Some people are able to accept living with a severe disability. I am not one of them, and that is why I have a keen interest in research and am deepl… - disability

Disability is not a brave struggle or ‘courage in the face of adversity.’ Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.

And yet it is not a “perk” to take the elevator when your friends walk up the stairs or to park in one of the handicapped spaces or to use a capacious bathroom stall or to be wheeled to the gate when you fly. It’s not just convenient either. It’s essential. This is the challenging, needy underbelly of living with an impairment that positive stereotyping can obscure. Accommodations serve the invaluable purpose of ensuring the human dignity of people with disabilities — our ability to participate in society as completely as possible without being de facto quarantined for “defects” in a world that prizes fitness and forgets that disability is the most fluid identity category of all.

ACCORDING TO LAWRENCE Carter-Long, spokesman for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund , about 20 percent of Americans identify as disabled, while only about 2 percent of characters on television and in film have disabilities.