16/09/2025
Normalising Disability - a heartwarming story 🥹
SUMMARY
A unique, true story whereby every individual in a community adapted so people with disability could fully engage in community life.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello my name is Lauren, from Geelong Community Care and I just wanted to share with you a true story that I heard a few weeks ago about a village in Massachusetts, USA, and just how the people themselves became the support system for people with disability and how they adapted to accommodate disability.
So basically this was around 1600s / 1700s, like I said on an island in Massachusetts, the population was about 3,000 people and 1 in about 150 people were born deaf.
So what this island ended up doing, waaas, everyone learnt sign language! So this meant the people with disability could go fishing, (*general stuff up here*) with their friends, that means that they could work together on farming, that they could go to town meetings that they could communicate with anyone that they wanted to. So it was just so empowering for those people living with hearing impairment or deafness. So yeah for me this is just such a beautiful response to deafness or disability.
I just wanna also show a little percentage of how many of the people were deaf and how many people made provisions for their deafness. So who doesnt love a pie chart, so, yes, so it was actually 0.6% of the population who were deaf. Um but yeah we can see the dark green is everyone who learnt sign language! Um and just for comparison here I have, yeah, moved to Australia 2025.
And I know Im comparing oranges with apples I know Im comparing deafness with disability but my point is, like, what can happen when everyone works together in the community. And I must say we have an amazing government response to disability and that is the NDIS. How amazing, this country is amazing. And also, we've seen a lot of changes, we're going from strength to strength with accommodating people with disability which is so amazing. But, um I guess just when you think about, you know, if 1 in 5 people, 1 in 6 people have disability that means a lot of our friends, a lot of our families have disability, and even more in Geelong as well.
So, anyway this story brings up so many other thoughts that I have which maybe I can land in future videosbut I just wanted to share this story. I thought it was such a beautiful example of humanity loving each other and accommodating each other. Let me know if you have any thoughts or if it's brought up anything for you, but, um yeah! Thats it. Seeya : )