"We are not vulnerable; it is our rights that are violated."

By Barbara Anderson

The title of this column is trademarked. It is by María Antonia Irazabal Quintero, a blind activist for the rights of people with disabilities and head of the regulatory division of the National Secretariat for Care and Disability of the Ministry of Social Development of Uruguay. 

With a clarity bathed in common sense, she summed up in that phrase everything that moves people with disabilities, their families and activist groups: vulnerability is not a condition, it is a punishment applied by society. 

"To change, we have to change." The obvious puns are a hallmark of Antonia who explained the only way to make possible the full inclusion of people with disabilities. If we continue to accumulate wishes, declarations of good will, proposals without budget or measurement, or plans that are detonated without concrete data on the community of people with disabilities, it is impossible to achieve real (hopefully ever) change.