It is clear that people with disabilities have long been treated as moral and social inferiors, at the same time that they have suffered distributive injustices of various kinds (see generally, Barclay 2018). Routinely, people with disabilities have been denied jobs for which they are highly qualified because they have been considered incompetent, or because employers have not been comfortable with their presence in the workplace. Often, people with certain disabilities have been consigned to segregated institutions and facilities because they have been regarded as incapable of making decisions or caring for themselves, or because others in the community did not want to interact with them.

Justice for people with disabilities, then, appears to raise questions about the relationship between distributive justice and relational justice that justice for other stigmatized groups does not. Yet the need for redistribution hardly reduces the importance of recognition in achieving justice. Indeed, the complex, disputed relationship between the two makes disability a significant challenge for theories of justice.

People with disabilities have had to battle against centuries of biased assumptions, harmful stereotypes and irrational fears. The stigmatization of disability resulted in the social and economic marginalization disability community. Adding to this is the ignorance and ableist architecture that makes it difficult to function.

In the 1800s, people with disabilities were considered meager, tragic, pitiful individuals unfit and unable to contribute to society, except to serve as ridiculed objects of entertainment in circuses and exhibitions. They were assumed to be abnormal and feeble-minded, and numerous persons were forced to undergo sterilization. People with disabilities were also forced to enter institutions and asylums, where many spent their entire lives. The “purification” and segregation of persons with disability were considered merciful actions, but ultimately served to keep people with disabilities invisible and hidden from a fearful and biased society.

The marginalization of people with disabilities continued until World War I when veterans with disabilities expected that the US government provide rehabilitation in exchange for their service to the nation. In the 1930s the United States saw the introduction of many new advancements in technology as well as in government assistance, contributing to the self-reliance and self-sufficiency of people with disabilities.

In the 1940s and 1950s, disabled World War II veterans placed increasing pressure on government to provide them with rehabilitation and vocational training. World War II veterans made disability issues more visible to a country of thankful citizens who were concerned for the long-term welfare of young men who sacrificed their lives to secure the safety of the United States.

Despite eight years of international competition under his belt, this will be EwThe evolution of the disability rights movement (DRM) in India spans over four decades. Voices began demanding the rights of people suffering from disabilities in the early 1970s; it was, however, nowhere close to being a movement at that point. The various demands from groups and individuals were significantly scattered.

Overall, what started as scattered demands for rights for people suffering from disability has today developed into an issue area that is the subject of many academic works. Though many obstacles still exist in the path of the DRM, the achievements to date are worthy of praise and they need to be highlighted.

India--DRM: The 1970s and 1980s

Until the 1970s, most of the people who suffered from any kind of disability were considered as outcasts from the mainstream society and were looked down upon. To put it bluntly, though it may sound politically incorrect, any disabled person was treated like dirt in Indian society. Most of these people were either seen as beggars or in better cases they were associated with the field of music. Even the system thought of them as a liability; these people were considered to be of little use to society and hence their concerns were severely disregarded. Many people thought of disability as the result of someone’s previous life’s sins and thus held them responsible for their present condition. This absurdity led to various forms of injustices in India.

In the West, things started to change after World War II, when thousands of soldiers returning home were left with several kinds of disabilities. These soldiers became an initial source of the DRM and they even saw some success in getting their rights, mainly because these soldiers were considered heroes of the war and thus their demands garnered immense public support.

No such thing happened in India. Most offers of assistance from Indian society toward its disabled population were viewed as charity rather than providing legitimate rights to PWD. Even the families associated with a disabled person were looked down upon and scrutinized in many ways by their relatives and neighbors. In many cases, this led to families disowning their disabled family members; disabled children were all too often left in orphanages. A severe kind of “shame” was associated with disability.

For politicians, the rights of disabled persons were a non-issue. Disabled people were not considered as a “vote bank” as they were people with no voice. Unlike the caste movements and women rights movements, the DRM had no leader. This dearth of leadership caused a very long wait for the movement to gain any kind of success.

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2014, defines for the first time the meaning of disability and extended it from seven to 21 categories. Categories include sickle cell disease, thalassemia, muscular dystrophy, autism spectrum disorder, blindness, cerebral palsy, chronic neurological conditions, mental illness, and multiple disabilities.

