On Tuesday, President Donald Trump delivered his
State of the Union address
before a joint session of Congress. While parsing the address, there was one thing that especially stood out for me: the President’s due acknowledgement of women’s progress in the workforce, as evidenced by the historically high number of female members of Congress. This is an essential milestone in our nation’s quest for gender parity that we all should be proud of. Of course, we know that much more work remains to even the playing field for women in politics, as well as many other facets of American society.
But President Trump’s recognition of the crucial achievement of women in the workforce brought to mind something entirely relevant: the realization of the depressingly low number of disabled politicians. Aside from Congressman Dan Crenshaw, who lost one eye as a Navy SEAL, and several of the wounded American servicemembers who now serve in Congress, I have yet to hear of a deaf or blind member of our national legislature in the current term. Even though people with disabilities are the largest minority group in the world (about 1 billion, or 15%, of the total population of the world) and the U.S. (about 1 in 4 Americans, or 61 million of them, live with a disability), they are grossly underrepresented in the nation’s political life. We have certainly made major strides toward greater inclusion. But far too often, our non-disabled politicians ignore people with disabilities, perhaps because it is much easier to turn away than to face society’s pressing challenges.
For people with combined vision and hearing loss (or other forms of more significant disability), the picture may be far bleaker. As is the case with larger populations who see some benefits from general societal changes, smaller communities within them tend to be left behind. Politicians and thought leaders alike routinely give speeches at key events extolling the accomplishments of those in the larger community and exhorting the rest of society to do more to bring societal and attitudinal barriers crashing down. (There certainly are many unsung accomplished women and men with significant disabilities like deafblind individuals who made substantial contributions to society). Yet, beyond the pomp and rituals of such events, few concrete policy moves are made to bring people who are deafblind on par with the rest of the disability community, much less the general population.
While I do not have solid statistics to evince my arguments (largely because so few studies, if any, have been conducted to assess the circumstances of deafblind people), I can tell you from my own personal experience as a deafblind person and my years championing disability rights that despite the Americans with Disabilities Act and other more recent policy improvements, deafblind people continue to face dire challenges in many aspects of life. This is not least because we have not made some tangible progress in the last several decades but mainly because policymakers and those in the business world (as well as the news media) still generally ignore them as the rest of society is transformed. To them, progress within the larger disability community is progress for all disabled people. Nowhere is this more evident than in the 4th Industrial Revolution: both policymakers and industry leaders almost always emphasize (and sometimes overstate) how disruptive technologies can help those who are either blind or deaf, not both, and in the process fail to promote truly universal access. At the moment, I see the much-trumpeted transformative powers of artificial intelligence (AI) or augmented reality may actually be leaving deafblind people further behind. Especially for those who rely on tactile and Braille entirely.
A society is truly great when it not only strives to achieve gender equality but also endeavors to be just and fair to all of its citizens. Just as merely promoting gender equality won’t necessarily lead to women and men having the same rights and opportunities to achieve and thrive in life without recognizing that women (and men) come in different shades and shapes and from different faiths and cultures, empowering people with disabilities to live fuller lives requires sincerely acknowledging their unique and diverse needs and accordingly adopting policies and practices that embrace every person and every community without regard to ability or market size or value. I therefore entirely concur with President Trump that we have “unlimited potential” as a country to make “historic breakthroughs for all Americans.” Here’s hoping that our leaders will for once work together, sleeves rolled up, to tackle our country’s myriad challenges, including the advancement of all people with disabilities.