Mehak
“I want to live in a world where we don’t have such low expectations of disabled people that we are congratulated for getting out of bed and remembering our own names in the morning.”
-Stella Young (TED Talks 2014)
Mr. X was rejected from the interview despite his quick wit and skills because the employer was under the impression that his “Disability” could be trouble.
Ms. Y chose to pursue her studies privately because she was bullied at her school because of her “Disability”.
Mr. Z was made to believe that his “Disability” resulted from his bad actions in his past life and that he should be ashamed because of it.
These are just a few instances of adversities that disabled people have to face just because they are different from the normal. We live in a world where bodily perfection is admired and a deviation from it is shunned. We human beings have the need to feel accepted and included. Hardly do we find any facility made for disabled fellows. Anita Ghai an Indian academic was once asked to crawl and enter the flight because the airport had no means to help her. People with disabilities are humans like all of us and need to not feel excluded from society. Most of the time they are subjected to mockery and abuse. These reasons lead them to seek isolation.
If we look at statistics 21 million people in India are disabled (2011 census) and 70% of them are unemployed. Such a huge number itself says it all.
No employment=Poverty=No money for getting treatments=Miserable condition of the disabled.
Sometimes their own family has a pessimistic attitude toward them. They deny accepting their child as someone different from the normal. A child who was not accepted by his own family finds it hard to feel acknowledged or feel visible.
People with disabilities have a right to participate in the affairs of society and control their life. Had this right been snatched away from them we would have been oblivious to the contributions made by Mr. Stephen Hawking in the world of physics and quantum mechanics. Had this right been snatched away from Mr. George Washington Carver we would have been deprived of few advancements in agriculture that have proven to be so advantageous.
Society needs to change its outlook toward the disabled. They are not somebody that should be bullied, impersonated, detested, or underestimated.