(53rd Entry) Twenty years ago I wrote…

“Because of modern medicine and advances in technologies disabled individuals are “coming-out” for the first time in history.”

I wrote this in the late 80’s. The push for disability rights began to gain momentum in the early 1970’s with the first major piece of legislation called the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Part of this was probably a result of the Vietnam War and the number of Disabled Veterans returning during this time period. Disability rights took much of its early forms from the civil rights movement. Legislation focused on education, mainstreaming, accommodations, independent living, etc. The Americans with disabilities Act signed in 1990 was undoubtedly the most ambitious piece of legislation in terms of the issue of disability. All of these laws have helped disabled individuals by bringing attention to the issue of disability, opening doors and opportunities that might not have been otherwise available.

While legislation can open doors by removing barriers, providing education and independent living, etc. It doesn’t necessarily change people’s attitudes… disabled or non-disabled. It can be the beginning for disabled individuals to live a more fulfilling life. It is a first step.

Again, using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs… It seems to me that legislation is most effective for those lower needs… the “biological and physical needs”, “safety needs” and even “belongingness and love needs”. What about the higher needs… Esteem Needs and Self Actualization? You can’t legislate these needs either for disabled individuals or non-disabled individuals.

Ironically, shortly after the Americans with Disability Act was passed companies actually hired less disabled individuals. This can be interpreted in many different ways…

Disabled individuals are “coming-out” in greater numbers. What does this mean? Disabled individuals are a minority group in every sense of the term, but what does that mean and how are we different from other minority groups? First, anyone can “join this group” at any time via accident, injury, illness… (I just read something close to this, so I wanted to mention this and not be accused of plagiarizing.) It crosses all ethnic, cultural, economic, etc. groups. It can happen at any time.

Second, in many ways we’re a “new” group of individuals. What I mean by this is that many of us that are considered disabled would have died prior to “modern” medicine, technology. I also wrote twenty years ago… that disabled individuals are coming out and we have no conscious path to follow. There’s not a long history of individuals for us to pattern our lives after… role models. After all, FDR hid his disability from the American people.

It seems to me as we “mature” as a group, a minority… we’re responsible for taking ourselves to those higher needs… Self Esteem and Self Actualization! If we’ve learned anything from the civil rights movement… no one is going to do it for you. Doors might open, but how you respond to that door opening is totally dependent on you. Understanding how the issue of disability affects us as well as those around us I believe is the key to our future.

Over time I hope to explain this belief in more and more detail!