As an American, it can be easy to think our country is the most progressive country in the world when it comes to disability. After all, we passed the ADA in 1991, a groundbreaking act guaranteeing basic rights in employment and accessibility to Americans with disabilities. Sure it’s not a perfect law, it’s proven to be a huge headache for small businesses, and the definition of “disability” has been dissected so thoroughly it drives people with profound disabilities mad, but it was and still is a monumental law.
But politicians can’t force a people to accept a minority just because a law says they have to. It takes time, or maybe it’ll never happen here in the USA because of the way we are at our core – wily-eyed and image conscious. Europe, apparently, is the exact opposite. All I know is what I’ve been told (specifically what my fellow American friends who use wheelchairs have told me) and their experiences traveling to the UK and Europe all speak the same thing.
The consensus is that Europeans are totally unfazed by wheelchairs. They really could care less and usually kept on walking, talking, immersed in their own thoughts, not caring about their four wheels in the least during their travels. And that is AWESOME. In the USA, especially the Midwest, if people see a wheelchair they gawk and stare like they’re seeing a dolphin for the first time. Are wheelchairs really that novel? In the Midwest apparently. But in Europe, they have more important things to worry about.
You really know a culture is beginning to truly accept a minority when you begin to see the minority featured in spades 
in the media. While we have Artie in Glee, the UK has Ouch!, a BBC subdivision (a website) with strictly disability-themed content. That would be like CBS having a disability area on their website, featuring blogs, commentaries, podcasts and other related media. But no, the British are the ones doing it. And while it’s not a perfect site (the theme of Ouch! Is, It’s a disability thing, oozes cheese), but the content is rich.
Ouch! produces one of my favorite disability podcasts, Ouch! Talk Show, hosted by Liz and Steve, two bawdy wheelchair-users who shoot from the hip. Liz got married to her girlfriend earlier this year and the article on their nuptials, A Wheelie Special Wedding, is a great read. They also made one of the funniest YouTube videos I’ve seen in a long time, Dirty Dancing – Wheelchair Wedding Dance. I’m guessing the couple liked Dirty Dancing… a lot.
And you can’t forget Disability Bitch, their resident columnist. “Ouch’s fearsome Bitch eats famous disabled people for breakfast. And then spits them out again. She tackles other controversial disability topics with all the subtlety of a hammer cracking a nut. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!”
With Ouch!, British TV programs featuring people with disabilities - Britain’s Missing Top Model, How to Look Good Naked, Beyond Boundaries – and even their fashion industry using models in wheelchairs on High Street, it‘s not hard to see that the British are on a whole other level when it comes to their comfortableness with disability. America needs to follow suit.
Photo courtesy of E01
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