Disability

From Free net encyclopedia

The term "disability", as it is applied to humans, refers to any condition that impedes the completion of daily tasks using traditional methods. National governments and global humanitarian agencies have narrowed this definition for their own purposes.

Image:Handicapped.jpeg

1 Demographics of disability
2 Types of disability
3 The evolution of an organized international movement
4 The language and terminology of disability
5 Well-known people with disabilities
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

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Demographics of disability

Many books on disability and disability rights point out that the disabled community is one of very few groups of people that one does not have to be born into, as disability can develop later in life as well. Some disability rights activists use an acronym TAB, "Temporarily Able-Bodied", as a reminder that many will usually become disabled, either from exhaustion (physical, mental or emotional), illness, poor health or poor fitness, especially if they happen to the aged and frail stages of life.

In most areas of the world, but especially in developed countries, people with disabilities is becoming a dangerously expensive percentage of the population. The main reasons are longer lives, due to clean water, better food, shelter, medicine and medical treatment. Accidents, genetics, illness and poor health are no longer effective reasons for trimming population sizes.

Physical trauma both arising from accidents and violence, particularly war and it subsequents (e.g., land mines in places such as Cambodia) lead to often serious physical such as the impaired limbs. In advanced regions, traffic accidents are the most common causes of disabilities.

Psychological trauma can also lead to a range of disabilities. Some of these are treatable, some not yet treatable, some may not be recognized by certain authorities. Most disabilities have psychological and sociological factors which usually are much more important than any physical factors (real, assumed, or imagined).

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Types of disability

"Disability" can be broken down into a number of broad sub-categories. Various medical, paramedical or other specialists have their unique ways of categorizing disabilities. One such point of view includes the following, but ignores the psychology and sociology of disability:

Physical impairments affecting movement, such as muscular dystrophy, post-polio syndrome, spina bifida and cerebral palsy.
Lack of or amputation of limbs or other body parts
Sensory impairments, such as visual or hearing impairments.
Neurological impairments, such as epilepsy or dysautonomia.
Cognitive impairments such as Autism or Down Syndrome.
Psychiatric conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder and Schizophrenia.

Specific Learning Difficulties such as Dyslexia and Dyspraxia.

Some disabilities are not obvious to outside observers; these are termed invisible disabilities. Claims of disability may persist after being created. These claims may exist bureaucratically, psychologically, legally, historically and in other ways.

A person may be impaired either by a correctable condition such as myopia, or by an unchangeable one such as cerebral palsy. For those with mild conditions, related impairments can improve or disappear with the application of corrective devices. More serious impairments call for adaptive equipment.

A list of disabilities can never be complete or finalized because individuals, organizations, and governments define disabilities differently.

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The evolution of an organized international movement

In many locations around the planet, there have been organized and unorganized group activities around disability. Historically, disabilities have often been cast in a negative or "magical" light. An individual thus affected was seen as being a “special” subject, requiring psychosocial highlighting. Often this may be medical or paramedical intervention. His or her condition was usually (not always) seen as disabling. Social reactions to it are sometimes justifiable, and historically, these are usually not justifiable. One of the dominant philosophies on disability in non-theocratic regions, is known as the medical model of disability.

Over the past 35 years, a competing view known as the social model of disability has been defined. In this model, disability is seen more as a social construction than a medical reality. Disabled activists, such as Tom Shakespeare (2002), argue that although their impairments may cause them pain or discomfort, what really dis-ables people as members of society is a socio-cultural system which does not recognise their right to genuine equality.

The medical viewpoint argues that facilities and opportunities should be made as accessible as possible to individuals who require adaptations: physical, biochemical, or psychosocial. Dismantling physical barriers, or setting up adaptations such as wheelchair ramps, is known as "fostering accessibility". Positive and non-discrimination legal processes are usually needed to ensure the effectiveness of these adaptations.

The social model borrows from Social Medicine, in recognizing that humans are mostly environmentally dependent (health, fluids, nutrition, education, upbringing and government overheads), so the emphasis is on those with the resources, power and ability to deal with the disability area.

A human rights based approach has been adopted by many organizations of and for people with disabilities. In 1976, the United Nations launched its International Year for Disabled Persons (1981). Very much later (2000) the United Nations Assembly decided to start working on a comprehensive convention for the rights of people with disabilities. Since 2002 the "UN Ad-Hoc meeting" gathers every six months to discuss the content of this UN convention. These meetings are open for Non-Government-Organisations and Disabled Peoples' Organisations.

