Reflection Paper On Disability

Douglas C. Baynton argues in his article, “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History”, that the concept of disability is culturally constructed and has been paid little to no attention to throughout history. He also argues that the term disability plays an important role in justifying discriminations against minority groups, based on gender, race, and ethnicity. He states that “Disability has functioned historically to justify inequality for disabled people themselves, but it has also done so for women and minority groups. That is, not only has it been considered justifiable to treat disabled people unequally, but the concept of disability has been used to justify discrimination against other groups by attributing disability to them.” (Baynton 94) He used women’s suffrage, African American freedom, and immigration restriction as examples to show how disability played an essential role in illustrating how minorities who were labeled as disabled were treated with discrimination. As they were labeled with disability, discrimination against them became justifiable, which ultimately proves that discrimination against disabled was thought as justifiable and were looked over.

Author of disability Nancy Mairs who’s a feminist and a cripple, has accomplished a lot in writing and teaching. Her remarkable personality shows in many of her essays especially in Disability which was first published in 1987 in the New York Times. In this essay, Nancy Mairs shows how disabled people are constantly excluded, especially from the media. By giving out facts and including her personal experiences, Mairs aims for making some changes regarding the relationship between the media and people with disabilities. Mairs thesis is shown implicitly in the first

The article “introducing disability Studies” by Ronald J. Berger was an eye opener in uncovering the past history of negative stigma associated with having a disability. Through history people have felt the need to stare at people with disabilities or to turn away in fear of maybe contracting the “disease”. This negative attitude was positively reinforced by ordinances such as the Chicago “ugly law” in which a person with physical deformities would have to pay a fine for simply being too “disgusting” looking to other citizens. This law was in place from 1880 to 1973, which is pretty recent in history. However there are positive glimpse in history when it came to uncovering and defining disabilities. Men like Leo Kanner and Asperger have dedicated

In 1817, the American School for Deaf was founded in Hartford Connecticut. This was the first school for disabled children in the Western Hemisphere. Although this was not the beginning of the Disability Rights Movement, it was a start to society, making it possible for people to realize that there were those with disabilities out there in the world and something had to be done. The Disability Rights Movement fought for equal access, opportunity, consideration, and basic human respect along with dignity for those born blind, deaf, or anyone with other forms of physical or mental disability. The purpose of social movements is to provide social change regarding a specific issue in which a particular group of

Author of disability Nancy Mairs who’s a feminist and a cripple, has accomplished a lot in writing and teaching. Her remarkable personality shows in many of her essays especially in Disability which was first published in 1987 in the New York Times. In this essay, Nancy Mairs shows how disabled people are constantly excluded, especially from the media. By giving out facts and including her personal experiences, Mairs aims for making some changes regarding the relationship between the media and people with disabilities. Mairs thesis is shown implicitly in the first and last

Usability is a critical portion of web design that one must be ever mindful of when constructing websites. Whether creating a personal web space or building multiple pages for a large corporation, it is the burden of the designer to guarantee people can access that content. According to the United Nations, disabled people compose roughly 10 percent of the world’s population (United Nations, 2010). Many regulations and standards have been set forth to provide disabled people with the same opportunities to access content available on the World Wide Web, as it is most of the World’s population.

At the beginning of the semester, I wrote what I thought was the definition of disability. Disability is “a socially constructed idea that being different makes you unable to be useful or valued in society” I wrote. This answer, while not wrong, only scratched the surface of how I define disability now. As a disclaimer, I do not believe I now have a full or encompassing definition of disability, but I do believe I have a better one.

The three colleges I chose to compare and contrast for disability services are Swarthmore College, Bowdoin College and Haverford College.

In my essay you will learn about Jamaican and Haitian culture and their outlooks on disability. Laster on you will see the comparisons between those two cultures and the American culture. I selected the Jamaican culture because it has always been a dream of mine to visit Jamaica. I selected Haiti because I am not well educated on their culture.

The dominant model of disability for the majority of the 20th century was the medical model. The medical model’s emphasis is on impairment; this is the cause of the disadvantage disabled individuals face and therefore the site of interventions (Crow, 1996). It is based in the biomedical and clinical. It views disability as a personal tragedy, an idea which is often implicit in work around disability based on the medical model. (Oliver, 1990).

ICF stands for International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health. It views disability in terms of body functions and structures, activities, participation and important contextual factors, as stated in the ICF PowerPoint presentation (Francaviglia). At the top of the diagram, shown in the ICF PowerPoint presentation, the health condition is described as any disability, disorder, injury, or trauma, but also includes important conditions such as pregnancy or aging (Francaviglia). Moving to the next level of the diagram, the body structures may include the specific limb or organ deficiency, functioning defect, or impairment from the health condition. These body structures effect “the execution of a task or action by individual”

be protected by the A.D.A. this person must have a long standing record of this

It was warm that day. I walked to the bus with my hands shaking and eyes wide. I knew this was going to be a big day for me but I had no idea that Saturday would be the first day of the rest of my life. At first glance, this may seem like a big statement but my first day of volunteering with Camp A.N.C.H.O.R. (Assisting the Needs of Citizens with Handicaps through Organized Recreation) sent me on a journey with social justice that I am still taking. At 16 years old I thought I was going to go in and change lives but, the individuals I met ended up changing mine. I didn’t know what I was doing or much about the populations I was dealing with. However, I did know the individuals I was working with were incredibly funny, smart, talented, and had so much going for them except for one thing, their disability. I realized that these individuals were being portrayed as incompetent, unintelligent, and incapable because of one small aspect of their life. After speaking to some of their parents over the course of two years, I realized the immense difficulties these families go through. My initial reaction was anger, and then it dawned on me. If I want people to treat me like an individual and give me full human rights, have access to a public education, not receive discrimination during job interviews, they should have the exact same rights. This is not something they choose to take on each day. It is a part of their life that they deal with everyday as so many of us do with other

In reviewing the required videos and reading on low incidence, there were a large range of how it affected individuals are processed by individuals without disabilities, these videos demonstrates what it is like to try to be normal with a disability. The first video called, Autistic Basketball Player,” presented an enlighten outcome, that people should not assume that individual with disability are not able to contribute to a job or sport. Jason Mcelwain’s a young man with Autism that id given to chase an individual with a disability self-worth is just as valuable as the rest of the team when it come to sport. The second video called, “Breaking Barriers of Autism: The power of Kindness and friendship present how individuals with disabilities are able to leap bounties id one person will acknowledge them. In his lecture he was able to present insight on how lonely it is on another side of the disability spectrum.

Chapter 7 was enlightening and the chapter I was able to relate with the most thus far. For example, one part of the text stated that educators and families often set low expectations for students with disabilities. I can relate to this personally. When I was in the IDEA program, my classes were rarely challenging and my teachers generally set low expectations for my peers and me. I believe the reason for this was to not stress the students or push them past their limits. However, my best teachers were those who did push me to my limits, so I could set a new limit the following semester.