Portrayal of Disability: Disability as Inspiration

Have you watched Speechless?

Inspiration Porn “It’s a portrayal of people with disabilities as one-dimensional saints who only exist to warm the hearts and open the minds of able-bodied people.”

Stella Young - TedTalk

Other examples of inspiration porn The Amazing Parent The Heroic Professional The Benevolent Classmates

Disability doesn't make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does. Stella Young Disability doesn't make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does…. I believe it is important for us to keep questioning. Thinking about disability has evolved over the centuries and continues to evolve. If we don’t challenge our own perspectives, it is easy to become out of step with current thinking. One question we might ask is “who decides” where the leading edge of thinking is? Who is telling the story? Who has the mic? I won’t ask who identifies as a person with a disability and who does not, but I think I’m safe in saying that we have a majority of nondisabled people. If we think about other groups of people—African Americans, LGBT community, Latinos—and we were to set up an organization to serve those people, would it be considered “OK” to have the majority of people employed by that organization be white or straight? Definitely not. Yet in the world of disability services this is common. Why is this? Even though we talk about disability as being a part of the diversity that exists, we don’t respond to disability in the same ways that we respond to other kinds of diversity.

Contact Me Your Name Email Etc. This resource was developed by Southwest ADA Center Affiliate – Arkansas, a program of the University of Arkansas—with a subaward from the Southwest ADA Center with funding from NIDDLR.