Looking at Society from a Wheelchair

Looking at Society from a Wheelchair

Jacquie Detterbeck

LBS 492

Dr. Luckie

Fall 2005

There are manytimes when people are confronted with an uncomfortable or difficult issue and it explains a lot about a person in the way they react to that issue. There are typically two responses either the person will be very accepting of the issue or very rude in regards to it. Most people probably could not give a simple reason why they act one way or the other and some may not even realize that they are acting the way that they are towards the issue.

One area that may be considered uncomfortable is the interaction with the disabled population. Imagine you are walking down a street and you come up behind someone in a wheelchair that is having trouble navigating the sidewalk, do you offer help or do you pretend not to see them and walk around them leaving them stranded? Sounds like an easy question to answer, you would offer help of course because who does not want help. Now imagine you are the person in the wheelchair-do you still want the help?

Society may not think about the issue of helping the disabled often but when the definition of disabled is defined by The American with Disabilities Act of 1990 as

“… a person who: has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; has a record of such impairment; or is regarded as having such an impairment.” (Americans with Disabilities Act, The, Online).

this places twenty percent of American citizens in the “disabled” category, making it America’s largest minority. Meaning that odds are some portion of everyone’s life is going to be spent disabled (Morgan). This issue affects such a large number of people in the United States alone, however, many people are still unsure of how to treat the disabled people they encounter, in particular people with a physical disability which requires them to be in a wheelchair.

What do you think; does the disabled population want help? Hopefully by talking to people affected by disabilities they can help society learn what we should do and how we should act when we find ourselves in a situation where a person with a disability needs help.

One professional who works with the disabled community at MichiganStateUniversityis Dr. Gail Dummer. She is a professor of kinesiology and is the Director of the Sports Skills Program on campus. The Sports Skills program is designed to “provide coaching and instruction in sports skills to children and adults with disabilities who reside in the greater Lansing area.”(Sports Skills Program, Online). Through her work with this program she has made a few conclusions about how society views the disabled and how the disabled view themselves. Dummer said that “society discriminates in ways that they do not even realize.” I have watched the Sports Skills Program many times and have seen that she treats the participants no different than the assistants she has helping her. When asked if her thoughts about the disabled population have changed over the years that she has been running this program she had a very interesting answer. She said “working with these individuals has made me see that what they need is just someone who will believe in them and give them a chance.” Her response leads me to believe that maybe disabled individuals do not want our help because then it may make them feel that they are not able to do it on their own. Maybe what they need is to struggle, to fail and then to succeed knowing that someone believed they could.

Another professional who works with the rehabilitation of disabled persons is Ashley Detterbeck MPT, ATC. As a physical therapist at the Marshfield Clinic she works everyday at rehabbing the disabled and she also is very involved in fitting patients with wheelchairs. In her experience she has found that while some disabled may need round the clock care most are adapted and can live normal lives. Even her patients with more serious spinal cord injures, who may need help with activities of daily life, can often live independently. She has been working in this field for almost four years now and has decided that “these individuals are really no different than anyone else they just view the world at a different level.”

Another way for me to look at society’s view of people with disabilities was to actually be in a wheelchair, so for two weeks that is how I lived my life. While there was nothing physically wrong with me and outwardly I looked like I was just sitting in the chair, the way people reacted to me made me feel like I must have actually had a third leg I did not know about. Spending multiple days on the campus of MichiganStateUniversity, the thing I noticed the most was how inconsiderate people were towards me. I needed help many times and I can only recall three times when someone actually held the door or would reach something for me that was impossible to reach. This made to me ask myself if I really would want someone to help me and at times it was a definite yes.

I think my worst time in the wheelchair was while I was in the library one night. I tried to go to the bathroom and struggled for a couple minutes with the extremely heavy door while people glared at me because I was making a lot of noise every time I couldnot get the door open. When I finally got out of the hallway and into the bathroom there was no bathroom stall big enough for my wheelchair. Then after struggling to get back out of the bathroom I got back to my table just to overhear some comments about the chair. I decided that people associated being in a wheelchair with being deaf and therefore figure that they can say anything about me and even if they are only five feet away I can not hear them. Two college age males walked by and one said “Look at the girl in the wheelchair” to which his friend responded “Hey let’s not start checking out the handicapped.” I was absolutely appalled at the comment but more appalling was the fact that they said it like I couldn’t hear it.

But by the end of the two weeks in the chair, overhearing under the breath comments and being gawked at made me want to do things on my own if only so I could feel like I was still capable of doing something. The wheelchair had successfully turned me from a very self-confident person to a person who would find alternative ways to go places just so I did not have to face people who may offer me help or make a rude remark about me.

