The difference between something like glasses & many other disability aids is access. Glasses are normalized, a lot more than a mobility aid or another tool like a colostomy bag or port, for instance. There are far fewer barriers in the world for someone who wears glasses than...
for other disabilities. This is usually actually how I describe the social model of disability to people. You are only "disabled" if your needs are not normalized in society. So since so many people need glasses, most people who need them get them, & most people don't bat an...
eye at seeing someone wearing glasses. (However, there is a major issue, as there are in most instances of medical access, wherein minority & low income students, & adults too, have lower rates of access to glasses for those who need them, but this is a tangent for another day)..
Here's another way to look at it. An example of a mobility aid most people use is cars. Let's imagine everyone was expected to walk or ride bikes, & only those who physically couldn't do so due to a disability were allowed to drive cars. This would seem silly, right?...
We could all benefit from using cars even when it is not absolutely necessary, but merely convenient. But then why do people & doctors & insurance companies alike assume that the only people who need wheelchairs are those who physically cannot walk without one? It is much more...
difficult to get a wheelchair prescribed & covered by insurance if it will *merely* vastly improve your quality of life, even though you still have the physical ability to walk. For instance, if you have orthostatic intolerance, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, or something like...
EDS that weakens your joints & makes you more susceptible to injury or dislocation, for example, it can be extremely difficult to get access to a wheelchair or other mobility aids or even things like supplemental oxygen or other tools that might improve your symptoms & your...
quality of life. Even if you do have access to these tools, because they/their use aren't normalized like a more common tool, like glasses, users of these tools will encounter everything from people disbelieving the individual really needs to use the tool, to preventing access...
to public spaces or even access to things like school & employment due to dependence on the use of the tool. With all this in mind, I cannot in good conscience refer the simple need for glasses as a disability. There are people with disabilities that involve the use of glasses...
But generally speaking, most folks who wear glasses because of relatively mild problems with eyesight (& not something more disabling like blindness) are not disabled under the social model of disability. Under the medical model they are, because they have a measurable "deficit".
But when we consider not merely how a condition impacts an individual, but also how society creates conditions that make living with that condition more difficult than for someone without it, we can see how disability has less to do with the condition, & more to do with access...
& acceptance of the condition. Someone who needs glasses but doesn't have access to them, for instance a student in a low income area with less access to things like eye exams & insurance coverage for glasses, due to the unequal access to these things in minority communities...
A student who needs glasses & doesn't have them *is* disabled. They will suffer in school, for example, because they might be seen as less intelligent or uncooperative, when in reality they simply cannot see clearly. They will suffer in other areas, too, like sports & play...
But then in a rich white neighborhood, for instance, few if any students who need glasses will go without. It is merely a matter of the resources a society has & how they are distributed. If everyone who would benefit from a wheelchair had one, they would be more normalized, too.
But because we see tools, like wheelchairs in our society as strictly for those who absolutely cannot walk without one, to the point that people will verbally or even physically attack a part-time ambulatory wheelchair user who stands up from their wheelchair or walks in public..
many/most disability aids continue to be shrouded in stigma. The stigma is fueled by a lack of visibility, which is fueled by the lack of access, which is fueled by the stigma. It's a vicious cycle. This is why it is important to increase access to all tools of this nature...
from glasses to wheelchairs to service animals to meds & so on. If everyone had what they needed, fewer people would experience life as "disabled," when we consider disability as a concept dependent on how a society constructs itself. Let's imagine a society of intelligent...
creatures who are all born without legs, living on a distant planet. We might imagine they all use cool hover chairs that get them where they need to go. Their whole society, their customs & their infrastructure, would be built around this fact, & so none of them would...
experience their lack of legs as a disability. But when one of the creatures is born with legs, they might struggle greatly. The cool hover chairs would be too cramped for their legs, so they'd have to walk, but they can only walk half the speed the hover chairs glide at.
You are only "disabled" if your disability exists within the minority of needs a society experiences. Thread ^^^
#neisvoid
#neisvoid
