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Home / Thoughts / Other's Thoughts / Sophie's Thoughts / BADD - When does an impairment become a disability?

BADD - When does an impairment become a disability?

Written by Sophie on Tuesday, May 1, 2007

For a while I wasn’t sure I was going to be doing any post for Blogging Against Disablism Day. I didn’t really know what I should say. It wasn’t until I established in my mind what the term disability really meant to me that something sprang to mind. Sean will probably already go over this (if he hasn’t already), but I personally think an impairment is the actual physical/mental/emotional problem, and a disability is what arises from the social and physical constraints as a result of your impairment.

I have gone over this in the past, but I personally don’t think impairment becomes a disability until you give it that title. Someone in a wheelchair or on crutches is more likely to say they are disabled as they come across these constraints a lot sooner and a lot more often than less obvious problems. Some people (like me) sometimes never get to the point of classing their impairments as problems as they are so used to compensating for this problem when a issue comes up. For example, I don’t like tea and coffee and drinks like that so I generally don’t find myself trying to drink out of a cup. If I did like to drink something like coffee my familial tremors would more likely be considered as a disability.

Even though a person defines themselves as being disabled, for their own emotional health it is generally wise not to dwell on the fact. This is often dependant on a person’s personality and/or impairment. It is often hard not to see impairment as a disability when so many people seem to be ignorant of problems in society that highlights a person’s impairment.

There is so much more to life beyond disability, even for us transabled people. We all have families, hobbies, and friends. BIID for many of us doesn’t become a major disability until we stop to think about what we don’t have rather than what we do have. Some people appear to have been hit harder by their transabledness than others; maybe they have just found ways of compensating for it.

Tags: BADD - Impairment Specific, BIID, Disability, Impairment, Transabled