These number's represent any affirmative answer to any of six disability questions on the Census long form <http://www.census.gov/dmd/www/pdf/d-61b.pdf> (page 5). The six questions are about sensory limitations, physical limitations, cognitive difficulties, daily living difficulties, going out difficulties, and work difficulties. The questions are thought to undercount psychological/mental health difficulties as a disability.
These questions are answered by individuals under their own perceptions of their own situation. This is a very "social" view of disability. Two people with the exact same physical, cognitive, and behavioral situation could answer these questions differently. Public and private programs for people with disabilities have rigid and often lengthy evaluations in order to define people as disabled. They are designed to be exclusionary to keep costs low and to serve people with more "severe" conditions.
I would not get into the obvious representation fallacy (who do you "see" and who don't you "see"?) of your casual observation but not all disabilities are visible.
Peace,
Jim At 01:49 PM 7/25/02 -0400, you wrote:
>On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Marta Russell wrote:
>
> > There are 52 million disabled persons in this nation alone.
>
>Really? One in every 5 1/2 people is disabled? How come the visible
>fraction looks so much smaller at first sight?
>
>Michael
"The game is not what things 'look like'."
- Robert Motherwell -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20020725/bb6b259f/attachment.htm>