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Old Aug 12, 2010, 04:22 PM
Callista Callista is offline
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Member Since: Feb 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 218
Yep. Being an impairment doesn't make it intrinsically bad, though. Disability isn't something horrible; it just means you have to work around some weakness, whatever it happens to be. The only thing that makes a disability is that society isn't set up to work with your particular skill set; it's a gap between what you can do and whatever your society expects of the average person.

For example, if everyone were telepathic, then you would be disabled if you weren't; and you'd have to get accommodations that involved different methods of communication; for example, e-mail might be considered adaptive technology in that kind of a world. In our world, it's not a disability not to be telepathic, because nobody is and our society doesn't expect it of anyone.

So disability isn't really something that describes one person; it's more a state created by the combination of someone's skill set and the resources provided by their society. In an illiterate society, a dyslexic person isn't disabled; in a world where everyone can memorize entire books savant-style, the average person in our world would be disabled because he's got to study something to memorize it. That's what they call the "social model" of disability, and I think it's the most relevant one to everyday life.
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