As a disabled person, I don’t need fixing

“Is there not some kind of treatment?” that’s the question I’m often asked when people find out about my vision impairment. People’s mind wanders to the fact that it’s 2024, so surely there can be some kind of magical fix for my blindness.

What if I told you that I don’t want or need fixing. Earth shattering, I know.

Let me add another concoction to the cocktail: I have far bigger priorities. Like, you know, family, friends, my job, and that thing called life.

Pity casts a cloud over the conversation, each of us taking an awkward sip of the imaginary cocktail.

 

I’ve experienced pity for as long as I can remember. People don’t understand how I can live a happy life as a disabled person, because to them, it must be anything but. They assume that I must spend every day wanting a cure.

I imagine them thinking that I’m sat on my sofa, frantically googling cures for blindness at any given opportunity.

The reality is that I don’t spend every waking minute of every day wishing there was a cure. In fact, it never even crosses my mind.

I’d quite like more hours in the day, not that I’d spend them looking up cures for my vision impairment, that’s for sure.

 

When I inform people that I don’t want to be cured, there’s a hesitancy in the air. The question is repeated back to me, like I need a moment to rethink my answer.

I don’t need, or want, to give it another thought.

The assumption is exhausting. It’s also quite insulting.

 

The web of pity

Stereotypes form these assumptions. People’s assumptions are tangled up in the unhelpful narratives that still exist today, making themselves believe that disabled people must need fixing. That fix is the only solution.

They can’t see how I can be independent or live a pretty normal life even though I’m blind. To them, that can’t be possible. They struggle to wrap their head around these thoughts. The only choice that comes to mind is that I need to be fixed.

When interacting with a disabled person, they’re consumed by the thought that that’s the only way.

They feel sorry for me. In their eyes, disabled people are broken. We can’t fulfil our lifelong dreams, career aspirations or have fun. Or heck, we can’t do the boring every day stuff.  It’s like a virtual pat on the head, a gentle whisper.

These stereotypes take a medical model approach – the barriers a person faces are due to their disability or impairment. The blame is put on disabled people, rather than society.

For years, I believed this approach. I convinced myself that I had to overcome my disability, to prove to people that I didn’t need fixing. I told myself that a lack of accessibility or inclusion was my fault, that I was to blame.

Thankfully, my life has taken a shift. It’s not my fault, it’s an inaccessible society that wasn’t made for people like me.

I learned about the social model of disability, whereby society puts up those barriers, not disabled people.

Now I know that I don’t need fixing. It’s society that needs fixing.

But I also know it’s not that simple.

Society is still tainted with the idea that accessibility is too costly or time consuming, and the exclusion that disabled people face on a daily basis happens far too often.

Stereotypes swirl around, worming their way in.

People assume that finding a magical cure is the answer to all our problems. These so-called fixes wouldn’t mend a broken, inaccessible society. It’s not a viable fix, and it never will be.

It’s not something you can patch up with glue, hoping it’ll stick together.

Disabled people aren’t the broken ones that need fixing. Society is broken. Society is the place that needs a complete overhaul.

 

If society believes that disabled people are broken, then what is this telling the younger generation?

It’s setting them up for a lifetime of thinking that they’re less than everyone else.

They need to feel like they’re part of this weird and wonderful world, even if it is an inaccessible one.

They need to feel like they’re included.

They need to feel like they have their place.

 

I’m not broken, so why would I want to be fixed?

When people ask me whether there’s a magical cure, I don’t think it crosses their mind whether I’d actually like it or not.  They assume that I must want it, because there’s no other option.

It’s the only way we can fix a broken society. What if I was to tell you that a change in attitudes, and a shift in the way we view accessibility and disability as a whole is the answer?

 

When I was younger, if you’d have asked me whether I wished I could see, I would have been in two minds. I’ve always stood firm in the fact that I’ve never wanted to be cured. There’s nothing that needs fixing.

Where it gets complicated is the perceptions myself, and others had on my blindness. It’s no secret that perceptions dictated my love/hate relationship towards my disability. That led to me feeling like there was something wrong with me, like I needed to be fixed.

I felt broken in the sense that I was misunderstood, regularly not having my needs met, and always feeling like I was an afterthought.

I now know that I’m not broken, and I certainly don’t need fixing as a result.

 

I’ll never speak for the entire disabled community. I’m just one disabled person after all.

What I will say is, the disabled community will tell you that we’re not broken. What’s broken is society on a constant loop, viewing disabled people as a community to be pitied or less than.

 

Why don’t I want to be fixed?

What springs to mind here is the practical stuff. There are so many skills I’ve gained thanks to being disabled. It’s more than that though.

I’m deeply connected to my disability. It’s within every fibre of my being.

I also couldn’t imagine my life without the disabled community. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

My personal feelings towards my disability will never change anymore. I can guarantee you that.

I’m proud of being disabled, and nothing will ever change that.

My disability is part of the person I am. I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t blind.

This is where I wholeheartedly recognise that everyone’s experiences are different. Some people might want a cure. Others won’t. How ever they feel, it’s no one’s place to dictate the answer to them.

I was born with a vision impairment, so being blind is all I’ve ever known.

If I suddenly had vision, we have to be realistic in the fact that it’d probably take me years to adapt. The way I live my life would be different. And I don’t want to have to adapt. I’m happy being the person I am.

I find it hard to imagine what it’d be like to live any other way. It’d change who I am. That in itself is a scary thought.

What I do want is to live in a world that’s accessible. I want to feel considered rather than an afterthought.

I want to go about my day like everyone else, without having to navigate people’s assumptions and just get around with ease.

I couldn’t imagine not being disabled. My disability has weaved itself into everything I do and what I stand for. I don’t want that to change.

 

I think it’s important for non-disabled people to understand how disabled people feel about this so-called fix and our general view of our disability.

To you, non-disabled people, put the time and energy you spend assuming a disabled person wants to be fixed into making the world more accessible. That will have a far bigger impact.

 

Fellow disabled people, where do you sit on the scale of wanting to be fixed? I’d love to chat in the comments. I had a really interesting conversation about this over on LinkedIn, so I’d love to continue that here.

 

Holly x