Perseverance in Profile


WHAT DO PEOPLE WITH A DISABILITY


WANT? A View From a Person with a Disability


BY DARRYL WEISS 10


To begin with, to not be referred to as disabled. Dictionary.com defines disabled as “persons who are crippled, injured, or incapacitated.” The definition brings to mind a person unable to perform a job that does not involve the simplest of tasks. Disabled brings to mind a broken object, something that is unusable.


ing, deformity, or mutilation for the purpose of begging.” Most of the ugly laws included the following wording: “Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object… shall not… expose himself or herself to public view” and were on the books as late as the 1970s. An “ugly law” would compel an individual with a dis- ability, such as a stroke survivor who spoke with loud garbled


A DIVERSITY & THE BAR® JULY/AUGUST 2013 MCCA.COM


more appropriate refer- ence would be they are people with a disability. Te term can be used to describe everything from an ataxic gait (an unsteady, uncoordinated walk) to an individual with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). At one point laws (known as “ugly laws”) were introduced to target those who “exposed disease, maim-


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