One of the most effective aspects of the speech is that it portrays that it is not an individual’s choice or fault to be disabled in different ways in their life. Highlighting how disability is an aspect of life that only the person living with a given form of disability can understand and how it affects their well-being (McCuen-Metherell and Winkler 220). The disability may bring about agony and frustrations to an individual’s life because they wish they could live a normal life like individuals who are not disabled (McCuen-Metherell and Winkler 220). I can greatly relate to the impacts of disability when I witnessed my father struggling to come in terms with the reality that he lost his sight after suffering a chronic disease that causes blindness. Through witnessing my father go through all the frustrations of trying to live a normal life, I can attest that disability may negatively affect an individual’s mental health and well-being.
The story greatly impacted me since it gave me a broad view of how it feels like to be disabled. Individuals hold different perceptions of people living with a disability, which greatly impacts their well-being within society. I was greatly affected by the fact that some community members look at how disabled individuals do or perform various activities and not what they perform. For example, from the story, Dan Slater states that some of his audience members mostly focused on how he pronounced some words by stuttering instead of listening to what he was saying to enhance their understanding (McCuen-Metherell and Winkler 221). The audience’s reactions portray how some individuals have a different outlook on people living with a disability, which causes agony and frustration.
One of the main effective aspects of Dan Slater’s speech is that he assures that people living with disability and normal individuals are all the same. By being the same, the author elaborates that such groups living with disability are always abled differently (McCuen-Metherell and Winkler 223). Normal groups should take the responsibility of ensuring that they act as a support system and empower disabled groups to achieve some of their goals by acknowledging that they are not equal to them.
Work Cited
McCuen-Metherell, Jo Ray, and Anthony C Winkler. Readings for Writers, 15th ed., Cengage Learning, 2015, p. 220-223.