Barriers Of Disability

Superior Essays
Disability is a word that often brings negative connotations with its perceived meaning. According to the World Health Organization, disability is known to be a complex phenomenon, which has shaped our everyday interactions (2016). Being able-bodied allows you to fit into the societal definition of normal in which you are capable of your own individual achievements. However, being disabled creates barriers, which are often hard to cross and only leave society with forcing pity upon you. Of course, much is out of good will, yet from early depictions of disability, known examples dating as far back as the early 1930s, we are only left to frown upon it. Media plays the upper hand in how we construct our beliefs and values. As a society we collectively …show more content…
When a disabled person does something that we believe they were not capable of, we claim it to be overcoming an obstacle. However, with our societal conditions, it is more so of learning to live with the obstacle. Shakti and Abed do not challenge the societal barriers, but rather create solutions that help them continuously move forward. Disabled individuals are just as capable to live their lives as normally as the rest of us. However, this is often to an extent due to the barriers put in place by society.

Attitude Live, a New Zealand company, is one of the many organizations that have taken upon the task to educate citizens about living with a disability. Most documentaries allow disabled people to share their thoughts on the supposed barrier free society, which we live in. Cameras follow them over the course of a few months as they face the challenges at hand. Shakti Krishnan is one of the many interviewed for their ongoing series. The thirty minute documentary films Shakti’s progress as he prepares to move to Auckland for University all while living with Spina
…show more content…
Of course, both examples do this splendidly as they form their own solutions to live in the larger world. In the second documentary the audience is shown Haneen Abu Ayash, a 25 year old with a balance defect which leaves her unable to get a job. When asked about her feelings she states, “It 's not wrong to exercise my right or to know that I 'm like the rest of the people.” Unlike Shakti’s peers, Haneen’s social circle deems her unworthy of doing anything capable of, what is considered, a normal human being. Specifically, in third world countries the role of woman is to be a housewife, if she cannot complete even the simplest tasks then she is deemed worthless. Muna Zayed, 14 years old, also wishes to change amongst the community as her having a disability has left her without friend as they are too scared to play with

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis “Disability and the Media: Prescriptions for Change” In the media, there is a controversy on how the media portrays a person with a disability. Charles A. Riley II, article has a pointed view on how the media acts, and how they need to change their ways on viewing the world of disability. Riley writes this article to get his point across to the world that the media needs to be changed.…

    • 1320 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Wrong Depiction of Disability In Nancy Mairs essay entitled “Disabilities”, she explains many of the complications that disabled people face because of the depiction that is shown of them in the media. Nancy Mairs is a disabled person herself, suffering from multiple sclerosis. In the essay, Nancy Mairs shows how disabled people are constantly excluded from the rest of society, especially from the media. Throughout the essay, Mairs uses personal experience to describe the daily struggles that disabled people feel because of the negative portrayal disable people are given in the media. Additionally Mairs aims to make changes regarding the relationship between the media and people with disabilities.…

    • 1030 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Robert M. Hensel, a Guinness World Record holder with a disability, once said, “There is no greater disability in society, than the inability to see a person as more,” (Langtree). When thinking of people with disabilities, many individuals think of the things they cannot do rather than the achievements that they have made or the contribution that they have on humanity. Why is this the perspective that so many humans have? After reading Rosie Anaya’s “Mental Illness on television” and comparing it to Nancy Mairs’ “Disability,” despite these two essays conveying very similar ideas on the topic of how media negatively affects their reader or viewer’s outlook, each composition’s unique situation deserves closer examination. “Mental Illness on…

    • 1253 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As for the disability culture, we’ve seen cases that disabled people can be talented and become artists, writers. Disability culture help reframe people’s impression about disabled people. I want to provide this resource guide to the student group because I want to use this guide to raise more awareness about the disability rights and culture. I think it is important to let more students understand the things that disabled people went through and educate them. It is because they can apply their knowledge to real life situation in the future and help contribute to the disabled community.…

    • 856 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    False Positive Analysis

    • 1025 Words
    • 5 Pages

    A task or skill is seen as ordinary only when someone who is classified as “normal” is performing it. That same exact task or skill is then seen as extraordinary when someone who is “different” or disabled is performing it. In the article “False Positive” by Beth Haller, she claims that, “Society holds few expectations for people with disabilities - so anything they do becomes amazing”. Haller strongly believes that in today’s society a person who is disabled is set to be amazing no matter what they do, even if it is the most simple or ordinary of tasks. The film, 23 Blast, portrays that a person who is disabled is seen differently than a normal person because of his or her inabilities performing a task.…

