Inspired by the late Alan Reich, the first person to address the general assembly of the United Nations from a wheelchair, 1981 was designated The Year of the Disabled Person. It recognized that millions of blind, deaf, paralyzed, and mentally challenged men, women and children in developing nations were shunned by their governments, ignored by their neighbors, and often abandoned by their families.
In the United States at that time, a White House Conference on The Disabled Person, designed and directed by persons with disabilities, addressed issues of parity in education and employment. It recommended workplace accommodations, such as audio instruction for the blind and visual instruction for the deaf, to enable qualified persons with disabilities to be employed in factories, shops and offices.
Reich, a brilliant scholar fluent in several languages, including Russian, had been an All American track star at Dartmouth. He became quadriplegic from an accident while picnicking with his family. He’d been a corporate executive, but after rehabilitation formed the National Organization on Disability and devoted his life to helping other persons with disabilities.
But it would take another decade of unceasing effort to pass the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), and even today, compliance with its provisions often meets with resistance.
Progress has come slowly, with no easy victories. Twelve years after passage of the ADA, James D. Wolfensohn, then president of the World Bank and former board chairman of the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies, said the lives of 400 million persons with disabilities in developing countries were further burdened by poverty, isolation and despair. “Stigma prohibits them from going to school, finding work or even being visible in their own neighborhoods,” he said.
Vaccines available in industrialized nations prevent childhood diseases, such as measles and polio, but those diseases continue to plague children in developing countries. A partnership between Rotary International and The World Health Organization has greatly reduced polio cases throughout the world, but polio still disables thousands of children every year who have not received vaccines. Sadly, misinformation plays a role. Some parents have been conditioned to fear vaccines and prohibit their children from receiving them.
Stigma has burdened persons with disabilities generation after generation. Sometimes with brutal consequences. In Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, the Third Reich systematically murdered thousands upon thousands of helpless disabled persons. In less barbaric form, stigma is always deeply hurtful and demeaning.
On the Mid Shore, an Anti-Stigma Coalition has held annual events for many years to reduce stigma and open doors for persons with disabilities. The disAbility Coalition of Talbot County is a staunch advocate for improving public transportation and accessibility. The Hugh Gregory Gallagher Motivational Theatre dramatizes real life experiences to educate the public through entertainment. All of these efforts are commendable and deserve support.
But stigma is a daily burden that cannot be addressed by occasional exposure to those who suffer from it. Their lives are restricted in ways able-bodied persons could not imagine. So a constant drum-beat is needed to defeat stigma’s presence. The words we use when we speak of persons with disabilities, the acceptance we demonstrate, the employment opportunities we provide, and the personal responsibility we assume for making sure a neighbor or fellow parishioner with a disability can get to church, attend the theatre, or dine out is important. It’s a matter of reducing stigma person to person, day by day.
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Carlton E. Spitzer
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