Disability Awareness

Disability Awareness Programs

When you see someone who is disabled, what comes to your mind and how would you feel? Do you think differently with people who have disabilities? What do you think those with disabilities are thinking? These questions always play on our minds when we see disabled people. It's hard to judge people when you know they can't do the things most people do. For example, you see a blind man, can you say right there and there that he has no future because of his vision impairment? Of course not! For all you know, that blind man has more skills, knowledge, and talents than you do.

Is it natural for people to be judgmental to individuals with disabilities? People may tend to be judgmental, but if they knew what it must be like to have impairments, I bet they will have new perspectives in life. And this is what disability awareness programs are all about.

Disability awareness programs are designed and delivered with the purpose of reducing the barriers and increase the understanding, acceptance, and inclusion for those with physical disabilities within our community. Disability awareness programs aim to:

§ Challenge some of our general assumptions, attitudes, values, and beliefs regarding disability and diversity.
§ Educating the public by providing a more realistic, practical, and positive picture of people with disabilities.
§ Providing sensible suggestions on how to interact more comfortably and confidently to those with impairments

Disability awareness programs are as important to children as it is to adults. Why? Look back in your childhood years when you were still studying. It is the time where your confidence and understanding to things were shaped. There is no better way place to start learning disability awareness programs than your early years. If kids started to realize and appreciate the feelings, difficulties and hardships of disabled person while they were still young, the world will be a better place for who are more like us than different.

There is a good activity in a particular disability awareness program that will make you realize that such programs have a lot of things to be learned about. Life as kid can be hard, especially when you can't get or the things you wanted, but try being a blind - it's going to be very much harder. That is what this blind kind has to go through during school days. All of his classmates can learn through watching, but not with that kid. He has to learn the movement first before he can learn how to do it.

Being blind is part of his everyday life, but its something another student experienced for the first time during that disability awareness program activity. She found making a simple sandwich difficult, which she was so good at, because she was blind-folded, and she was making a mess doing it. With desperation, she said she'll stop and now she understood what those blind are going through.

That was a part of the program that made students understand the daily life of someone with impairment such as how hard it is to draw when you cannot see or can't simply do it when you don't have hands. There are so many things you can learn and discover when you or let your children be part of any disability awareness programs.