Susan Wendell's Article: The Social Construction Of Disability

When looking at the photo above, it is clear to see that some sort of rally is taking place in the streets. The banner with the MLK quote does not actually say what the rally is actually for, but there is a heavy emphasis on justice vs. injustice. The people on the right half of the picture look very stern and determined, while the people on the left are smiling a little more and being more social. A lot of the people involved in the rally are in wheel chairs which makes it understood that this is a rally for disabled people everywhere, but not everyone is in a wheelchair. Some people are standing around the people in wheelchairs and marching with them. The photo is in black and white and there are tall buildings all around the people. There

The lens crafted from Susan Wendell’s article “The Social Construction of Disability”, is a lens of understanding that society isn’t crafted around the disabled, but rather the abled who can easily participate throughout society unlike the disabled (39). Taking this into account, when looking at the layout of the buildings in the picture they can represent the large oppressive forces of society that is trying to keep the disabled community down. But when looking past the buildings, all that there is left to see is the sky and the clouds. The contrast of colors between the colors of the buildings which are dark shades and then the colors of the sky and clouds which are white shades, it’s almost as if looking at two worlds in which one world is oppressive and dark like the buildings and the second world being open and accepting like the sky and clouds. When looking at the buildings in a literal context, most buildings do not accommodate the disabled, especially those in wheelchairs like Wendell talks about in her article (46). So when looking at the buildings as a dark type of world that the disabled need to overcome, it relates with how the buildings actually hinder disabled people. When looking at the difference between the abled and disabled and the oppression on the community of the disabled, there is still room for conversations about doing away with the binary of abled vs.