    • 1025 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    According to the American Community Survey, “The overall rate of people with disabilities in the US population in 2015 was 12.6%” (2). Although this percentage may seem insignificant, that number translates to well over millions of citizens who have disabilities. Considering this, everyone is likely to encounter a person with a disability at some point in their lives, so it is important that they are aware of how to be inclusive and interact with them. They may be people, but the society has discriminated against them in the past. The good news is that there has been progress because of the awareness that has been brought to the issues.…

    • 912 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Public Health Assessment

    • 823 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In the recent past, societies have neglected persons with disabilities. Nonetheless, families and communities are slowly internalizing ways and means of assisting the disabled persons to lead a normal life. For example, policies designed to ensure that public and private institutions have facilities that can facilitate movement of physically handicapped has reduced the levels of stigmatization from the healthy…

    • 823 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Kafer discusses the depoliticization of disability as she analyses the billboards used by the Foundation for a Better Life’s (FBL) “Pass it On” series. This depoliticization occurs as the FBL shifts responsibility for “overcoming” a disability onto an individual rather than the society around them and frames a “focus on personal responsibility [that] precludes any discussion of social, political or collective responsibility” (Kafer 89). Through this focus the FBL portrays that sticking with “community” values will provide all that one needs to overcome a disability, however they fail to recognize that the community they are basing their values on is geared towards discrimination and ableist mindsets. These billboards are not alone in their…

    • 1003 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This is a powerful assertion that was argued using a combination of anecdotes and historical contexts. Susan Wendell describes three components to help articulate her argument. She first describes social factors that construct disability. This includes social conditions like war, availability of resources, pace of life, inaccessibility, and culture. Then she described the social deconstruction of disability where she expands how disability is socially constructed by social condition that cause, fail to prevent damage to people’s bodies.…

    • 894 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Harriet McBryde Johnson is a person with disabilities. She writes of the things people have said to her on the street such as: “I admire you for being out; most people would give up…if I had to live like you I think I’d kill myself.” Reading those word leaves one with a feeling of outraged confusion. Those word do not seem like something a nice polite person would say to an other. And its hard to put oneself in the head space where you would think to say that.…

    • 825 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Person First Language Reflection 1. What concepts did you find interesting or important from this article? I think the most important message that the article brings out is we need to treat the people who have disabilities as people like everyone first, but not as their medical diagnoses. They are the unique individual, they are a group of people that use their bodies in difference way, and they share the same rights as everybody. As people who don’t have disabilities, we shouldn’t use any words that contain with negative perception and stereotypes to describe the people who have disabilities.…

    • 1639 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Once a month I volunteer at a program for adult with disabilities. The program is designed for the volunteers and the participants to get together once a month, either at a group activity or on their own. Activities are determined by the program’s staff and have included making flowers out of paper, a cooking class, trips to restaurants, and playing board games. Recently the program staff contacted me and suggested that the woman I am partnered up with, Ros, and I spend our time together doing structured activities like bowling or going to the movies. Ros prefers to walk around a park or a shopping center and spend the time talking with me.…

    • 1203 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    One main reason Eleanor Roosevelt became interested in helping the handicapped, was when her husband Franklin became ill with polio in 1921.It was the hardest time of life from that moment on (1921-1945). Talking about Eleanor and her work with the handicapped cannot be done without mentioning and extraordinary man who has done astonishing things throughout his life. One man in particular comes to mind and his name is Henry Viscardi. Henry Viscardi was a man born with underdeveloped leg and learned by himself how to use his prosthetic leg for example, he had to learn how to walk, balance and train his muscels. This changed his whole outlook on life, himself and the world around him: he found himself in the world that he had dreamed of being in for so long.…

    • 766 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The medical model of disability is a model which identifies the impairment of a disabled person as the problem, of which, the aim is to fix or cure this impairment by means of medical professionals whereas the social model of disability is a model which identifies that society creates barriers in the environment that do not allow disabled people from participating fully and equally to those who are able bodied and looking at ways that can remove these barriers for disabled people. This essay will thus further discuss the medical model of disability in contrast with the social model of disability and i will illustrate this by using materials such as case studies and academic references that relate to the medical model and social model of disability.…

    • 719 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout the entire semester in Disabilities in Society, I found that the entire class was interesting especially having guest speakers. We learned about models of disability, language, media and the arts, autism, stereotypes and attitudes, mental health, eugenics, employment, universal design, education, and more. The most important things I learned in class was stereotyping and attitudes that still exist, education and language. In society, people view people with a disability differently, I learned that there are myths created by society.…

    • 957 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics