People With Disabilities Discuss Their Communication Experiences by Race Dalton A major fear for many people with disabilities is being treated differently. Psychology Professor Tomas Martinez, who has post-polio syndrome, said people would talk to him differently because of his disability when he was younger. Now he believes that people are becoming better at communicating with him. “It is an area that as we learned about communicating differently to respect the new definitions that we have for each other, and to now not allow ourselves to be compartmentalized into these little boxes of being handicapped or being disabled as opposed to recognizing it as something that impacts somebody, but doesn’t necessarily have to define who they are,” Martinez said. As people think through how to communicate more inclusively in terms of gender and race, they also need to think about disability, Martinez said. Pepperdine students and faculty who have a disability shared their communication experiences, which they believe are sharply different than those of the people around them. Experiences in communication Martinez said he has had post-polio syndrome since he was a year old when his family took him to the hospital to spend a year in isolation. “I was taken away from my home,” Martinez said. “Now that I know what happened to me over the years, it’s kind of affected me growing up.” He said he was lucky to have a family who supported him.
Photo courtesy of Tomas Martinez Martinez recalled a time where the public school his mom wanted him to attend would not allow him in because of his disability. However, his mom’s resolve was strong and the school eventually ended up taking him; Martinez was one of the first children to be mainstreamed in education, that is he was one of the first children who had a disability to be placed into a mainstream classroom. Like Martinez, senior Amanda Cooper said she has had a difficult time growing up with a disability and is thankful for her family’s constant support. “Growing up with a hearing impairment can definitely feel isolating because a lot of people assume that only elderly people have hearing loss, but for sensorineural hearing loss, it’s hereditary,” Cooper said. “It also continues to worsen as you get older. When I was a teenager and I already had hearing loss, it was difficult for me to know that that was probably the most I would be able to hear in my life.” Cooper said people often assume she knows what they are saying. When she mishears them and answers incorrectly, they automatically think it’s due to a lack of intelligence instead of a lack of ability.
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