Dialogues on Disability

... a new series of interviews, by Shelley Tremain, launches today at the Discrimination and Disadvantage blog with inaugural guest Bryce Huebner.

One interesting feature of the interview is Bryce's discussion of whether his celiac disease should be viewed as a disability. There is a broad sense in which virtually everyone is disabled -- we are nearsighted, have allergies, experience back pain, etc. Yet, given our social structures, many of these disabilities are hardly disabilities at all. If I lived in a world in which corrective lenses were inaccessible, my 20/500 nearsightedness would have a huge impact on my life. As it is, I pop on my glasses and no problem! (In fact, I'm terrific at reading tiny print that eludes most others my age.) When I was in southern China a couple years ago, I had an allergic reaction to shellfish almost every day of my visit -- the food is so pervasive in the culture that even when it's not an ingredient, some residue often gets mixed in -- but in southern California, no problem. Conversely, in some culinary cultures, Bryce's celiac disease might hardly manifest; and we might imagine cultures or subcultures where being in a wheelchair is similarly experienced as only a minor inconvenience.