Over 1 billion people in the world live with some form of disability — and the World Health Organization says that number is dramatically increasing because of a rise in chronic health problems and an aging global population.  

The pandemic — which Barbarin has called a "mass disabling event" — sparked more conversations about the barriers to access health care, the necessities of working from home and the importance of strengthening public health systems. But Barbarin notes that many of these discussions have been happening for years in the disability rights movement.  

"Literally every single thing you could think of affects the disability community, because we represent everybody," she said.  

There have been a number of important activists from the Black community, which has one of the highest rates of disability among racial groups in the U.S. 

"We are in a community that is very vulnerable, meaning that a lot of the people that we look up to die very young. … But in their time here, they made sure to have their voices heard, which is exemplary in my book," Barbarin said.

Today, Barbarin says disability rights activists are still fighting for more accessible housing, better food access for marginalized communities, raised income caps for people on Social Security, and a more diverse representation of disabilities in entertainment.  

"Making sure that all of these policies, regardless of what they are about, have disabled people in mind — that is my goal," Barbarin said.   

Her work today is galvanizing the disability community and making sure their movement doesn't go ignored.  

“No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp,"

I AM NOT YOUR INSPIRATION- STELLA YOUNG

Alice Wong, disabled activist, reveals glimpses of her life with humour and rage in Year of the Tiger - An Activist’s Life. Photo: Eddie Hernandez/Disability Visibility Project

Ever since her childhood, disabled activist Alice Wong has had an affinity with Star Trek and X-Men, not only because of the superpowers of the cyborgs and mutants who coexisted with humans in those worlds. She has resonated with those and other sci-fi aliens for different reasons.

Like a cyborg, for example, Wong’s body is enmeshed in technology setting her apart from other humans: she relies on a power wheelchair for daily life, as well as a non-invasive ventilator and a spine fused with metal rods and wires.

As for her “superpowers”? Long before “WFH” and “Zoom” became buzz terms, Wong had championed the rights of people with disabilities to work remotely, and participate in civic and political activities online. She tapped into the power of the internet to build online disabled communities, giving voice to a group that has often been undervalued and overlooked.

“For many disabled, sick and immunocompromised people like myself, we have always lived with uncertainty and are skilled in adapting to hostile circumstances in a world that was never designed for us in the first place,” Wong, a self-described “disabled oracle”, writes in Year of the Tiger – An Activist’s Life.

Despite her achievements, the activist’s uncomfortable assessment that she is a “disabled person in a non-disabled world” is palpable throughout the book. As someone relying on state funding for access to personal assistance services for almost every aspect of her daily activities, she is constantly aware that she may be just “one crisis or policy change away from institutionalisation”.

At the peak of the pandemic, Wong learned from a recall notice that she might have for years been breathing in toxic particles as a result of a faulty design of her life-sustaining ventilator.

“As I fight for access to inhale and exhale, I am forced to welcome untold numbers of particles into my body that can endanger my peripheral existence even more. I am an unwitting character in a eugenic horror movie based on real events,”

Ever since her childhood, disabled activist Alice Wong has had an affinity with Star Trek and X-Men, not only because of the superpowers of the cyborgs and mutants who coexisted with humans in those worlds. She has resonated with those and other sci-fi aliens for different reasons.

Like a cyborg, for example, Wong’s body is enmeshed in technology setting her apart from other humans: she relies on a power wheelchair for daily life, as well as a non-invasive ventilator and a spine fused with metal rods and wires.

As for her “superpowers”? Long before “WFH” and “Zoom” became buzz terms, Wong had championed the rights of people with disabilities to work remotely, and participate in civic and political activities online. She tapped into the power of the internet to build online disabled communities, giving voice to a group that has often been undervalued and overlooked.

If there’s anything to come out of this pandemic, I hope that people realise that, for many of us, we have always been here, we have always survived. And in many cases, we have the solutions- Alice Wong

“Ableism” refers to discrimination and social prejudice against people with disabilities. Ableism comes in all forms, from overt prejudice to more subtle microaggressions.

Disability advocate Anthony Pulrang defines ableism in this way -- “Any statement or behavior directed at a disabled person that denigrates or assumes a lesser status for the person because of their disability. Social habits, practices, regulations, laws, and institutions that operate under the assumption that disabled people are inherently less capable overall, less valuable in society, and/or should have less personal autonomy than is ordinarily granted to people of the same age.