People with disabilities have been encouraged to see our needs as unique and extraordinary rather than as society wide issues of exclusion and inclusion. Accessibility then means the availability of the same choices accorded to able-bodied people. It also means opening the meaning of the word "normal" to the ordinary lives of people with disabilities. - Nancy Eisland. The Disabled God: Towards a Liberation Theology for the Disabled. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press 1994, 28.
This book makes a lot of interesting points, but it seems that opening the meaning of "normal" to abnormal things defeats the purpose of the words existence. I have a congential bone defect, and I'd rather not hear waxing eloquent about the "normal-ness" of that, because most people do not have it. The fact is that some disabled persons have extraordinary needs, regardless of whether or not people have the backbone to treat these persons inclusively. When it costs somebody 500,000 extra dollars to function at 75% the capacity of a person who does not have those special needs, then that person's needs are not ordinary in the slightest.
I mean no disrespect to Nancy Eisland, but this redefining of terms seems to refer to everybody and nobody.
