People with Disabilities - Term Paper Example

In holy Bible, there are lot of examples for disabled persons. Disability appears mainly in two forms; Physical disability and mental disability. Among physically disabled people, some of the organs such as hands, legs, eyes, ears, etc may not function properly whereas among mentally disabled people, intelligence and emotions may not function properly. Physically disabled people may experience more trauma than mentally disabled people in some cases because of the social exclusion they are experiencing.

It should be noted that mentally disabled people or people with less brain development, such trauma may not come in the first place because of their inability to recognize the discrimination. Stereotyping is the major problem facing by disabled people. In most of the communities, such people often treated as second class citizens. “The "supercrip" is the flipside of pity because it implies that a person is presumed to be deserving of pity, instead of respect, until he or she proves capable of overcoming a physical or mental limitation through extraordinary feats” (Shapiro, 1994).

There are plenty of famous people such as Stephen Hawking who commands enormous respect from the world even though they are physically handicapped. This is because of the contributions they given to the world amidst all the limitations they suffer from their disabilities. On the other hand, normal people with disabilities are getting pity rather than respect. In other words, better abilities of a disabled person always force us to transform our feeling from pity to respect towards them. However, disabled people do not like pity towards them from others.

They like to command respect rather than pity. They know very well that pity will prevent them from attaining proper social status like other normal people. In their opinion, pity is an emotion demonstrated by others in order to discriminate people with disabilities from the main streams of social life. Parents are often facing more traumas because of the disabilities of their children. So they are the ones who fight more vigorously for the rights of the disabled ones at present. In fact the attitude of the public towards the disabled ones has changed considerably in the recent past.

Earlier, children with disabilities such as autism were educated in separate classrooms. However, as per the modern research findings, it is necessary to teach such children in the company of normal children in order to help them to come out form their disorder. So, parents started to fight for the human rights of their disabled children over the past few decades. Society often visualizes disabled people as a liability rather than an asset. It is a fact that disabled people may require more social attention than normal people for sustaining their life in a healthy manner.

The social costs needed for providing a healthy life to people with disabilities are more compared to other expenses. For example, physically disabled people need more medical attention, specially designed schools and rehabilitation centres. At the same time, they may not be able to deliver anything in return to the society. In other words, society often considers the spending for disabled ones as a non-productive spending. However, there are many cases in which physically handicapped persons delivered more to the society than others.

As mentioned earlier, Stephen Hawking is the best example. It should be noted that Hawking has a motor neuron disease which paralyzed