For our project, on the second term, we made a quiz so that we could know people's opinion and knowledge on the subject of physical disabilities and wheelchairs, as we have mentioned.

These were all the questions we asked:

 

• What gender do you identify with?

• What age range do you belong to?

• Do you have any kind of physical disability?

• From 0 to 10, how strong is your knowledge in physical disabilities?

• What physical disability do you have?

• Do you practice sports? At what level?

• If you answered yes to the last question, which sport do you practice?

• Have you ever experimented a sports wheelchair?

• If yes, how was your first experience?

• Do you own a sports wheelchair?

• What difficulties do you encounter while practicing sports or in your everyday life?

• What is, in your opinion, the biggest problem in the design of nowadays wheelchairs?

• What implementation(s) should be made to promote physical activities in the world of reduced mobility?

• There is discrimination against people with reduced mobility

• Do you know the methods taken to protect the individual against disability discrimination?

• Have you or someone else you know ever suffered from discrimination due to your/their disability?

• If you answered yes in the last question, how did it occur?

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This excel contains the answers we obtained:

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When we made the quiz, something we thought that was important to include was some questions about descrimination. We wanted to see how people with physical disabilities are perceived by the world, if we as a society support them enough and how safe they feel. Honestly, since we are in the 21st century, I was hopeful we wouldn’t get that many responses talking about people being discriminated; part of me was hopeful that we would be over all the stereotypes and overall stupidity and that the cases of discrimination that happen were just isolated events where idiots who are bored decide to pick on others. 

But, unfortunately, I was wrong. The first question about discrimination we made was showing people this sentence: Existe discriminação face a pessoas com mobilidade reduzida na sociedade/ There is discrimination against people with reduced mobility.

93 percent of the people that responded to our survey agreed with this affirmation. 

We also asked if they were aware of the methods taken to protect the individual against disability discrimination. These were the responses we got (enter gráfico no power point). As You can see, we had a pig percentage of two answers: Yes, some; and No. I feel like one of the reasons many people aren’t aware of these methods is the lack of education relating to physical disabilities, but I’ll talk more about that in a while. 

Now, the answers that surprised me the most were the ones where we asked if people have suffered or if they knew someone who has suffered discrimination due6 to their disability. Out of all the people that answered, 35% said they had. It might seem like a small percentage, but this number should be zero. It’s disgusting that in such a modern era people still treat others this way. I don't know about you all, but for me, basic human decency and respect doesn’t seem like something that difficult to have.

Anyways; in most of the responses we got people talked about discrimination at schools; children being made fun of and excluded from playing and interacting with others. One person even said that when they were at school, people would puncture their tires. I discussed this with my group colleagues and we ended up realising that the only thing that can prevent these events from happening is education. We need to start educating our children more, we need to normalize talking about this type of subjects, because pretending people with disabilities don’t exist and not giving them the visibility they deserve will only cause more of these things to happen. We need to bring awareness at schools, talk about what exactly is a disability, what it involves, and break this ancient taboo. More important even, parents should be discussing these things with their kids, teaching them to be kind and inclusive towards EVERYONE, as well as parents themselves should be more inclusive and pass on to their children the ideas of respect and humanity. Children, especially at a young age, are extremely influenciable, so they will imitate whatever behaviour they see adults or people they look up to doing. That being said, it is also important for adults to be conscious of their actions.

Some of the people that answered our question told us that something very common from happening is for others to stare at them in public places, which obviously makes them feel uncomfortable, or even people telling them things like “aw, poor thing”, as if they petty them. This is all related to the false idea that people with disabilities aren’t capable of doing things, that they are less competent. Actually, a lot of people told us that they feel discriminated against when looking for a job because people tend to think they aren’t as skilled as someone without physical disabilities. One of them even told us that they were “advised” to drop out of their university course, which fortunately they didn’t do and thanks to that they were able to find a job and be able to provide for themselves. 

But there are a lot of ways to discriminate against someone. Public spaces not having enough conditions for people with physical disabilities is also a main problem nowadays. Even public services usually don’t have simple things such as ramps. And that is why informing people is so important, acknowledging the existence of people with disabilities and their struggles without underestimating them.

If we look at social media, whether it is TV or Instagram, we will barely find any representation and I think this also affects people’s perspective on disabilities.

Something that should also be given more attention is sports for disabled people. We should encourage it as much as we can since there are numerous advantages, and that’s also a reason we should promote it more.  

We should always try our best to be more inclusive. One of the people who answered our quiz said something that made me think a lot. We asked if these situations have happened to people and if so, what happened during the situations. This person, after naming a few situations, saying that it has happened multiple times, on multiple occasions, ended their response with “Portanto a questão não é se ocorrem este tipo de situações mas com que frequência!”. And after reading all of the answers we got, I can certainly say that it is way more common that we even realise, and there is still a long way to go, but hopefully, things will change in the future and we will improve our behaviours and our mentality as a society if we start informing ourselves and others more about this topic.