Are we truly can say we don’t have an ableism?

Our society respects every person and tries as best as they can to be equivalent to every person. Well, at least it’s what they said.

If you search Google or the news for a little bit about people with disabilities, there are a lot of articles about welfare facilities and policies for people with disabilities, or how they can be treated as equal and be fitted into our society.

To those who do not have disabilities, this society seems to give them ample opportunities and fair treatment. However, it is biased to ask people who don’t have disabilities about things about people with disabilities. The perspectives of people with disabilities toward our society seem to be different.

For example, in Korea, where I have lived for a long time, if you go to a parking lot, you can almost always see a parking space for the disabled. They are ubiquitous and provide convenient parking for people with disabilities. However, half of the cars parked there do not have a disabled parking mark. They infringe and oppress the rights of persons with disabilities only for their convenience. This can also be said to be a type of ableism.

In the U.S, Although the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 was enacted, efforts were made to eliminate ableism. This act helps people with disabilities to participate fully in American life. But, recent research Anand and Ben-Shalom’s (2014) analysis of time use found that paid work had most difference between people with and without disabilities : working-aged men and women with a disability spent up to 321 and 289 fewer minutes less in paid work, daily, than men and women without disability. (Disability as inequalities by Carrie L. Shandra)

By looking at those examples, we can see that ableism is more deeply rooted than we think and is already in our unconscious. They are important members of our society and they are the ones who will shape the future with us. There should be no situation in which their disability leads to inequality because of ableism.

We often encounter ableism in our lives: hard-to-reach stairs for people in wheelchairs, insufficient parking for people with disabilities, low employment rates for people with disabilities, people’s perceptions, and invisible discrimination around them. It is necessary to recognize the existence of them in this society and to be assimilated with them.

Then, to not make disability an inequality, what’s the first thing we can do as individuals in our society? What can we do as an individual to reduce ableism and make people with disabilities get equality as us?