Sometimes, Disabled People are seen in public. That they exist is usually reinforced by signage and the arrangements for public biology stations we call rest rooms. After that, we might encounter an occasional wheelchair. Whether or not people who stumble about with their dog or pony on a lead in public spaces are disabled or not, they do not throng normatively, and public spaces are about normative gathering. One of the jokes that circulates the disabled community is that line about how you can join us at any time. Indeed, disability—the medical conditions of the human body that don’t fit the bell curve of human activity in modern society—crosses the typical social boundaries of race, class and gender. Thus, seeing a disabled person in public might be so rare for some that children are told not to stare.

Public event spaces were, for a generation, required to provide access to disabled people: some of these efforts are visible to the public by curb cuts, ramps to buildings, wheelchair accommodating elevators, braille signage, and sign language interpreters alongside public speakers. Of course, these architectural modifications to public spaces are predicated upon the notion that the disabled person can physically get to those public spaces, and transit problems abound. That transit problems are a typical issue in the disabled community is not part of public discourse, but an obvious factor on why disabled people are not a common sight, especially since a good third of the population has some sort of limiting physical condition.  It’s big work to attend events. Humans are hardwired to herd up, and deprivations—solitary confinement that is so typical of disabled life—are seen as a form of torture, psychologically; therefore, disabled people too must sometimes attend some kind of gathering. […]