"Your abilities lie in the places people usually overlook, so you've been convinced you don't have any at all. But you're smart, and you're capable, and if people struggle to see that, it's their problem, not yours." - Talia Hibbert - Act Your Age, Eve Brown
Ableism can take many forms including:
- Lack of compliance with disability rights laws like the ADA
- Segregating students with disabilities into separate schools
- Failing to incorporate accessibility into building design plans
- Buildings without braille on signs, elevator buttons, etc.
- Building inaccessible websites
- The assumption that people with disabilities want or need to be ‘fixed’
- Using disability as a punchline, or mocking people with disabilities
- Refusing to provide reasonable accommodations
What can we do to recognize and avert ableism?
- Believe people when they disclose a disability
- Similarly, don’t accuse people of ‘faking’ their disability
- Listen to people when they request an accommodation
- Don’t assume you know what someone needs
- Never touch a person with a disability or their mobility equipment without consent
- Keep invasive questions to yourself
- Don’t speak on behalf of someone with a disability unless they explicitly ask you to