I remember sitting in an all-area meeting when my friend Dave approached me to see if I would be interested in speaking to his middle school classes about living life as a person with a disability. Dave told me that his students were learning about different cultures and how different people lived. He had already had one of my Club kids speak a few weeks earlier about being blind and thought I would do a great job talking about life with a physical disability. I had as part of my job spoken to small groups of people but, I had never spoken to middle school students before. Never one to back down from a challenge, I agreed to do it.
Arriving early, I found Dave sitting in his classroom and we talked briefly about how each class would go. He would take attendance and set the stage for me and off we would go. I talked briefly about the specifics of cerebral palsy and briefly about my personal history. I knew from speaking with adults that mixing personal experience with questions was how you hold people’s attention and make it a meaningful experience for the listener. Now, if you have ever told a young person you can ask me any question, you know that you are likely to be asked anything from do you have a pet to have you ever been sad? They are not like an adult who often ask you measured and carefully crafted questions. I think both Dave and I were surprised by how attentive they were and the depth of their questions. I knew when a parent approached me a year or so later and said that their child was in one of those classes and I had made a real impact on them that answering people’s questions in an honest and open way really can change a person’s view and even their lives in some cases.
While I think blogging about my life experiences can really help people, I also want to address questions people often have especially if your life is impacted by a person with a disability. And so, from time to time I want to address questions that I have been asked over the years and share with you my answer to that question. It’s important to say here that my experience and the answers I give are mine alone and what I found that works for me. You may very well have a different answer and idea and that is great. Your circumstances may be different as well has your disability. My hope and my passion is to provide some answer and that answer may be a springboard that causes you to reflect and answer the question or questions for yourself.
Some questions I pose may take an entire blog other questions are short and there may be more than one question. Shall we dive right in?
How many people are there in the world who have a disability?
Often able-bodied people have this idea that because they don’t see or encounter many people who are classified as has having a disability that the number is rather small. According to the World Bank they estimate about 15% of the world’s population have some type of disability. The world health organization estimates the number at 10%. They can only estimate the number because in some parts of the world the disabled are a hidden population. According to research done in 2018 the total world population is 7.594 billion people in the world. If you take the low estimate of 10% you can see that the number is enormous of people with a classified disability.
I hear people using different terms when talking about a person with a disability, I don’t know what term to use?
Growing up the most common terms I heard where he is “crippled” and he is “handicap” these words were socially acceptable at the time. By the mid-70s the culture began to use the word “disabled.” In the 80s and onward people started using words like “differently abled.” As you can see terminologies have changed over the course of time and as people grow in their understanding, we create different words to describe a whole host of disabilities. One thing I learned traveling to different places is that out dated terms like handicap or crippled are still used and socially acceptable. An example would be when I went to Germany people referred to me as handicap and could not understand why I did not use a wheelchair. So, we need to understand the words the culture uses to describe people with disabilities.
The issue for me is not the terminology a person uses to describe me. The issue really is the attitude used when describing me and when the terminology used takes away from seeing me as a person or seeing my ability or contribution I can make. I remember sitting behind a very elderly person and hearing him say to his wife where is the crippled boy. Now, I could have gotten extremely angry but I needed to understand the culture he grew up in again crippled was a commonly used term and I was very young according to him. The safest way to find out what terminology is acceptable is to ask the person themselves. I like the terminology “I am a person with a disability or I am a person with cerebral palsy.”
I hope that you got something from these first questions and answers. I will from time to time answer other questions and so I hope you will return. I have linked a PDF which talks more about terms that are currently being used if you are interested in going deeper. Thanks for spending time with me today.
Thoughts? E-mail: francisearly@francisearly.com
Go Back To The Blog