Before going into the main discussion, I just want to clarify some terminology. In general discussions, we tend to use the terms "impairment" and "disability" interchangeably. However, there is a very important semantic difference between these two. The word "impairment" is focusing the attention to a property within a person, e.g., having a bad vision. The word "disability" essentially means that a person is not able to do a certain thing. Thus, an impairment is connected to the person, and a disability is the problem caused by the impairment for a person in a certain context. 

The reason that this distinction is important is that a person can have a quite serious impairment, but still not be disabled with respect to a certain context. E.g., being having a visual impairment does not necessarily disable a person from working over a telephone, e.g., as technical support. If we don't differentiate between the two terms, however, there is a great risk that we regard the impairment as a problem where it is not. 

But there is also another issue here, which is the main thread in this post. As I wrote above, a disability occurs when an impairment causes a problem for a person to perform certain tasks. This is an important observation, in that it means that an impairment is not a problem until there is an obstacle that the impairment prevents a person from overcoming. The big question is where the obstacles actually come from?

To get an idea of this, we will (cherry) pick a couple of very clear examples: dyslexia, dyscalculia and ADHD. The thing that relates these three is that they can to a large extent be traced back to a development in society. In the medieval society, neither of these were disabling in the sense above. Dyslexia, e.g., was of course still an impairment, that prevented the person from cracking the alphabetic code. However, it was not disabling people, since most people never learned to read anyway, and if you had the impairment, chances were big that you chose an occupation where reading and writing was not needed. 

Things changed, however, when we introduced the common school system, where every child was supposed to learn how to read, and even more so, when the society started to require from every citizen that he or she should be able to both write and read text. Now, when you were forced to read in school, the disability soon appeared, albeit initially under the disguise of "stupidity". If you could not learn how to read simple texts, you simply had to be stupid. The (well-intended) general teaching of learning to read now caused a disability among those that had this impairment. 

The same story could be seen with dyscalculia, where the non-ability to handle simple maths was not a problem, until society forced us to learn it in school, and then even furthered this to the extent that you had to report your personal economy to the state in order to pay the proper amount of taxes. Now, the problem of not being able to do simple maths had become a disability, which it was not in the medieval times. 

But what about ADHD, then? Well, it is about the same thing there. The impairment itself would not disturb people who did not need to sit still on a chair for the whole day. Shepherds, all kinds of occupations with physical activities were open for people with this property. The hyperactivity did not matter, when you were running around looking for the missing sheep. Now, when you had to attend school, this became a big problem, especially as the physical activities were lessened more and more, since you needed more time to learn all the theoretical "essentials". 

So, what is the point of this post; that we should be allowed to abandon school if we have any of these impairments? No, not really. Instead we should realise that the problems for people with some types of impairments are in some sense artificial, they are created by the society rather than inherent in the impairment. Are there any possibilities to use this knowledge to support people? Yes, if we understand the respective impairment and its properties, and also accept impairments as being "natural" parts of the human being, we can take many measures to prevent the disabilities to take over. With dyslexia, for example, the label "stupid" is at least on its way to be removed, and there are many supportive tools that can be used to help a person both read and write. 

Dyscalculia is not as well known, but one thing that is a problem for people with this impairment, is the transfer of the economy from concrete payments, i.e., cash, to being only numbers in a list. This is a problem for people with dyscalculia, since the adding of numbers on a sheet of paper (or a screen) is vastly more difficult than using physical bills and coins. So IF we will end up in the cashless society, this will undoubtedly become a huge problem for people with dyscalculia (and many others who may just be weak in maths for other reasons). 

And ADHD, finally, what are the implications for this group of people. Well, the most important thing is to try to come to terms with the properties of this functional variation (it is not only a negative issue, ADHD does have positive properties as well). We need to be more open for using the specialties of ADHD, such as the creativity, the perceptual spread, and the power of heavy associations for one thing. But we may also need to be more open for that there is a higher need for physical activities in the work place, to accommodate for the people who have a high degree of hyperactivity. 

In this way, it is easy to see that the society creates the disability in these cases, but they are not the only ones. Try to think of other times when an impairment is turned inte a disability by social rules of other kinds of barriers stemming from how the society works today. The most important things when it comes to fighting disabilities is awareness, understanding, and the many insights that come from this.