Disability is one of the many things that we all face every day in one way or another. Our attitudes towards it can be affected by multiple models whether that be via family/friends, the media, or a personal experience and sometimes via assumptions we make without realising it or whether we know those assumptions to be true or not. My personal attitudes towards people with disabilities have been shaped by family, personal experiences and especially via the media.
Media
The media is a universal tool that we all use, it can provide information to us and it can also shape our opinions on different topics. "The media can play an important role in presenting disability issues in a way that could dispel negative stereotypes and promote the rights
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Would they feel inferior to the people around them? Would they call themselves a cripple because that's what people have said to them? And then I have thought about it from the perspective of myself seeing and experiencing that disability in person. Is there any way I can help them? Are they in pain or are they sad because of their disability. whatever the case was I have always had a positive attitude towards them. Another way my attitudes have been influenced in the media is celebrities or talk show hosts/news presenters etc. have spoken about certain disabilities or had people with disabilities on their shows talk about a disability, hearing it from another perspective can be very eye opening and can sometimes make you think hard about how you have been around disabilities. However, in saying this the media can also negatively portray disabilities or make a stereotype of them. Some of the stereotypes that portray people with disabilities are the extremely innocent one who are naïve and will follow any order given to them, another stereotype is making the person with the disability into a hero via sympathy and focusing on their disability in order to gain sympathy. This can cause a