When I meet people and they hear the things I am doing I often get complimented on how well I am doing for myself or how amazing it is that I have been able to accomplish so much or that I am an inspiration to them because of how I live my life. I am very grateful for all the experiences and resources I have, yet somehow I find the responses I get from people are usually out of proportion to my accomplishments. Nothing I am doing stands out as particularly exceptional yet that is how I am sometimes treated by people and I have a sneaking suspicion of the reason. My wheelchair.
I started using a wheelchair when I was 18. Immediately I noticed the changed perceptions and expectations that people had for me based only on the sight of the wheelchair. Before I started using a wheelchair I never was told it was "so great you am able to go to college" or "it's really impressive that you can drive". Those activities are considered fairly normal for a teenager or college student in the U.S. and yet as soon as I acquired a visible disability people's expectations about my abilities changed and all of a sudden it was noteworthy and impressive for me to accomplish the same activities that were before seen as "normal". Those limited expectations have continued to follow me throughout my college career, my sport involvement, travel, graduate school, internship and employment. Everywhere I go I surpass people's limited expectations for me as a person with a disability simply by doing normal, ordinary things. It is frustrating to say the least.
People with disabilities historically have had more limited opportunities to pursue regular life activities- education, employment, recreation- but it's not necessarily because of their disability. It's because society is not designed in a way for people with disabilities to be able to fully participate and so those opportunities often were not available to them. When people don't have access to accessible transportation, affordable healthcare, adaptive equipment or reliable attendant/interpreter services people with disabilities are not able to fully participate in society. It's not because we walk, talk or think differently.
I am thankful that I have had the resources, accommodations and services to allow me to pursue higher education, to adapt my vehicle so I can drive, to purchase or borrow sports equipment, to be matched with a service dog and to live in an accessible house. With the right adaptations I can do pretty much anything. And so can other people with disabilities.
If you've stuck with me this long, I'd like to challenge you to recognize that people with disabilities accomplishing ordinary things shouldn't be surprising or inspiring. It should be the norm. Disability should not change our expectations about what someone can achieve or accomplish.
So, that's me. An ordinary human going about my ordinary life in a not-so-ordinary way. I hope you check back in again to learn more about me and also to learn more about what it's like to be a person with a disability living in a society that has a lot of assumptions and ignorance about disability. Hopefully the time you spend reading my blog will give you new perspective on disability through the encounters I experience every day. Thanks for reading!