An approach that has tokenly led to tangible improvements in the lives of people with disabilities in some regions has been the Independent Living Movement. The term "Independent Living" was taken from 1959 California legislation that enabled people disabled by polio to leave hospital wards and move back into the community with the help of cash benefits for the purchase of personal assistance with the activities of daily living. With its origins in the US civil rights and consumer movements of the late 1960s, the movement and its philosophy have since spread to other continents influencing disabled people's self-perception, their ways of organizing themselves and their countries' social policy.

The disability rights movement, led by end-users rather than fanilies and other carers, began in the 1970s. This self-advocacy is largely responsible for the shift toward independent living and accessibility.

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The language and terminology of disability

Many people use the term disability to replace the designation handicapped. While these two designations are often used interchangeably, proponents of the social model of disability use the latter term to describe the social and economic consequences of the former; i.e., an individual with a disability is said to be "handicapped" by the bias of society towards ability (e.g., a building without an elevator handicaps a person who uses a wheelchair). Similarly, in the United Kingdom, people within the disability rights movement commonly use the term "disabled" to denote someone who is "disabled by society's inability to accommodate all of its inhabitants."

The Person First Movement has added another layer to this discourse by asking that people with disabilities be identified first as individuals. These organizations vary in their names in different regions. Usually they demand that all or the majority of the "Directors" be disabled themselves, with relatively few or no other non-disabled persons in the major decision making process. The terminology of this movement the term “people with disabilities” is preferred over "disabled person."

Some people with disabilities support the Person First Movement, while others do not. People who are Deaf or Polio affected may see themselves as members of a specific community, and so may reject efforts designed to distance them from the central fact of their identity. This seperatist view may be prevalent within some disabled communities, depending on the local politics, and the reaction to some professional labelling of that "OCD" (person) or that "wheelie" (person).

The American Psychological Association style guide devotes a large section to the discussion of individuals with disabilities, and states that in professional writing following this style, the person should come first, and nominal forms describing the disability should be used so that the disability is being described, but is not modifying the person. For instance, "people with autism," "man with schizophrenia," "girl with paraplegia." Similarly, a person's adaptive equipment should be described functionally as something that assists a person, not as something that limits a person. "A woman who uses a wheelchair" -- she is not "in" it or "confined" to it, and she leaves it at the very least for sleeping and bathing. "A communication aid user." "A girl who uses a ventilator." "A man who takes antipsychotic medications to optimize his daily functioning."

Many people with disabilities especially dislike "disabled person" or "the disabled," as this implies that one's overall "personness" is defective, while "person with a disability" acknowledges the disability without implying anything about the overall person. However, according to the "social model", as it is society that disables a person, the reality of being a "person with a disability" is not really possible because it is impossible for an individual to "have" a society, therefore the term "disabled person" does not signify the lack of one's own "person-ness" but points an accusing finger at society for excluding those with impairments.

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Well-known people with disabilities

Many people with disabilities have contributed to society. These include:

Self Advocate Singer-Composer - Ian Dury (UK, 1942-2000), [[1]]
USA president Franklin Roosevelt (impaired movement as the result of polio),
classical composer Ludwig van Beethoven (deaf in later years),
King Richard III of England (childhood sickness allowed bones to malform, resulting in severe curvature of the back and extremely uneven legs)
musician Stevie Wonder (USA, blind)
jazz pianist Marcus Roberts (blind)
musician Ray Charles (USA, blind)
Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen (lost left arm in a car accident),
comedian, actor, author, and monologist Greg Walloch (cerebral palsy),
civil rights activist Helen Keller (deaf and blind),
Chilean civil rights activist persons with disabilities Carlos Kaiser (was born with incomplete upper and lower limbs)
Cole Porter, musical theater composer (lost legs after riding accident)
Classical actress Sarah Bernhardt (lost leg after a nasty fall)
Stephen Hawking (who has motor neurone disease and uses a wheelchair and speech synthesizer) UK,
Deng Pufang - has paraplegia
Nicaraguan guitar player, singer and songwriter Tony Melendez (born without arms)
Major league pitcher Jim Abbott (USA, born without a right hand)
Actress Marlee Matlin (deaf)
Joseph Merrick ("the Elephant Man", severe neurofibromatosis)
Christopher Reeve, USA actor famous for portraying Superman who became a quadriplegic after a horse-riding accident,
for others see list of people with disabilities.

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References

Michael Oliver, The Politics of Disablement (Macmillan Press, 1990).
Tom Shakespeare, Genetic Politics: from Eugenics to Genome, with Anne Kerr (New Clarion Press, 2002).

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