Column

We must raise the disability threshold

You are disabled. Stephen Hawking is disabled. Tony Blair is disabled. Your unemployed neighbour is disabled. We are all disabled.

Stephen Hawking is not able to walk – so he is disabled whenever he wants to. But he can travel, speak, write and think – so in these things he is not disabled, even though he needs assistance to do at least three of them.

Tony Blair can do more than most people. Almost everyone is more disabled than the Prime Minister. But Tony is disabled too – he can’t think philosophically, he can’t walk around London without the company of security guards, and he can’t always say what he believes.

Your unemployed neighbour is able to do a lot less than most people. She wants to be socially valued, but she feels discarded. She wants to move house, but that is impossible. She wants to be free from stress, yet it enshrouds her. She wants a holiday in the sun, but she can’t pay for it.

We are all abled and disabled to some degree, and in most things most of us are permanently disabled. I am able to look after my family financially, but that means that I can’t spend the time I want to spend with them because I have to work so much; I don’t have the time to learn Maori, and I can’t play soccer (to be honest, I never could). And I still haven’t a clue about the meaning of life.

I am certainly disabled, but no-one thinks I am because we habitually make three huge social errors:

• Error 1: most of us do not think of ourselves as disabled
• Error 2: we label a minority of individuals ‘intrinsically disabled’ – instantly segregating them
• Error 3: we forget that almost all disablement is externally caused.

The point – all too familiar to those who cannot naturally do what most people take for granted – is that there is no such thing as intrinsic disablement. Being disabled is relative to what you want to do, and to the context in which you have to do it.

If I am wheelchair bound and I want to gain access to a building with steps I am disabled by paralysed legs and the steps. If I have an artificial walking device then I am not disabled as I pursue my goal. Nor am I disabled if there are no steps.

It is arbitrary and unfair to speak of disabled people, as if ‘they’ are a group of human beings inevitably more incapable than everyone else. It is infinitely better to speak of disabling societies, since it is our social arrangements that enable and disable us in most respects.

In social systems that do not provide welfare support: to pay for wheelchairs, computers, education, transport and places to relax, people are disabled as a direct result. In such systems those who lack the prevalent physical and mental skills are doomed to remain the most disabled of us all.

In social systems that set out to give everyone equal opportunities for homes, mobility, knowledge and purpose, everyone is enabled to an important degree. Whatever the social system, all of us will remain disabled in most things. But the equalising society seeks to ensure that no-one – whatever their personal circumstances – is unnecessarily disabled by the society itself. Fair societies raise the disability threshold as their first priority.

We are a long way from this. The enabling society seems as distant as it has ever been. It will remain so until we see the profound errors in the ways we classify disability, and until our governments plan according to moral goals (like providing health care free for everyone who needs it) rather than political expediency.