Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities

Assumptions can be more disabling than disabilities. When I was a toddler, Eva and Charley lived in our apartment building. Eva had a low voice, which made it easier for me to understand her, and I spent many hours playing in her apartment. I knew that her leg braces and crutches were connected to polio but didn't know the details. A few years later, when visiting their new apartment, I was stunned when I saw a newly displayed wedding photo. The photo exploded my assumptions about Charley, his wife, and their relationship: Eva had had polio before they got married. What had trapped me into thinking that Charley was such a good husband for accepting his wife's condition after she got the disease? What had disabled me from considering the possibility that he had courted a woman with crutches?