There is no doubt that there are still many people who try to tiptoe around people with disabilities and it actually feels uncomfortable and yet they don’t really understand why. They really don’t know what to say or do and in the end they make the person with the disability feel out of place and that is not a nice place to be. You need to think back to when you experienced a short-term disability in your life like a broken arm or leg and try to remember how frustrating it was when people tried to treat you differently. Roll ahead now to present time when you meet a person with a disability and try to keep that thought in your head. There is no need to be stressed and there is no need to think that you’re going to do something wrong when you are around someone with a disability and you should generally just continue on with your life as normal.

There are service providers out there whose goal it is to provide not only support for the person with disabilities but to be also NDIS support coordination providers who are changing outcomes. They are there to help people with physical or mental disabilities but it is also their job to try to teach other people how to react around people like this. Many of us have found ourselves in an uncomfortable situation where we did know what to do and so the following tips should help you to better understand disabilities and how you should react around people with them.

• Just try to be yourself – People with disabilities that may have occurred in a car accident don’t really see themselves as any way different and so you shouldn’t either. Just because you see someone sitting in a wheelchair doesn’t mean that they can’t take care of themselves and they haven’t learned to deal with their disability. You will find that they can easily move in and around any store and of anything they have many advantages over you.
• Wait to be asked – Just don’t assume that a person with a disability wants your help and so wait until you are asked before you do anything. A person with a disability has no problems with asking you for assistance if they need it and so just continue on with your normal day and they ask for help.
• Talk to the individual – It may be that the person with the disability has someone there to help them and so many people have a bad habit of speaking to the help and not to the individual. This is increasingly frustrating for the person who has a disability and so you don’t want to ignore them. Don’t wrongfully assume that a person in a wheelchair is also mentally disabled because 9 times out of 10 they aren’t.

It needs to be mentioned again that you should just try to be yourself and react as you normally would with any complete stranger who you meet for the first time. If you still feel a little bit uncomfortable then maybe it’s time that you educate yourself about people with disabilities and the rights that they have.