Friday, May 23, 2008

The upside of disability


Rabbi Lionel Blue says there's
an upside to his epilepsy.

The BBC You and Yours series asked What Disability Means to Me? and brought together several prominent British disabled people to discuss "how disability has affected their lives, and perhaps formed, or changed the kind of people they are."

The BBC talked to Rabbi Lionel Blue, commentator Murray Walker, writer and poet Gwyneth Lewis, rugby player Kenny Logan, comedienne Liz Carr and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The BBC reports that its biggest surprise from the piece was "the almost universal reaction from our contributors that their 'disability' has improved them in some ways: made them more perceptive, more 'emotionally intelligent,' as writer Gwyneth Lewis puts it, while not claiming that definition for herself."

The BBC does much good work on the topic of disability, with its program Ouch! and its news coverage, so I hope others in the media will follow its lead to allow disabled people to tell the world of their experiences in their own words.