In a

TED talk from April 2014

, the late writer and comedian Stella Young introduces and unpacks the term “inspiration porn”. She takes aim at internet memes of disabled people “overcoming” their disability, and argues that when a disabled person overcomes anything, it’s more relevant to highlight the barriers that a disabling world sets in their way, not their medical problems.

It’s a perspective I love, mainly because I grew up with a disability of my own. While it has made life inconvenient at times, and caused me to spend much of Primary School being accommodated for in the most mundane of situations, it hasn’t prevented me from living like any other human being.

At times, I simply wondered why it was that the environment around me so clearly overlooked the needs of the handicapped.

And so when Young, who was born with Osteogenesis imperfecta, says that she learnt to use her body to the best of its capacity “just as you have”, it makes complete sense.

“That’s the thing about those kids in those [internet memes] as well,” she emphasises, “They’re not doing anything out of the ordinary. They are just using their bodies to the best of their capacity.”

In the same way, the Uber driver I mentioned at the start of this article wasn’t doing anything incredible. He was just making an honest living in the way he knew best.

So when someone comes along and says, “imagine without hearing or speaking ability, he studied to became a draftsman”, it’s both absurd and patronising (read: insulting). There is no dignity in giving this man charity simply because learning was more challenging for him as compared to the average, “normal” human being.

As such, it’s important to realise that when a person in a wheelchair is unable to climb a flight of stairs, this is only because the path from the first floor to the second was not designed with people like him in mind. That’s all. It’s no reason to feel sorry for them.

Like Young says, disability alone does not make anyone exceptional. And we need to understand this because it makes all the difference between respect or pity.

Joseph shares with me that when he first wrote his Facebook post, it was for a Facebook group where parents of autistic children share their experiences.

“The post was part of my response to talk to these parents out of sheltering their children from reality. Reality isn’t that forgiving, I brought up my own case study as an example to these parents about the rude shock I received expecting things to go my way because I worked for it,” he says.

“The world isn’t fair and many who worked the part never get their say in things. I didn’t want these parents to go about giving in to their kids all the time, telling them everything is perfect and everyone will accept them because it simply is not.”

For a moment when I was reading this, I forgot that he was referring to children with autism. Rather, this reality check sounded like something completely universal, something that all of us learn to deal with at some point in our lives.