The eligibility for food stamps has widened and widened; welfare has been widened - unemployment insurance and disability insurance. These are all incentives not to work.
Obviously, because of my disability, I need assistance. But I have always tried to overcome the limitations of my condition and lead as full a life as possible. I have traveled the world, from the Antarctic to zero gravity.
I put up a huge wall of denial. It was years before I was able to break through it... accepting that your child has a disability, especially one like LD that cannot be seen or easily diagnosed, is one of the hardest things to come to terms with.
I was slightly brain damaged at birth, and I want people like me to see that they shouldn't let a disability get in the way. I want to raise awareness - I want to turn my disability into ability.
For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people.
Disability informs almost every part of my life. It's as important, if not more so, than my gender and sexuality. It's certainly a great deal more important to me than my religion or whether or not I caught a tram, ferry or bus to work.
People are uncomfortable about disability, and so interactions can become unintentionally uncomfortable.
If you can slow the biological process of aging, even a minor slowdown in the rate at which we age yields improvements in virtually every condition of frailty and disability and mortality that we see at later ages.
You go, well you can't joke about race. Well if you're from a different race and that's your experience of the world and you want to talk about that, then fine. Or you can't talk about disability, but disabled comics can talk about that.
I like to discuss my condition publicly because if I, with this disability, am able to fulfill some of my ambitions, so can other diabetics.
I use the term 'disabled people' quite deliberately, because I subscribe to what's called the social model of disability, which tells us that we are more disabled by the society that we live in than by our bodies and our diagnoses.
I've fought physical disability and was cured because of naturopathy and yoga.
Autism is the fastest growing developmental disability in our nation.
Before taking up dressage, I'd distanced myself from the Paralympics because I hadn't wanted to be defined by my disability. Then when I grew up and got an office job, things started to change. I'm actually allergic to horses, but I'm even more allergic to paperwork!
Growing up in a group home, and with an undiagnosed learning disability to boot, the odds of success were not on my side. But when I joined the high school football team, I learned the value of discipline, focus, persistence, and teamwork - all skills that have proven vital to my career as a C.E.O. and social entrepreneur.
It became very clear to me that Yooralla was not as interested in media coverage that explored issues faced by people with disability as it was in giving a pat on the back to journalists who maintained the status quo by giving readers the warm and fuzzies over their morning paper.
For me, disability is a physical experience, but it's also a cultural experience and a social experience, and for me, the word 'crip' is the one that best encapsulated all of that.
Whether it's veterans' disability claims, infrastructure projects, dam safety, or helping our farmers, what I am focused on is being useful for folks in the Hudson Valley.
Not only does disability impact individual health and well-being, it also leads to social and economic exclusion.
Doctors are not fortune tellers, and neither am I. Having lived with disability since birth does not afford me immunity from illness.
'CSI's been a great blessing for me. It's been a platform that's allowed me to go around the country and the world, really, and speak on issues of disability, but I've never - I'm a professional actor, so I studied for years; I do theater. I never want to disrespect what got me here.
Congress acknowledged that society's accumulated myths and fears about disability and disease are as handicapping as are the physical limitations that flow from actual impairment.
I believe we need more culturally diverse books - about disabled characters, though not about their disability, about people with different sexual orientations, or a boy who is a cross-dresser. We need to reflect the diversity of our society.
I worry that when educational counselors and teachers call in families with concerns about a child having a learning disability, we aren't always looking at the complete picture.
For me, Paralympic sport isn't about being the best human being. It's about being the best human being with that particular level of disability.
The thing about living with any disability is that you adapt; you do what works for you.
I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However, this is not entirely a matter of joy, as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health. One aspect of this is that rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person's concept of his relation to the cosmos.
Whether you're gay or straight, with a physical disability, your skin's a different color, it's absurd in this age to not be aware and be concerned of the inequity in rights.
Disability in the Middle East is viewed through a different lens because you're in wartime countries where it's much more mainstream, so I was just never 'other'd.
I actually think of being funny as an odd turn of mind, like a mild disability, some weird way of looking at the world that you can't get rid of.
People presume my disability has to do with being an amputee, but that's not the case; our insecurities are our disabilities, and I struggle with those as does everyone.
Every person with a disability is an individual.
I believe very deeply in my soul that God paired me and my father purposely and that he knew that my father would give me the strength to be a person with disability that was proud, always held her head high, and was never, ever bitter.
'The Simpsons' appearances were great fun. But I don't take them too seriously. I think 'The Simpsons' have treated my disability responsibly.
The world worries about disability more than disabled people do.
I don't generally talk about medical terms when I discuss my position as a disabled person. I take a social rather than medical approach to disability, and so long Latin names for congenital conditions are not relevant.
