Who is actually including whom here?
I appreciate people who make an effort to include others. People who see diversity not just as a nice-sounding word, but as something that makes our lives together more colorful, more contradictory, and sometimes even more challenging. Because inclusion doesn’t mean that suddenly everyone is the same. Perhaps it means, rather, that we learn to live with our differences without constantly using them to erect barriers.
The difficult question of finding the right words.
When it comes to disability, this approach is a delicate balancing act. When do we talk about a disability? When do we talk about a linguistic or social minority? And when do our very terms create new dividing lines? Sometimes language seems to lag behind reality itself. While we’re still trying to find the right words, people have long been living with their experiences, their frustrations, their opportunities, and their very own ideas about what needs to change.
That’s why dialogue is so important—especially among people with disabilities. To talk about what isn’t working. About barriers that others might not even notice. About activism, about exhaustion, about small victories, and about how to reach people who haven’t had much exposure to this issue so far.
A disability isn't always "a different story"
For many people, a disability is something they initially imagine as something “foreign.” Yet life can take a different turn at any moment. An accident, an illness, old age—suddenly, an abstract concept can become a personal reality. For people born with a disability, however, it is not something that enters their lives one day. It has been part of their lives from the very beginning.
That can scare people. Others, on the other hand, see it as the most normal thing in the world. These perspectives could hardly be more different.
And I'm standing somewhere in between.
Caught between opinions, experiences, good intentions, and sometimes even statements that make me feel uncomfortable. I try to build bridges. Not because I believe everyone has to end up thinking the same way, but because I believe we can understand one another, even if we haven’t had the same experiences.
Perhaps that is why inclusion does not need even more perfect answers. Perhaps it needs more people who are willing to serve as interpreters: between the hearing and the deaf, between people with disabilities and those without, between personal experience and societal perceptions.
When does diversity become a label?
Perhaps the problem begins when diversity becomes nothing more than a label. When a company posts a colorful image on its website, organizes a special event, or publishes a diversity statement—and thereby creates the impression that it has already done enough. Yet genuine interest can be far more valuable than any perfectly worded campaign. Most people who are concerned with inclusion aren’t doing so out of malice. On the contrary: Often, there’s a genuine desire to do things right. The crucial question, therefore, isn’t whether we get everything right right away, but whether we’re willing to listen, ask questions, and be open to correction. Diversity comes to life when it’s not just made visible, but actively incorporated into everyday life.
And sometimes that is precisely the most difficult task: not to speak for the other person, but to help them be heard on their own.