The moral health of society can be assessed by the way it relates to the least protected part of it - the elderly, children and the disabled. Today, relatively favorable conditions have begun to be created for people with disabilities on the part of state bodies, but are people ready to accept this category of citizens as equal members of society?
Who remembers the good old fairy tale by Valentin Kataev "Flower-seven-color"? Girl Eugene spent six magic petals on the fulfillment of her own whims when she met the boy Vitya. Vitya was disabled and could not play with other children, so he was sad and lonely. Eugene guessed the seven-flower, so that Vitya would become healthy.
Disabled person and society
At first glance, Kataev’s tale, kind and positive, involuntarily reflects the attitude of society towards this category of the population: a disabled person cannot be completely happy in his condition. How cynical it does not sound, but in the days of the Soviet Union this was precisely the attitude towards people with disabilities. They were not discredited, they were not limited in their rights, but they were shy.
And the disguise of latent discrimination was the exaltation of "a real Soviet man" whose existence was impossible to hide - Maresyev, Nikolai Ostrovsky. The official position of the state was to deny the existence of persons with disabilities as a phenomenon.
Absurdity, and not the only one in the history of the Soviet Union. But it was precisely this policy that led to the fact that people with disabilities became a non-existent category - they exist, but they seem to be gone. Therefore, the attitude towards them on the territory of the post-Soviet space, primarily on the part of society, is very different from the attitude of the world community towards people with disabilities.
The situation of disabled people in the Russian Federation
The state has finally recognized the existence of the problem, a whole program has been developed for the legal and socio-economic rehabilitation of disabled people. But the decades-long attitude of society will be more difficult to overcome.
Squeamish-pitiful-sympathetic - with approximately these words you can describe the attitude towards the disabled of the average layman.
Limited opportunities
A person with disabilities - this is how a disabled person is positioned today. Although, logically, where is the limit of opportunity, it is difficult to determine. It is hardly possible to call the limited possibilities of Paralympics when a slalom player with an absent limb walks a track that a healthy person cannot afford to pass.
