I was looking for a word to describe our attitude toward persons with disabilities (PWDs). A group of students once asked me about that and since then I began looking for the word.

We just celebrated Deaf Awareness Week (Nov. 10-16) and the International Day of Persons with Disabilities is on Dec. 3. I think, it would be good to reflect on the way we look and treat a sector in the margins of our society.

The word is not “apathy.” Although it best describes our attitude toward the poor, the word doesn’t capture our attitude toward PWDs. The word implies that we actually acknowledge the existence of those we are indifferent to and we are thus only shielding ourselves from whatever effects their existence have on us.

I am tempted to say that we consider them “non-existent.” But that would not be truthful. By naming the attitude correctly, we delineate its boarders, fence it, and we get a sense of control over it, hence the word “capture.”

We are well aware of the existence of PWDs among us. Many elevators now have information in Braille. (How the blind persons reach the elevators without guides is still a curiosity for me.) Public transport vehicles have already placed stickers depicting a wheelchair user on seats designated for them. (How a wheelchair user can actually get on the bus or the jeep is another curiosity.) A couple of religious programs on television have sign language interpreters. (The deaf need only to know about God.) More and more special education centers are sprouting all across the country and a growing number of teachers are focusing on special education.

These are to be expected. There are around eight to nine million PWDs in the Philippines, according to estimates of the World Health Organization. The Department of Health’s prevalence survey in the year 2000 puts the number at around three million. The last census of the National Statistics Office reveals an even lower figure at only over a million.

The disparate figures are primarily caused by the technical difficulties involved in enumerating PWDs. Persons using wheelchairs and the blind using canes are visible. But there are disabilities which are hard to detect and some are even mistaken for another disability.

Deafness, for example. We cannot tell a deaf person from one who is not deaf until we start conversing with them or until they start signing. Their inability to hear, especially in the case of children, are often mistaken as “mental retardation.” They are unable to hear their teachers in class and consequently, learning is slow or not taking place at all.

The inability of the deaf to enunciate words—a consequence of not hearing the words spoken—is what is easily noticeable. That is the reason Cebuanos and Tagalogs mistakenly call them “amang” and “pipi,” both of which mean mute. But the inability to enunciate well, like mental retardation, is an altogether different disability.

The way we look, call and treat PWDs is not helpful. We are not proud of having PWDs among us, even among our family members. We keep mum about their existence, hide them or even deny their presence the same way we do when we realize our own defects, mistakes and failures.

I think the word I have been looking for to describe our treatment of PWDs is “anonymous.” We treat Filipinos with disabilities as though they are anonymous. We notice their existence but we do not know their names. We do not have an image of their faces in our minds and what their day-to-day life is. We are not even certain if they have lives at all. Do they, really?

We have crude statistics on Filipinos with disabilities. Even then, as one of Jean-Luc Godard’s characters in “Pierrot le Fou” puts it after being given statistical figures, they don’t “mean anything, because we don’t know anything about these men, who they are, whether they love a woman, or have children, if they prefer the cinema to theater. We know nothing.”

We seem to want to remain unaware about PWDs. Sometimes we do realize our lack of awareness and we put a ramp in the pedestrian lane, an information in Braille in the elevator, or a sign language interpreter in a religious program on TV—but only where we happen to feel like setting them up. The next pedestrian lane does not need to have the ramps, tactile warning strips to and from the elevators are not necessary, and the next television program need not be interpreted in sign, especially if it is a news program.

Why should we care about the lives of a few persons when their existence or non-existence does not affect our lives? Why should we care when they do not have the number and do not add to the ratings of our programs or augment our profits?

Why should we pay attention to those who challenge our image and idea of being human, and of what is normal and well?

Why should we stretch our senses, our language, our set-up in society, or our way of life when we are just fine as we are now? Why should we change the way we view what it is to be human beings?

Because the attitudes we adopt toward PWDs define our person. They show the kind of persons we are and the kind of society we have. We get to be defined. We get to rise up from our own anonymity.

* * *

Send comments to babisalva@gmail.com.