discussion with the pupils about it. This could help people to realize that they shouldn’t pity disabled people, and only help them if they ask you (and thus actually need help).

Apparently some people ‘help’ disabled people without even asking them if they need it first. Apparently they don’t realize that they’re not helping and just make the disabled person feel less helped: “When you’ve got a disability it’s hard to get around, but when someone pushes you it’s like they’re insisting you on doing something without you allowing it, but they’re taking away your control of what you can do.” Besides that this shouldn’t even have to be an issue since it should be common sense to not move someone without their permission, I think that some comedy movies might be of use regarding this. It might give some people food for thought if there was a scene when someone ‘helps’ an old or disabled person across the street, only to have they say that they weren’t going in that direction. In fact, I think that having more disabled characters in movies, TV shows, and similar would also help with normalizing the disabled. I’m sure people would stare less on the visibly disabled if they were a more usual sight.

In summary, I believe that we need more awareness of disabled people’s lives.