How to deal with misinformation on disability

As a disabled person, your first priority should be to attack all misinformation surrounding disability. If you don't refute it,then you may find that a misled public may falsely accuse you. Therefore,read your newspapers and magazines and watch your television diligently for it may be here where all faulty information originates.

Whenever you spot misinformation do whatever it takes to correct the deceptive information. You will most likely find it necessary to write letters, therefore make sure your letters contain no unconfirmed assumptions about disability. Only when all of us do this will we be able to educate a misinformed public on the true realities of disabilities.

Here are several examples of misinformation that I had to address. The first dealt with the American's With Disabilities Act and implied that it was just an excuse to become disabled. It pointed out its use and misuse and left the reader with the faulty impression that disability is something to be desired. It also left the reader believing that all people with disabilities like government aid.

When I saw this article,I wrote a letter to its author. I pointed out the true realities of disability and asked how it was possible for 70% of the disabled in my country to be so disabled that they couldn't perform something useful. I then pointed to Title V of the American's With Disabilities Act and asked if this wasn't the culprit which may be causing the problem. Essentially, it states that it is all right for one to be within up as a risk for private insurance. How can one be considered a risk prior to employment and expect to find employment?

My second example comes from an article whose hidden implications were worse than the first. This article read: military says no to ritalin and its subtitle read youths who took this A.D.D. drug will be shut out of the military.

Why was this article misleading? First,it compared ritalin to one of the mind-altering drugs of the sixties. Secondly, it made no reference to prescriptions of ritalin which may be given for symptoms not related to attention deficit disorder. Thirdly, it made no attempt to state that A.D.D. can vanish as one gets older. Finally, it so misinformed its readers that some may have believed that anyone who used ritalin was a potential drug abuser or that their brain had been so altered that they now resembled someone with mental illness.

If this type of bureaucratic thinking is allowed to penetrate government,then millions of youths may become disabled simply because they once took ritalin. If they are unfit to serve their country shouldn't it logically follow that they may also be unfit to serve in any government capacity? If they are unfit for government employment then what's to prevent them from being denied

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