HumanVantage

Welcome to the very first edition of This May Surprise You…, the blog series where we gently peel back the layers of society’s most persistent misunderstandings with equal parts honesty, humor, and I‑can’t-believe-I-have-to-explain-this energy.

Today’s topic:
What a disabled person looks like.
(Spoiler: You can’t tell. At all. Please stop trying.)

Now, in my house we make jokes about disability all the time — not mean ones, not cruel ones, but the same kind of jokes you’d make about anything that’s just… life. That’s what disability is for us. Not tragic. Not inspirational. Just part of the package deal. Like having freckles or hating mayonnaise.

The rest of the world, however, seems to have attended a very different educational institution. One with far fewer accredited professors and far more hallway whispers:
The University of How to Be a Know‑It‑All.

This is where graduates like Doctor Nosy McJerk earn their honorary degrees in Public Meddling. His medical specialty?
Telling ambulatory wheelchair users that they don’t exist.
His subspecialty?
Announcing this loudly, in public, with the confidence of someone who once skimmed a WebMD article.

He is often accompanied by Nurse Bias Much, whose credentials include:

• Spotting someone stand up for three seconds and declaring them “cured”
• Confusing mobility aid with moral failing
• Believing disability is only real if it comes with a dramatic slow‑motion commercial and inspiring background music

Somehow, these two have become self-appointed gatekeepers of What Disability Is Supposed to Look Like™.

This may surprise you…
but there is no way to look at a person and determine:

• how disabled they are,
• what supports they use,
• what pain they’re in,
• or what accommodations they need.

Wild, right?

Meanwhile, actual trained medical professionals — the ones who went to real, credentialed, non-imaginary schools — tend to agree on a radical concept:

People with disabilities deserve to live full, joyful, interesting, adventurous, messy, beautiful lives.
(Except committing crimes. They’re very clear about that. No crime‑doing.)

Imagine how lovely the world would be if people simply thought — silently, to themselves, in that polite little brain-voice —

“There goes a person living their best life.”

No evaluating.
No diagnosing-from-afar.
No unsolicited commentary.

Because disability can look like:

• a rock‑climbing daredevil who has seizures, syncope, spontaneous joint dislocations, a cane, a walker, a wheelchair, a very cute service dog, and absolutely no intention of slowing down
  or
• a clumsy woman who can see out of one eye and sort-of the other, who refuses a cane or a dog because she’s tired of being judged, and who still shows up every single day determined to live boldly

And I have so many more examples — trust me, this is just the introductory chapter.

Disability doesn’t have a look.
But judgment sure does.
And I, for one, am tired of pretending not to notice it.

And now, having learned this very basic but shockingly misunderstood truth, you have officially earned your honorary degree in Respecting Everyone’s Right to Live Their Best Life.

No ceremony, no tassel, no student loans — you’re welcome.

Go forth and use your new degree wisely.