When it comes to people with disabilites, the process works like this: many (though not all) of us present with visible indicators that a disability is in play, whether those indicators are behaviors or assistive devices. I’m stunned at how often people see these indicators of disability and assume that respectful social pleasantries are lost on the person who has a disability. We still appreciate politeness. We still deserve respect.

The issue of mistaken assumptions, however, goes further than politeness. For purposes of this post, I wish I had kept a running tally of all the people throughout my lifetime who have seen my wheelchair and assumed my speech and hearing didn’t work. That would be a very high number. (“The leg bone’s connected to the voice box” must be from the long lost version of that old song, I guess.) For purposes of enjoying my life, I’m glad I haven’t kept up that count.

Instead of resting on your inevitable, split-second assumptions, I ask you to try the following:

If you want/need to know if a person who has a disability needs help with something, just ask. Many people with disabilities are more than able to tell you what they need, and it would be relatively rare for you to meet a person lacking expressive language skills in a community setting without either a companion or device to assist them in answering your inquiry. And I promise…no one knows better what assistance each person who has a disability needs than that person him or herself.

After you ask if we need help, please trust the answer. Specifically, this request may be challenging for you, if we say we don’t need help but still appear to be struggling. While I would never suggest that you watch someone with a disability struggle with a task without offering to help, if the person declines your offer, let it go. You are then free to assume (barring evidence that the refusal is a case of life-or-death stubbornness) that the person has the situation under control.

If we say we don’t need help, obviously, there is some reason we have chosen the difficulty of indepence over the ease of assistance. It might be as simple as needing to prove to ourselves that we can do what we need to do for ourselves. That may sound insignificant, but it isn’t.

When you see someone who has a disability, you may wonder what disability he or she has and/or how he or she came to be disabled. This does not make you a bad person. Trust me. We all wonder.

But if you’re over the age of ten, please don’t approach a stranger and ask these questions or any derivitives of them.

If you’re thinking nobody really does that, you are wrong. Now some of the people who ask such questions are probably the same people who ask complete strangers when their (existent or nonexistent) babies are due and if they are breastfeeding them and give all sorts of unsoliscted advice, primarily in the form of horror stories.

There also seems to be a significant contingent among those who ask these questions that have no idea that these issues stretch beyond surface small talk and, if brought up in conversation by a stranger, are often offensive.

Most of the time, reluctance to share information about disabilities is not global. I, for example, have no problem sharing such information with people who already know me, even on a surface level. It’s definitely not a secret (at least for me). Somone might ask, I suppose, if it’s not a secret, why is it such a big deal?

Here’s the thing: we, who have disabilities, like to think we are so much more than a medical diagnosis. When you ask about our disabilities before even learning our names, you communicate otherwise. That makes sense, right? If not, the least you can do is blindly humor us on this point.

If you need another reason, there are at least two more.

First, personal medical information is just that–personal. We do not owe it to every stranger who is the least bit curious. I’m certainly not going to ask you how your last colonoscopy went!

Second, when we wait until you know us to share about our disabilities, we minimize the chances that you will make random mistaken assumptions about our abilities based on a disability diagnosis.

So please…

We know you’re curious about our obvious differences, but don’t ask questions about them until you have had a few other conversations with us. Thank you.

In our interaction, in many cases, I’m right in front of you. I may even be talking perfectly clearly to a person next to me when you walk up to me. Even if I’m not talking, you can be certain I know what I need or want from you and/or from life.

But if you take one look at my wheelchair and decide the best approach is to talk around me, to question my companions about my abilities, my workout routine, my lunch order, etc., you tell me that none of it matters, because, whatever the answers, I’m invisible to you.

In that moment, the interaction will change. I will speak up. I (and my companions) will force you to see me–the person; not the wheelchair. I promise you, though, it will be a clipped interaction. Why?

Because in that moment, it doesn’t matter what I know about me–my functional skills, my academic and professional achievements, or my membership in a tightknit circle of family and friends. Regardless of all that, I feel invisible, if only for a moment. It’s a painful moment.

It’s also a preventable moment.

All you have to do is address each person you interact with (with a disability or without) directly and with respect.

If you have a question, ask it of the person it concerns. If you want to know what I can do or how I do something, ask me (maybe not in our first conversation, though). And if you need to know my lunch order, I’ve got that covered, but you can give the bill to the other person at my table if you want.

I know it can feel risky at times to speak directly to a person who has a disability when you don’t always know his or her capacity to answer or understand, but it is so important to begin there. When you do, you communicate to that person that, regardless of his or her capacity, you see and value him or her as a human being.

What do you have to lose by making the effort?

With that idea in mind, there are many things that people around a person who has a disability can do to maximize that life. We want to help you learn what those are and how you can do them.

There are are things you just shouldn’t say to or about someone who has a disability. We want to help you avoid those for all our sakes.

In most cases, you will not find expert commentary, in the sense that it is not a substitute for the involvement of medical professionals (although we hope to be able to heighten their awareness of their role in dealing with patients who have disabilities and their families as well).

Everyone who writes for Head-over-Wheels.com is an expert in that we deal with disability every day, personally, professionally, or both. Whether you are an orthopedic surgeon, a special education teacher, a family member, a parent, a classmate, or a neighbor who sees people with disabilities around town occasionally, we want to help you fill that role in a way that focuses on the humanity of each person with a disability that you encounter.