I also took the opportunity to ask other students about their opinions of the disabled community. Kari Kotzian, a dietetics junior; Brandon Chaison, a material science and engineering sophomore, and Kelly Tarrien, a physiology senior each had similar responses to the questions posed to them. Kotzian was asked if she thought people in a wheelchair wanted help. Her response was “It depends, because of age, length of time they have been in the chair and the situation where the help would take place.” Chaison said, “I do not want to avoid eye contact with them but I do not want it to seem like I am staring,” in regards to how he acts when he passes someone in a wheelchair. While this seems like it may be a nice thing to do an article in the State News in April 2004 refutes this idea. The author is a disabled individual who has lived with the reality of being disabled and made this claim.

People need to learn that people in wheelchairs are just that, people,

and deserving of the same respect and politeness afforded to everyone else in this world. (State News, Online.)

The students also claimed that they have helped disabled people before either by opening a door or helping in the elevator with buttons. They did say, though, that they did not always receive a gracious response. Finally, I discussed with them when they thought these ideas of how they should treat the disabled where formed and by whom. Tarrien said that she believed her parents were a big part of who taught herhow to treat disabled individuals and that she does not remember a time that she treated the disabled any differently.

Although the professionals, various students, and I can give a good opinion about society’s view, the best person to explain society’s actions is someone affected by it everyday. Erin Morgan is a quadriplegic who has been living with her disability for three years. She was in a car accident while in high school and broke her neck leaving her with no use of her legs and limited use of her arms. A quadriplegic, by definition, has lost use of both arms and legs, whereas a paraplegic has complete paralysis of the lower half of the body. Therefore Morgan is considered by the medical community to have incomplete quadriplegia. I was very nervous to go to the interview because I thought she was going to be angry at her situation. I realized once I got there that I had assumed this about her and in actuality she was just a normal teenage girl who was excited about boys giving her their numbers, concerts and the mall and was not bitter about her accident.

One thing that was evident though was her resentment of the kind of treatment she received from people. While she did mention how sometimes the special treatment is nice she knows she would not receive the same treatment if she walked in someplace instead of rolled in. “You definitely see one extreme or the other, there is never someone in the middle, either people are really nice or really mean.” That statement was repeated by both her, her mother and her sister. One thing she mentioned that shocked me, however, was the way her school was unwilling to adapt to her needs. They would not allow her to go to school part-time and she would not be able to attend full-time because of circulation problems and her lowered immune system causing her to be susceptible to various illnesses especially pneumonia. They also wanted to place her in the special education classroom, even though she sustained no brain injury in her accident. Maybe that was how the high school thought they should help her. As if it isn’t hard enough just being in high school in a wheelchair but now they wanted to remove her from her friends and familiarity in her other classes.

Another issue she had was that society sees anyone with a disability as equally disabled especially in regards to handicapped parking. Even with a handicapped parking permit her family “joked” that they often times are the farthest vehicle parked away from an entrance because the “van accessible spot is taken by an old lady in a Cadillac.” Van accessible spots are wider so there is enough room to lower the ramp from the side of the van but not everyone knows this and so if this spot is taken they have to find another spot with no one next to it and hope that no one comes and parks there while they are in the store or restaurant.

She did say though that when someone offers help she will usually accept it because otherwise things are a lot harder and take a lot longer. She also mentioned feeling like she was a burden at times even with her family and close friends.

Trying to figure out what society should do is a difficult question to answer and one that may never have a definite answer. It is up to society to take every situation and treat it as single situation. If you think someone may need help, ask them. I found that there will be people that need help and want help and there will be people that need help and do not want help. Do not assume that everyone is the same; no one assumes that people with out a disability are the same so why should it be any different for someone with a disability.

References

“Americans with Disabilities Act,The” U.S. Equal Employment Opportunities. Website. Available online at December 15, 2005

Chaison, Brandon. Personal Interview. 7 November 2005

Detterbeck, Ashley. Telephone Interview. 7 November 2005

Dummer, Gail, PhD. Personal Interview. 15 November 2005

Kotzian, Kari. Personal Interview. 7 November 2005

McNulty, Rebecca. “Don't assume disabled always need help, capable on their own.” State News. April 2004. Website. Available online at

December 15, 2005

Morgan, Erin. Personal Interview. 6 November 2005

“Sports Skills Program.” Website. Available online at December 15, 2005

Tarrien, Kelly. Personal Interview. 7 November 2005