The column article written January, 2001.
‘If you ain’t got green spots or missing body parts then inability is simply a lack of effort.’
– Western Society.
People with visible disabilities often complain that people assume they can’t do things they are perfectly capable of. The general public is commonly accused of making unwarranted assumptions of mental impairment in people with cerebral palsy; of assuming that blind people aren’t competent to navigate without a sighted person to lead them and so on. The main fight, for the visibly disabled, seems to be proving that they can do things against a general assumption that they can’t.
But just as damaging as assuming people can’t do things, is assuming that they can. The assumption that a person without a walking stick is able to stand in a queue at the bank, or at a supermarket checkout, is damaging to people with invisible disabilities. In the current climate where the general public is ignorant about invisible disabilities, how many healthy-looking twenty-somethings would have the guts to go up to the clerk and say, “I’m disabled, I can’t stand in the queue, please help me” … and how many clerks, encountering the same situation, would think that the healthy-looking twenty-something was just too lazy to wait in the queue and tell them off?
People with invisible disabilities often report getting dirty looks or derogatory comments when parking in a disabled car park – even with the appropriate stickers on their car. The automatic assumption is that the driver is either lazy or too stupid to see the disabled parking signs, nobody stops to think that an invisible disability might be involved.
It is difficult for people with invisible disabilities to receive disability benefits and other entitlements. The judgments for these benefits and entitlements is all too often made by somebody “official” who only sees you for a short consultation and if you appear “too healthy” then your case can be lost. In Australia the current government is talking of scrapping the report of the treating doctor altogether and going simply on the report from a short interview with one of their “expert” assessors. This is patently absurd, to think the first impression of an “expert” to be more accurate than the patients’ own doctors! The policy, if implemented, will obviously rely on first impressions and therefore discriminate against those whose disabilities are harder to see.
Dancer Verpermann, whose wife has an invisible disability, has discussed this cultural blindness with me: “Jenn and I call it the ‘green spot’ effect. If you haven’t (for example) got green spots, then people assume that what is wrong with you is (a) minor, and (b) temporary and (c) not inherently limiting. An inconvenience.”
The varieties of disabilities – both visible and invisible – are close to limitless. Almost no combination of abilities and disabilities is impossible. Look beyond the shell a person wears and ask them what they can and can’t do and society will be a much better place.
Recent Comments