Hi Beata and everyone,

Attitudes toward the disabled may differ from the laws in the given country. It also depends on adherence to the laws which again vary from region to region. Generally it can be seen that the developed world has sounder measures to facilitate better conditions for the disabled, like allocating separate parking spaces, changing rooms, and other amenities such as ramps for wheelchairs on buses and other forms of public transport.

In the developing world, things are pretty sad in that department. This may be attributed to the struggle for basic needs, the lack of education or civic sensibilities. For instance, in socioeconomically challenged homes, the disabled may be perceived as a clear liability and thus be relegated to further neglect. In densely populated countries with lower levels of literacy, there is the imminent reduction of the value of life. In such cases, disabled lives are further disregarded, and their presence often unfortunately treated with indifference or scorn. 

The attitudes to special needs people requires systemic changes through various levels of social and legal awareness. Better treatment of such people in public places requires legal protection, respect of these laws and of the sanctity of life in general.

In public spaces and public transport, people give way to and help persons with physical disabilities.

But this is slowly changing because of opportunism. A benevolent person saw a cripple begging and gave him P10.00. The "cripple" saw money in the benevolent person's wallet. The cripple stood up as a normal person, took out a knife, stabbed the person who helped him, who died, and escaped.

In public spaces, mockingly allow "insane" persons do their thing. But people allow them to loiter.

Dear @Eddie,

Youe example shows me the level of despair had cited "cripple".  This is another dimension of living on the streets by people with psychiatric disorders, being left themselves without proper medical or social support and treatments. Thank you for your interesting observations and voice.

Dear All,

 Here I would like to mark something that binds the disability symbolic, art and advertising for austrian culture. I was surprised in Vienna  by the poster who calls for promotion of culture and theater using the symbol of blindness in so surreal and peaceful atmosphere shown, as static images  by Rene Magritte. Public space and disability symbol  provoked  to perceive brainchild as cultural symbol. I have not seen anything like this in Poland before. So this is not custom from my own country, but I shared it because of it's expressive power. In Vienna, I saw different variations of this poster, also with a young man deprived of sight and eyes. Poignant ...

Dear Beata, 

The real issue is the disability insensitive attitude of the society. Even a stringent law can do very less unless there is a change in the mindset of people and a willingness to accept and respect (disabled) people. There is an attitude of relating a disabled person with his or her disability and not to his/her abilities. The society should be dynamic enough to Accept all Differences, as the world exists only because of its differences and the natural balance among them. It also becomes the duty of each member of the society to Respect Individuality and Mutual Rights of any (disabled) member of the society. The society should develop a natural tendency to provide Equal Opportunities to disabled people, whereby they can enjoy their rights and as well contribute to the society. All citizens should have the attitude to Value the Contribution of disabled people as they do their own. For such an attitudinal shift to happen the society should believe in Disabled people and that they are like anybody else.

Dear @Sribas,

I suppose you write about situation in India, or am I wrong ? Dear Sribas, changing mindest is I suppose universal problem towards disabilities of citizen. You highlighted important issue as estimating defects and underestimating the potential. I would appreciate a lot if  you would describe patterns of public space behavior towards persons with different disabilities in India. This is sensitive matter, I suppose. Are they present in public space ? How is their presence regulated by dominant culture ? You wrote many key suggestions for any society, what it should do, but please, would you precise how it is now ? What you notice according to patterns of behavior towards persons with disabilities while your everyday pressence in public space and mainstream culture or even own local community? Are there any real or symbolic icons of disability issue, associated with customs, norms, rituals, habits, taboos ? What did you mean by insensitive attitude ? - please describe if you can.

Dear @Aftab,

Your description made me think yesterday for a few hours about many aspects of patterns of behavior towards persons with disabilities in Pakistan. What I noticed in your comment is associated with simple and basic human  solidarity in helping families by different bodies you mentioned. You highlighted also a religious and spiritual aspects of the support, which raises my curiosity and need to learn more about Muslim attitudes to disabilities. Fortunately there are sources on websites. However according to my knowledge and professional experiences this is not surprising for me, that key religions care about the persons with severe needs.  Thank you very much for contribution.

Hi Beata and everyone,

Attitudes toward the disabled may differ from the laws in the given country. It also depends on adherence to the laws which again vary from region to region. Generally it can be seen that the developed world has sounder measures to facilitate better conditions for the disabled, like allocating separate parking spaces, changing rooms, and other amenities such as ramps for wheelchairs on buses and other forms of public transport.

