When is a handicap a disability?

 When is a handicap a disability?

 

 

In 1975, the Education of All Handicapped Children (EHA) was signed into law.  The world for kids with handicaps changed on that day.  No longer could schools exclude any child because the child had a handicap that the school chose not to serve.  All children regardless of disability had the right to a free and appropriate public education.

You will notice that in the above paragraph the word “handicap” was used repeatedly to refer to a child who was not typical.  That, too, changed in 1990 when the name of the EHA was changed to the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA).  Benefits to children with disabilities were improved and so was the language referring to these children.

But the underlying question is, other than vocabulary what else changes when a person with a handicap is now called a person with a disability.

Well, the answer is, it depends.  A handicap does not need to be a disability.  A person with a disability is also a person with many other abilities.  We can concentrate on the disabilities or we can choose to extol what our abilities are.

Viktor Frankl is a Holocaust survivor.  He has written multiple books but the one that is probably read most often is Man’s Search for Meaning.  He says we can discover the meaning of life in three different ways.   We can create a work or do a particular deed.  We experience something or some one person.  And finally, by the attitude we take toward unspeakable suffering.   Surely this was a man who has endured “unspeakable suffering”.  Yet, he says that even though almost everything can be taken from a person, what cannot be taken is the attitude toward that suffering we each choose to take.

So while a handicap may definitely cause difficulty and suffering, each individual may chose to make that suffering a disability while recognizing the abilities that are also within that person.

A person on the Autism spectrum has the ability to pay very close attention to details, a great skill if you wish to be a programmer.  A person with cognitive limitations may have a great ability to see through the pomp and circumstance of life and see the true person.

Each of us has many disabilities.  Each of us also has many abilities.  It is when we attend to the abilities that our disabilities are less likely to become handicaps.