When I’ve been unable to communicate with most people through speech through speech but otherwise able to handle language in some respect, communication through writing has been extremely important.

When I’ve been unable to communicate with most people through language, the existence of people who are able to accurately interpret my thoughts for other people have been extremely important.

When I’ve been unable to walk, manual wheelchairs have been extremely important.

When I’ve been unable to get out of bed, motorized tilt-in-space wheelchairs, and computers with programs that allow the same sense of exploration that taking walks can create, have been extremely important.

Cats give me a level of friendship that only a few humans are even capable of providing, as the majority of humans are unable to interact with me on the same complex level that cats are.

(Most humans have brain programming that teaches them that I am someone other than I am. They don’t view that as a limitation, because most of them have it and it’s heavily accommodated to the point they don’t even notice it’s there. But I certainly notice it’s there, because it prevents their full social interaction with me, as much as any limitation of mine prevents full social interaction with them. Some humans aren’t like that, I welcome their contact as much as I do that of cats. But it’s only among cats that I can feel peaceful and interact meaningfully with a large group at once, which means that despite a severe cat allergy, I absolutely love spending time among large groups of cats.)

As far as cooking, eating, driving, and all those sorts of things, I don’t understand why it matters so much who does those things. When I’m capable of them, I do it. When I’m not, someone else does. I’m a client of a large service system that allows those adjustments to be made constantly based on the shifts in my own abilities.

People who just say it’s “obvious” that two total inabilities to do something are utterly and completely different from each other, tend to strike me as people who haven’t seen enough different societies to see how simple differences in what is automatically accommodated by a society affect what is seen as a severe disability and what is see as a simple and unremarkable difference between two people. I have seen enough different cultures to see so many ways of doing things that yes, it does matter. There are societies where to be what most people consider “retarded” means nothing. Some of my relatives come from such societies, some relatives of staff people who’ve worked for me come from such societies. One such person described her uncles in a village in Mexico who have families, jobs, and everything else, and are not considered disabled at all, despite the fact that in the USA they’d be called retarded and put in group homes and utterly prevented from having those things. You can’t truthfully say that cognitive impairments can’t be accommodated if you’ve seen that difference between two societies that treat them so differently.

And to me, what the “severe” in “severe disability” actually means, is the distance between how the person is built, and what the society they live in is willing to automatically accommodate (yes, I subscribe to something close to the social model of disability—seeing the differences I’ve seen between different societies, I can’t help it). That’s why a “severe disability” in one society can vanish in a society that treats that person’s particular version of human variation as normal.

This isn’t an academic game of words to me. I’ve seen it. And I’ve lived things my society views as congenital impairments, acquired impairments, progressive impairments, and things that sort of break the mold for all of those things. My level of happiness has varied throughout my life. So has the level of difference between my body’s functioning (this includes my mind) and the expected functioning of someone’s body in the society I live in. But these two things have absolutely no correlation with each other. There’s no direct correlation, and there’s no reverse correlation, there’s just plain no correlation.

So I can state from a position of experience (in all probability, of more experience than the commenters who believe otherwise than me on this) that with a tiny number of exceptions (that are almost undoubtedly not what people think they are, so don’t go there, it’s private) it is not how my body functions that determines how happy I am. There are many frequent commenters on this blog who know me personally and can back me up on this.

And one of my offline friends is (and prefers to call herself this, rather than any euphemisms) both autistic and retarded (and has multiple physical conditions as well, and has a speech impairment), and totally agrees with me on this matter—it is how other people treat her, and the level of accommodation she gets, that determine how happy she is, and what she has access to as well. She finds it as patronizing and outright nasty as I do to be told she just needs to be changed into a “normal” person in order to be happy, or to be told that she isn’t really very impaired if she’s as comfortable in her own skin as I am in mine and non-disabled people are in theirs.

Our existence is of course, very inconvenient to people who are dead certain that their own differences from the norm are what cause their unhappiness (and whose differences from the norm are quite often less extreme than ours, all of which completely fouls up their worldview on disability). But we’re going to keep on existing.

“Think about things like speaking, understanding how to use language, using basic home appliances, how to shop, remembering to do things, driving, reading, writing, etc.”

Then , yes , that’s exactly what adaptations and accomodations do. Try asking an OT or SaLT what they do for a living.”

