Anna Bach on conversations with the wrong addressees
According to a 2014 study by Scope, 67 percent of people feel uncomfortable talking to a disabled person. The first impulse would probably be to say that you can no longer really refer to it, that the evaluation is not up-to-date at all and that a lot has happened in the meantime. Is that correct?
A few weeks ago, when I was on the train with a friend, a ticket inspector spoke to us in amazement: “Oh, how are we going to do that with her?” She asked, pointing to my wheelchair and turning to my passenger. In order to signal to the conductor that I could also be addressed, I answered and thus won her over as a conversation partner. That doesn’t always work. Even if I start the conversation, it’s not uncommon for the able-bodied person next to me to get the answer: I ask where the elevator is, my companion gets directions. Eye contact is usually consistently avoided – and this is no exception: Many of my friends who are also dependent on a wheelchair report similar experiences. Why is that? I don’t think that reactions of this kind are automatically a sign of ignorance and/or intolerance; rather, they form the result of these three non-words: ignorance, uncertainty, clumsiness.
The points of contact between people with and without disabilities are missing and thus often also the “learning” of a completely normal interaction. This is due to kindergartens and schools, when the adolescents play and learn separately there, but also to the professional world, in which access to jobs is often difficult. The so-called inaccessibility cycle can also be used to explain the extent to which barriers affect the lack of visibility in everyday life: Without accessibility, disabled people cannot participate. As a result, they are seen less often by the majority of society and the impression is created that there are only a few of them and that they accordingly do not even have to be considered. This then results in non-existing accessibility – an eternal vicious circle!
The truth is, it takes money, time, and effort to change that, but questioning behavior during a conversation doesn’t. So the next time a person with a disability asks you a question, please talk to them and not about them. (bac)