From the inside

While none of these articles references people with Down syndrome specifically, they each address real issues that can impact on any person with a disability during their every day life, and give insights into how it might feel and be understood by them. Such discussions can be confronting and difficult, - that doesn't mean we should avoid them:

Lucky to Be Alive: Zika Coverage, Ableism, and the Terror of Disabled Bodies

Karrie Higgins, Huffington Post, 5 February 2016

... In my newsfeed, headline after headline about Zika and abortion. Sentences like this one: "Zika could easily entrap American women in areas with standing water that breeds mosquitoes, closed clinics, no access to the later abortions a microcephaly diagnosis might require."

Require.

I have a neural tube birth defect, called Chiari Malformation. My cerebellum is falling through the foramen magnum. I have a too-small skull and a "screwed up," epileptic brain. What do able people think should have been required for me?

Able people pretend, Of course we don't mean you! But they do. They do ...

Stop praising able-bodies for treating disabled people like human beings

Erica Mones, Running with Crutches, 4 February 2016

... Many articles write “Girl takes friend in wheelchair to prom,” and the comments section is spilling over with positive responses like “What a sweet girl,” or “What a lucky boy,” and what these commenters fail to notice is that they are promoting the stigma against disabilities in society. If an able-bodied girl asked her able-bodied friend to prom, people would not praise her for making her friend feel special; instead, they would just think that two friends are attending prom together. Noone would think the girl was missing the chance of having a “real” date to go with a friend. Disabled people deserve the same courtesy ...

Uncertain abilities and the right to fail
Real Social Skills, 18 January 2016
Being disabled often means being unable to reliably predict what you will and won’t be able to do. Or whether something will be hard or easy. Sometimes this is for physical reasons; sometimes it’s because of how people treat us; often it’s both ...

Is disability misery?
Ania Onion Cebulla, Alyssa and Ania Splain You a Thing, 8 September 2015
... We as a society have this concept that people with disabilities, especially those receiving disability assistance are lazy, sad, and pathetic. That they are deserving of pity. There is an underlying current of society that holds the belief that the words “I am disabled” actually mean “my life is not worth living”. In a culture that prioritizes what any given person can do, how productive they are, it is not surprising that this is the case ...