“Temporarily Able-Bodied”

Today I stumbled across a podcast called Invisible Not Broken, and listened to the February 20th episode, entitled “Accessible Travel and Disability Blogging”. The host made a comment about “temporarily able-bodied” people, which is the first time I’ve ever heard that term. I have mixed feelings.

I get the sentiment. We all eventually need to face our own mortality, and this is a term that helps currently able-bodied folks see that yes, many of us will have limitations in life, eventually. But not *everyone* will, and certainly all will not have limitations that completely change the way in which they live their lives. But I do see its value in the disability activism world. We should all be concerned about making cities more accessible. Accessibility is a goal that will improve everyone in society’s lives, not just the disabled people living in it.

According to a 2023 infographic on the CDC website (source can be found here), up to 1 in 4 Americans have some kind of disability (26%). Of those, 11.1% of disabled people have mobility issues, for 10.9% it’s cognition, for 6.4% it’s difficulty doing errands alone (independent living), for 5.7% it’s hearing, for 4.9% it's vision, and for 3% it’s self-care, which is defined as difficulty dressing or bathing, and of course, many of those issues will, at times, overlap. That alone should be enough to convince legislators to do something about the problems many cities have with creating accessible spaces for disabled people. But unfortunately, we still need to battle for every basic human right that able-bodied people take for granted.

Again, without getting into too much of the disability activism side of things, the term ‘temporarily able-bodied’ seems problematic to me for a few reasons. I’m not one to gatekeep, but it somehow feels as though they’re trying too hard to include everyone under the disability umbrella, when the people aren’t yet disabled. I read an article called “Can We Please Stop Calling Able-Bodied People TABs”, written on April 15th, 2015 by CrippledScholar (source: link), and agree with a lot of her points about there being better ways to include larger groups of people in ones community.

But I also feel like it IS a good way to bring attention to the fact that disabilities don’t just affect disabled people – they affect everyone. Most of us will eventually age, if we’re lucky, and have to alter our lifestyles to accommodate our new limitations, or may at some point have a temporary disability like a broken bone. Calling able-bodied people "temporarily able-bodied" may not be the answer, but creating a more inclusive society for disabled people certainly does have both economic and social benefits for everyone.

Gentle hugs,

Steena