What are needs of disabled?

Worldwide, men and women with the disabilities have relatively better life chance today than a decade or more ago. For one thing, disability has come out in to open. Disabled person have fought the practice of incarceration in residential homes and hospitals, a ‘treatment’ which was legitimate not only in the Middle east and Asia, but in the Western world.

There is a sense among the able-bodied that disabled people need their protection. Concern with the welfare of disabled people seen as ‘charitable’. Yet these breakthroughs can only be partially attributed to a change of heart on the part of the able-bodied decision makers at national and international level. Achievements and successes in advocacy work on disability can be attributed in the large measure to the effort and perseverance of groups of disabled people.

The disability movement is, in many countries, pro-active, strong, and involved in advocacy on the rights of the disabled. Disabled activists in the Middle East for instance, have become more vocal on essential issues such as right for disabled persons, representation, and full integration and independence. Fifteen years ago, such initiatives were in their infancy. Even now, such successes remain small-scale in comparison to the need; and possible only when lobbying groups have gained strength and negotiating power, and receive the goodwill and co-operation of the public.

However, people’s attitudes towards the disabled have been slow in changing world, towards the general discrimination meted out towards the disabled, the message form the non-disabled world, towards the disabled is that lives of the disabled persons are not worth living. Both men and women with disabilities are made to feel ‘deferent’; they fail to conform to a traditionally and socially agreed norm of beauty and strength. Pity, condescension, embarrassment, or a mixture of the three is the reactions most commonly encountered by men and women who have a disability, from non-disabled people. Many activists believe that v people are in some senses considered by able-bodied people, to be less than human.