In the developing world, things are pretty sad in that department. This may be attributed to the struggle for basic needs, the lack of education or civic sensibilities. For instance, in socioeconomically challenged homes, the disabled may be perceived as a clear liability and thus be relegated to further neglect. In densely populated countries with lower levels of literacy, there is the imminent reduction of the value of life. In such cases, disabled lives are further disregarded, and their presence often unfortunately treated with indifference or scorn. 

The attitudes to special needs people requires systemic changes through various levels of social and legal awareness. Better treatment of such people in public places requires legal protection, respect of these laws and of the sanctity of life in general.

Dear Monica, 

Your comment raised my reflection regarding the obvious gap and factors as cultural conditions towards disability phenomena between developed and developing countries. I can imagine continuum model of attitudes and habitual behaviors. This is an important aspect of the discussion about the position of people with disabilities in the particular cultures. As a researcher, I would be very interested in knowing the external expressions and a deeper semantic background of scorn, which you mentioned. How is manifests in public spaces and eveyday life ? Please describe on micro level, if you can.Thank you very much for support. I appreciate it. 

P.S. Poland is moderately developed country, but there are attitudes in public spaces which are far from glory and their mysteriousness amazes myself. 

Hi Beata

There is a range of responses to disability in Britain; some good, some bad and some are dependent on how the disability is presented or used by the person affected.

Professionally there are two different approaches to disability - the 'medical model' is that a person is disabled by the physical or sensory impairment while the 'social model' sees the impaired person as being disabled by society, e.g. because there is not access to some buildings for wheelchairs users and public transport is inaccessible to them.

Socially, at a national level, there is considerable admiration for those disabled people who achieve successfully in any field, such as sport, art, politics.  Generally, disabled people have great difficulty because of people's attitudes, either disbelief of the disability (unless it is clearly a result of traumatic injury) or fear despite disabilities are not contagious or, perhaps more frequently, ignorance of the conditions people have being the main causes.  However, there is also a scathing cynical view that some disabled people are just not trying and living off state benefits.  (The truth of this is that only about 1% of benefits claimed by people with disabilities is fraudulent.)

In 2012 we hosted the Olympics and Paralympics.  The Paralympic athletes are considered to be successful in their sport but not everyone agrees that there should be a paralympic event in the first place.  The opening and closing ceremonies were very direct and flagrant displays of all types of disabilities to the extent that some people found them confrontational or even offensive.

When it comes to cognitive impairment and mental health problems, there are again the two ends of the spectrum.  They are seen as either worthy of supporting and helping or 'other' and to be managed, controlled or 'put to one side' in institutions.

Sadly, over the past few years we have had some tragic examples of how disabled people may be targeted for abusive behaviour by others, even leading to deaths.

I think the fact that there is a UN Declaration of the rights of disabled people that includes the right to be treated as a person is sufficient comment on the state of some attitudes.

Expo Milano 2015 can be a great opportunity to improve the use and accessibility of persons with disabilities to major events and public spaces and to promote the occupational integration of disadvantaged people. The exhibition "EXPO 2015 To open, inclusive and accessible" will present 17 to 19 June at the Steam Factory in Milan assistive solutions, best practices, design and most importantly, the "guidelines" are useful in defining the criteria of accessibility and opportunity job possible for people with disabilities

There was a report today on the national news of Radio-Canada today about a singer in Quebec ,Jeanick Fournier, who was infertile but want a family with her husban.  They decided that adopt a 2 month old trisomique baby Johan.  The testimony was so inspiring because the couple was so happy to have such a wounderfull baby and two years later they adopted a young trisomic sister Emma. See video of Jeanic with Johan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOCzxJyI16g

Dear @Norman, @Enzo, and @Louis, thank you for comments. Every examples are interesting. 

Dear @Norman, thank you for valuable remarks and picture of British reality from insider's perspective. I agree with many issues you described seeing lot of analogy in Polish circumstanes and reallities of lives desinged by society to persons with disabilities. There are problems associated with poor attitudes, devaluations even discriminations towards persons with disabilities different ages in Poland. As you noticed and shared there are lot of various oppressions made by society - I would add - strengthening social model of disability. 

Dear @Enzo, your comment is raising hope for social inclusion in 2015 in Italy. I think that such sport opportunity for sharing social space is important for any society.

Dear @Louis, Thank you for sharing amazing example of compassion, love and understanding. I  admire adoptive parents and especially, those who adopt children with disabilities. This makes always kind of the balance between social opressions made by societies and good will of individual people having big hearts as adoptive parents.