The Brief Bedford Reader

I once asked a local advertiser why he didn't include disabled people in his spots. His response seemed direct enough: "we don't want to give people the idea that our product is just for the handicapped."... If you saw my blind niece ordering a Coke, would you switch to Pepsi lest you be struck sightless? No, I think the advertiser's excuse masked a deeper and more anxious rationale: To depict disabled people in the ordinary activities of daily life is to admit that there is something ordinary about disability itself, that it may enter anybody's life. If it is effaced completely, or at least isolated as a separate "problem," so that it remains at a safe distance from other human issues, then the viewer won't feel threatened by her or his own physical vulnerability. (This passage was taken from the article Disability by Nancy Mairs.)

I think what Nancy said was right. We "normal" people are afraid of disability because we know so little about it. If we were taught more about it and realized that disability is part of everyday life, we would probably be quicker to accept the people around us who are disabled and want to help them since they can not completely help themselves. I do not think it is right to ignore the hurting people. If anything, we should be paying more attention to them, since the "normal" people can take care of themselves. The disabled need hope and we can give it to them. That was what Nancy was trying to say.