Category: Uncategorized

Defining Disabilities, Part I

What makes a disability a disability?

Disabilities can be intimidating to discuss since it is a subject that a majority of people lack knowledge about. Most people have been conditioned to think about disability in a certain way or as being in a certain circumstance. In other words, disability is seen as a black and white subject.

In reality, disability is difficult to define. The meaning of it has changed so many times throughout history. Women were once considered to be disabled in comparison to a man. Similarly, people of color were considered disabled in comparison to white people, which was backed by scientific racism. Today it is commonly considered that people are disabled by the limits of their body in a medical way.

However, the medical model isn’t an accurate measurement for disabilities. Disabilities are not defined by a person’s body but by the culture around them. Let’s use an example to demonstrate this. John is a basketball player. He is the best player on his high school team and helped to win the regional championship. Despite all of his talent, John will never be accepted to play on a professional basketball team. Why?

John is 5’5” tall. The average professional basketball player is 6’7” tall. No matter how fast John is or how high he can jump or how well he can dribble, the professional basketball world will see his height as a disability on the court.

That’s one example of how disabilities are culturally constructed. This idea is referred to as the social model of disabilities. People become disabled by barriers in society, not by the difference in their bodies. As an example, a wheelchair user isn’t disabled by the use of a wheelchair, but rather they become disabled when the only way into a building is a flight of stairs. Or another way of thinking about it, a wheelchair user becomes disabled by a culture that relies on stairs instead of ramps. Another example is a Deaf person isn’t really disabled until they put on a movie only to find there are no closed captions. Or to draw a page from my experiences in the pandemic, I’ve become more disabled because the use of face masks prevents me from being able to lipread. There are many more examples I could give on this subject. But what about things we don’t normally think of as being disabilities?

I once gave a presentation in a college class on disability studies. At the beginning of my presentation, I did a poll. “By raise of hand, who here has a visual disability?” About four or five hands went up. I then rephrased my question: “Who here uses glasses or contacts?” There were chuckles and more than half the class raised their hands.

Glasses and contacts are examples of assistive technology. Assistive technology refers to anything used by people with disabilities in order to perform functions that might otherwise be difficult or impossible. Wheelchairs, canes, glasses, medications, hearing aids, are all examples of assistive technology. But so are pencil grips, graphic organizers, voice recognition, spell checkers, fidget spinners, and shoe inserts. If you’ve ever used an elevator, ramp, or escalator—you’ve used assistive technology.

Let’s take it a step further and recall infomercials or “As-Seen-On-TV” ads with the over-reacting actors showcasing useless products, such as a banana slicer or an egg cracker or juice bottle pourer. These products are actually designed for people with disabilities. An egg cracker designed for people who have one hand. A banana slicer for those who don’t have the dexterity to use a knife safely. A juice bottle pourer for people who struggle to hold heavy objects.

Because the market for disabilities is so small, these products have to be marketed to the world at large. The reason the actors in the commercials are so overly-clumsy is that they are trying to mimic disabilities without being obvious about it. Since most people have had no idea about that fact, that means these actors are doing a good job. With that said, assistive technology is meant to help empower people with tools and independence. You’ve likely benefited from assistive technology throughout your life, regardless if you have a disability or not.

Disabilities get even more complicated when you take into account temporary disabilities. Temporary disabilities, as the name suggests, are disabilities that are temporary such as a sprained ankle, broken arm, a concussion, among other things. For the six weeks that a person has a broken leg, they will use a cast, wheelchair, crutches, ramps, and elevators rather than stairs. Then there are the six months of physical therapy after the fracture heals. During all that time they are disabled. Another example of this is a dental cavity that causes a person to chew on one side of their mouth rather than both sides.

This applies in stories as well. How many times have you read a book or watched a show where the main character gets injured, but bounces back in the next scene? A character takes an arrow through the shoulder, but in a couple of weeks it is back to normal? I think we can all agree that’s not realistic writing. So, what are the long-lasting implications of of their injury? What forms of assistive technology might they use while they recover?

By now, hopefully, you are starting to see disabilities aren’t a black and white spectrum. In a lot of ways, everyone has different disabilities in the same way that everyone has different abilities. The meaning of this: the story of disabilities is the story what it means to be human. That’s why it is important to think about disability.

Welcome to Listen Up

An Introduction to the story and the person behind the blog

Hello Reader!

My name is Rachel Spencer. I am a Deaf writer and aspiring author. I started this blog in my senior year of college to help writers and educators: learn more about disabilities, why representation is so important, and how to incorporate disabilities into their writing. But I hope there’s something here for everyone.

Each week* I write and post an article. Every other week the article will be about disabilities in general and how to apply disability studies into your writing. In between these articles, I write a “Book Report” analyzing a book, movie, or TV show under a disability lens. These posts will serve to provide teachers with examples of disabled literature that they can include in the classroom. For writers, they provide different ways to incorporate (or how not to incorporate) disabilities into their own works.

I started this blog because I notice that the subject of disabilities rarely comes up in the classroom. In addition, I experienced growing up without stories or heroes that were like me. The lack of representation had a severe impact on me growing up.

Like many who are born or become disabled young, I grew up isolated from the disabled community. I thought I was alone. I remember searching the library for stories with characters who were deaf like me, but not being able to find anything. At eleven, I remember sitting on the steps at recess and wondering what my future would be like. Would I be able to have a career? Would people see me for the things I could do or would they see my limitations instead?

How was it that at eleven years old, I could already feel and describe the effects of ableism in my life? I believe it was because I never had a hero like me to look up to. I never saw myself in a Disney princess or in a superhero. I never saw myself in the dolls on the shelves at Target. Not in any advertisement. Nowhere. I thought I was the only deaf person on the face of the planet. You can imagine how lonely that feels.

All that changed the first time I came across a deaf character. I bawled for an hour straight. To sweeten the deal, the character was in the best series I had ever read. I was so happy that I couldn’t see the words on the page through my tears. Here was someone like me. For the first time in my life, I had a hero. For once—I didn’t feel so lonely. It was something that should have changed my life for the better.

Five pages later, the deaf character was killed.

That’s when a lot of things clicked for me. First and foremost, deaf people weren’t worth writing stories about. That was the only conclusion I could come to. Second, that meant I was worthless because I was deaf. Third . . . while it wasn’t the first time, I considered suicide.

All of these, of course, I now know to be lies. Deaf people, or a person with any kind of disability, are more than worthy to be in stories. My experiences prove that, in fact, it is a necessity to write stories with disabled characters. I firmly believe that if I had characters I could relate to and look up to, who were like me, I wouldn’t have spent years of my life battling depression.

Over the last several years I have been learning more and more about what it means to be disabled. I still feel new to all of this and I imagine some part of me will always feel that way because of how much there is to learn. Of course, I never would have had the courage to start this blog if it weren’t for a good friend of mine, Stephanie Hurzeler, who once said to me something along the lines of “Because you taught me so much about disabilities, I wasn’t so afraid when I got my own.”

So here I am, learning, and I hope that I can help you learn too. I want to give writers more tools they can use to include diversity and I want to give educators a place they can learn about disabilities to bring up the subject in the classroom. I can’t build a better world by myself. It’ll take all of us working together.

*As of May 23, 2021, I have switched to writing one post every other week instead of weekly. This allows me to have a better work-life balance, enable me to work on other writing projects while continuing to write quality blog posts for you. Thank you for your understanding and continued support!