Essay On Intellectual Disability

Some people are born with great strengths in education, cognitive skills, and independency, but there are many that are born with lower IQ and lower skills in adaptive behavior. These individuals are diagnosed with an intellectual disability. This disability doesn’t make their lives different from others in the sense that they still desire the same things in life that others without this disability attempt to achieve. Numerous times however, people will look at the intellectually disabled with a sense of pity or weakness. Intellectual disabled individuals need to be included in media because they deserve to be seen as equals. The intellectually disabled are not seen in the American culture as would another without a disability would be represented. …show more content…
These charitable events will use the pictures of the intellectual disabled to gain pity or sympathy to raise money instead of focusing on the achievements or actual lives of the disabled. The charities aim to make the viewers feel a bit of guilt in hopes to gain a donation. The disable person is not seen as consumer or contributors to society but only as needing money through charity to be able to live their lives. As Lucy Wood once wrote in her article Media Representation of disabled people “Charities through advertising and sponsorship campaigns reinforce stereotypes of disabled people that being, dependent, poor, needy, requiring non-disabled people to drag them out of their pit of despair through making minimal donations”. These large charity groups often use photos that depict the disabled person with the lack of a smile or the that they are unhappy. As seen in the photo advertisement that is used by the charity group “Volunteers of America”. The man in the photo is looking directly at the viewer with no smile. The image seems to give the understanding that the man is unhappy with his life as an