By Becky Montgomery, HLAA-WA Board Member
Pride? What’s with Disability Pride? I thought Pride was only for LGBTQ+ communities.
Well…no. Read on.
How did Disability Pride come about?
Twenty years after Gay Pride started, Disability Pride was born, right after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed.
Those twenty years were packed with disability activism. Initially, activists focused on changing laws and social standards that too often isolated people with disabilities in institutions. The work evolved to demands for basic education, such as laws like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that required “free, appropriate, and public” education for children with disabilities. With the passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the fight against discrimination in employment gained federal backing. And finally, the ADA. For the disability community, the ADA was like reaching the top of a mountain after a decades-long climb.
Just a few months before President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA into law, as Congress debated the final version of the bill, there was an unexpected finale. To show the American public why the bill was critical, several thousand activists marched from the White House to the 100 steps that lead up to the Capitol building. At the end, more than 60 people with disabilities climbed out of wheelchairs, threw down crutches, abandoned white canes, and then crawled to and up the stairs. They were led by an eight-year-old girl with cerebral palsy, Jennifer Keelan-Chaffin.
ALT: color photo of people with disabilities climbing capitol steps in Washington DC.
I can’t help thinking of our own young activist, also eight years old, Hugo Esterhay, who visited many of our state legislators in 2023 to tell them why hearing aids are critical to kids. Sometimes, children really do lead the way.
disability rights advocate.
ALT: Color photo of grade school aged boy with brown hair in suitcoat and button-down shirt
Getting back to the idea of Disability Pride: The twenty long years of activism in the courts and law-making offices were grueling, but they also gave the activists amazing skills. They educated judges, congresspeople, agency representatives, and even presidents and cabinet officers about the barriers that people with disabilities face every day. Disability activists threw their considerable energy into attending meetings, writing legal briefs, and joining forces with more experienced civil rights leaders across the spectrum. Not only were they successful, but they also came to see themselves as capable, influential, even sometimes powerful. What a revelation.
After the ADA passed, activists embraced this confident energy and applied what they’d learned to help the millions of people with disabilities who were not activists. Unfortunately, many people with disabilities blamed themselves for their isolation and lack of opportunity. Constant frustration about basic needs such as being able to enter a building without help can leave you feeling hopeless and inadequate. So before they could make progress on key accessibility issues, disability activists had to find a way to help their larger community feel pride in themselves. Disability Pride was born.
Disability Pride and people with hearing loss
Which brings me to us, people with hearing loss. Should we embrace the idea of Disability Pride? I say, YES. Here’s why.
At first, it can be tricky to think of ourselves as “people with disabilities.” Disability means you can’t walk, right? Or that you can’t see, or it somehow means something that seems more dramatic than not being able to hear well.
You (probably) have a hearing aid, right? But disability is even simpler than that. Disability just means that you’re limited from some ordinary activities of life. Does that fit? Are you stopped from some ordinary life activities by hearing loss?
Next, what about “Pride?” In some contexts, pride can be a negative thing, as if you are seeing yourself as better than others. But in this context, pride means you’re recognizing that, as a human being, you’re important too. You’re entitled to dignity, and to be treated fairly and with respect.
You might be saying to yourself, “But I’m not a hero like those people who climbed the Capitol steps. I’m an ordinary person in an ordinary life. I just have a hard time hearing.”
I bet that sometimes you are a hero in many situations that perhaps you haven’t really considered. Let me give you a pep talk.
Yes, you CAN be proud
Does anyone really think that having a hearing aid fixes everything in life? And does anyone really think that speaking up for your needs means that you’ll be able to understand a mask-wearing pharmacist talking to you about a new medication? Or that captions make it possible to feel Willy Loman’s agony as you’re watching Death of a Salesman? Or that when you ask someone to repeat what they just said, they say, “Oh, never mind. Not that important,” and you smile patiently?
No, of course not. All of those situations demand a huge effort and many skills on your part, which you learned to do without thinking about it. You practice those things daily. You have learned to use more than one superpower:
- Imagination. Every day, many situations demand that you put a lot of effort into understanding what others are communicating. You look for clues, such as the face and body language of the person. You look for contextual hints, like the conversation topic, signage, or text on a package.
- Resourcefulness. Someone says something that you almost understand. Immediately your brain starts seeking possibilities and evaluating them. Did he say “pill” or “bill?” What fits best in this conversation? As Shari Eberts explained, having a hearing loss is like playing “Wheel of Fortune” when most of the letters are missing. And eventually, you figure it out.
- Social savvy. If whatever you are trying in a social situation is still not working, you run through your internal toolkit. Is this the time to be assertive and demanding? Or does this person have a sense of humor, and can you make a joke? Is it best to just be very direct and ask them to move to a quieter area to talk?
- Strategic thinking. What can I do next time to make this work out better? How can I solve this problem?
- Resilience. When your simple ask for someone to repeat themselves gets brushed off, or even trivialized with “It’s not that important,” you shake it off and bounce back, ready for the next puzzler.
You can think of these skills as a variety of Deaf Gain—in other words, these are really huge advantages for people with hearing loss. I confess I’ve used this list in job interviews to let the interviewer know that getting someone with hearing loss as an employee can be a big win.
Bottom line: I Invite you to join me in celebrating Disability Pride. You’ve earned it, and you can look around you to honor others who earned it too.
Becky Montgomery writes about living with hearing loss from a very personal place – she has progressive hearing loss. She managed with hearing aids for 20-odd years but now wears bilateral cochlear implants.
Becky is now retired and works hard at catching up on her reading and movie watching. In the past, she worked at Microsoft, where she was deeply involved in the company’s Employee Resource Group for Disability. She’s also an HLAA-WA Board member.