DISABILITY IN PRACTICE C

Everyone is disabled in some respect at least in the sense that others can do things that we cannot. But significant limitations on pursuing major life activities due to severely limited eyesight hearing mobility cognitive functioning and so on pose special problems that fortunately have been recognized (to some extent) in our public policies. Public policy is important as are the deliberative frameworks that we use to justify them and the essays in the second and third sections of this volume have significant implications for public policy and offer new proposals for justifying frameworks. Underlying public policies and their assessment however are the attitudes good and bad that we bring to them and our attitudes as well deeply affect our interpersonal relationships. The essays here especially in the first section reveal how complex and problematic our attitudes towards persons with disabilities are when we are in relationships with them as care-givers friends family members or briefly encountered strangers. Our attitudes towards ourselves as persons with (or without) disabilities are implicated in these discussions as well. Among the special highlights of this volume are its focus on moral attitudes and relationships involving disabilities and its contributors'' recognition of the multi-faceted nature of disability problems. The importance of respect for persons as a necessary complement to beneficence is an underlying theme and a deeper understanding of respect is made possible by considering closely its implications for relationships with persons with disabilities. Awareness of the common and uncommon human vulnerabilities also makes clear the need for modifying traditional deliberative frameworks for assessing policies and several essays make constructive proposals for the changes that are needed.