Again, Dedj, tell me how “adaptations” get rid of impairments in those skills. Tell me if they even do. I want such a massive possible claim of yours to be clarified. Tell me what adaptations are capable of achieving, instead of evading me with your arrogance.

If accomodations and adaptations don’t work, you’d think with all the people involved that someone would have noticed (although people do notice and debate over ABA etc). But no, Billy “doesn’t think so” so they must be idiots. No evidence, no arguement, just “doesn’t think so”.

Billys’ “I don’t agree with it” doesn’t cut it. We don’t want his clearly biased ‘opinion’ on what is out there, laughably dismissing refinement and development as some proof of lack of validity. He needs to start giving the ‘validation’ he selfishly demands of others but refuses to supply.

He has given no sign of ability to do this, and has even stated lack of experience, skill and desire to learn.

Concern troll is an accurate description.

I apologise to anyone who has had to sift through all this to get any good out of it. This could have become a decent debate over the core essence of disability, but it went south. For my part in that I must apologise again.
———————

I’m not going to guide you by the hand through this, as you seem to be accustomed to and appear to be expecting. It’s downright rude of you to have proudly done bugger all research but still expect to be taken seriously.”

I’ve got a feeling that Billy Cresp is a concern troll: someone who puts forward ‘concerns’ but refuses to take on board anything put forward be others in the thread as information to answer or counter those ‘concerns’.

Such a person is likely to be wasting our time.

Arguments saying we all have limitations fail to recognize this.

There are those who will not acquire the necessary skills to live high-quality lives. I’ll never hold the record for the 100 meters. The two things are not comparable.

I don’t agree with it.

You’re entitled to not agreeing with it, and you can even propose your own model of how things should be done if you’re so inclined. Certainly, no one said it’s a perfect model. But the reality is that the model is used and millions of people depend on it every day.

It’s kind of like not agreeing with education. Well, OK, what do you propose instead?

“Think about things like speaking, understanding how to use language, using basic home appliances, how to shop, remembering to do things, driving, reading, writing, etc.”

Then , yes , that’s exactly what adaptations and accomodations do. Try asking an OT or SaLT what they do for a living.”

Dedj, are such adaptations really effective at making those things possible? Seriously. I’d be amazed. I wonder how they work.

I don’t care what literature the social model of disability and such things can be found in. I don’t agree with it. I don’t necessarily have to adhere to whatever someone in the social sciences part of academia says, as there seldom is a consensus about what they claim and views put out by them don’t stay the same over time. What is so lacking in my understanding of social systems?

I’ve looked at some literature about the social model of disability before, and when I see different people talking about it like it’s solid fact, they don’t consistently use the same terminology when referring to the concepts that they mean. So I doubt there is a strong agreement about the validity of the social model among those professionals who would know about it.

“A characteristic only becomes an impairment when that characteristic is in demand, the impairment only become a ‘disability’ if one would otherwise be expected to have that characteristic, and that characteristic is of importance.” Lots of capabilities fit those criteria and aren’t to be ignored.

“Models of this mechanism have been referred to. Examples and mechanisms for attitudes affecting atributes, and thus impairments, thus disabilities, have been given.” None of them were valid.

He’s obviously extremely confused, as evidenced by his constant switching of words and terms and irrelevant counter questions to responses.

A characteristic only becomes an impairment when that characteristic is in demand, the impairment only become a ‘disability’ if one would otherwise be expected to have that characteristic, and that characteristic is of importance.

Bear in mind – numerous examples of inabilitiies that are not also disabilities have been given. Examples of how context sets impairment have been given. References and examples of how adaptations, accomodations and attitudes can change demand and therefore definition of ‘disability’ and ‘impairment’ have been given.

Models of this mechanism have been referred to. Examples and mechanisms for attitudes affecting atributes, and thus impairments, thus disabilities, have been given.

Basically all of Billy’s concerns have been addressed, with examples given. Advice on further reading has been given repeatedly.

The exchange just before your comment was personal and there seemed to be a request that I show or prove qualifications of impairment and character as to why my view was relevant rather than on the merit of what I said. That was in part due to how I had gotten off track from the discussions content. I never see that as leading to a productive discussion. The points being made are worth pursuing without interfering personalities.