Ability and Tenacity

About three years ago, I had the link to a New York employment discrimination case. A young woman, who is a congenital amputee, desired to go into medicine. Her first step in preparing for her medical career was to become an EMT (emergency medical technician) more commonly known as ambulance attendant or paramedic. She passed all parts of the employment tests except the strength test. After going through a rigorous training regimen, she retook the test and passed it. She ws still denied employment with the hospital where she applied, but another hospital did hire her.
What was enthralling about this case was when the judge asked her if she considered herself disabled or unable to do the work. Her matter of fact reply was, “I can do anything I want to do.” The other significant part of this story is that the candidate refused to use a prosthetic device. Instead she learned to adapt to her condition and, quite literally, do whatever she wanted without assistance.

The young woman won her case against the hospital. She demonstrated that she truly could satisfactorily perform the required duties of the job with her own devised modifications. Doing so also allayed concerns patients had because they could see that she was able to function, carry loads, lift, administer treatment, and so on.
That goes to the heart of my point today. An illness, a disability, is merely a time when it’s necessary to become innovative. It’s a time when our life paths nudge us to become resourceful, to evaluate our talents, our skills and residual abilities. Once one or two evaluations are done (and it doesn’t need to be painstaking), start considering how to use those residual skills to continue being productive — in a new way, in a manner different from the traditional, as a new dimension of what’s already been done.
My work in accommodating those with physical disabilities began in the 1990s. Although it was me who was supposed to be supporting people who had undergone a loss or were trying to cope with not doing things the way others accomplished them, I became educated to many things. One of the predominant lessons learned was how important it is to those in the “disabled community” to be seen as productive members of society who are entitled to a fair, living wage. Another striking revelation was how incensed these individuals became when there was even a hint of their being tossed out of the running merely because of a difference in how they accomplished things.
Initially, my work began by being a reader for those who were visually impaired. Fortunately, I associated myself with one of the predominant centers in the Bay Area for that type of assistance. It was part of the volunteer regime to attend classes on causes of visual impairment, what it’s like to be blind, how to be a guide, how to offer various types of assistance, types of assistive devices.
The work grew and caused me to support people with other types of impairments. Then the types of disabilities multiplied when adult literacy tutor and mediator were added to my work history. Not only was it imperative that one have keen listening skills, good comprehension, and patience, but it was important to gain the trust of the people with whom you were working, and constantly show them respect.
Reading for the visually impaired, taking classes to increase awareness and sensitivity, led to seeing my clients and their friends as merely people with a different way of doing things. Among the things that were impressed on those who attended classes was that the visually impaired do all of the things every other person does — laundry, bicycling, bill paying, listening to the news, being concerned about safety and welfare in one’s environment, being affected by laws, raising children, dancing, commuting, advocating for legislation, holding jobs, managing foundation and corporate budgets, attending and graduating from professional schools.
What I learned as I became a professional accommodations provider was that my clients were not really any different from anyone else as far as cares and concerns. The only difference was how they went about accomplishing the various tasks involved in living a fulfilled life. Learning about the adaptive devices was an eye-opening experience as well. There are hundreds of things the general population takes for granted as a convenience in day-to-day life activities, yet those very things are assistive accommodations. The traffic signal that announces in which direction the green light is facing, the recorded announcement on the train of what the next stop will be, the reaching device, the talking clock, VoIP as an outgrowth of talking computers, using alt text on websites when graphics are used so that the page is still readable. It’s all just stuff that makes life better for all of us, not really adaptations.
Obviously, for those who were in the initial stages of losing an ability that they had possessed since birth, there was anger and depression. There were classes for those with the impairments on how to deal with loss. There were classes for those who interact with members of the community in order to raise sensitivity to the fact that the anger and depression periods will be there.
However, the whole point is that life did not end, it was not time to sit at home and vegetate, at the onset of the impairment. In fact, that was the time to get motivated to do things differently and to meet new people.
Actually, I’m extremely grateful for my accommodations experiences. They allowed me to overcome some residual prejudices I owned that I’d not acknowledged. They led to my becoming an advocate for those with impairments. They allow me to speak to you who may have some sorts of challenges and encourage you to evaluate yourselves. The one impairment (or several) is not the entire person. There are still abilities that make you a unique individual with value. But it’s up to you to do an assessment of what those other abilities are — the ones that you’ve overlooked for so long. The ones that you’ve taken for granted. The ones that are waiting to be fully exploited in a new way so that you may succeed on your path and in your way.
You can do whatever you want to do.