The Visibility Movement is a blog that aims to help raise awareness about discriminatory behaviour towards people with invisible disabilities and help shed light on why this is occurring. It’s currently run by Stephanie Mantilla, a PhD student at the University of Sydney, who’s research looks at invisible disability. The blog hopes encourage a more inclusive re-imagining of what it means to be disabled, so that when you think ‘disability’ you don’t only think of a visible physical impairment. We want the re-imagining to include people who appear to be able bodied as well.
What are invisible disabilities?
Any disability that you cannot see, they are also known as ‘hidden illnesses’. Invisible disabilities come in all forms.
According to the Australian Network on Disability they can be:
- physical
- intellectual
- mental illness
- learning disability
- sensory
- psychiatric
- immunological
So, what is the problem?
There are stereotypes about what disability is and what it looks like, these are known as ‘disabling stereotypes.’ These stereotypes cause us to associate disability with visible physical impairments and influence the images we associate with disability. For example, when you think of ‘disability’ one of the first images that probably comes to mind is a person in a wheelchair but an image that is less likely to come to mind is an able-bodied person with a mental illness.
Okay, but is that really so bad?
Yes, perhaps more so than you may initially think. This close-minded idea of disability marginalizes people who don’t fit in with it because ‘they don’t look disabled’ such as people with invisible disabilities. This can lead to discrimination against people with invisible disabilities, for example invisible disability shaming. In a similar way to how we’re having encouraging discussions about gender discrimination and racial discrimination, it’s important to have a conversation about this especially because it can also affect a person’s self-confidence.
What is invisible disability shaming?
Invisible disability shaming is when you make a person with an invisible disability feel as though they are doing something wrong for using something made for disabled people.
For example leaving a note on an able-bodied person’s car who just parked in a disabled car space despite them having the disability permit. This was what cystic fibrosis sufferer Lauren Rowe (who has also had to deal with a double lung transplant) has had to deal with earlier this year. Although this case sounds extreme, invisible disability shaming is actually quite common and often normalized, in fact most of us are probably guilty of doing it unintentionally. For example giving a dirty glare to an able-bodied person who just walked out of a disabled bathroom. For more examples head over to the invisible stories.
Why is this even important?
No one deserves to be discriminated against.
- 45% of Australians will suffer from a mental health illness at some point during their life.
- 10% of Australians have dyslexia.
- Up to 25% of Australian children have a learning disability of some kind, most of which are invisible.
- An estimated 2% of Australians have fibromyalgia syndrome.
- 10% of women have endometriosis.
Statistics show that 90% of disabilities are invisible which means there is a high chance that you or someone you know has an invisible disability.