Brandon is 21 and is another Ramapo undergrad. He is in his junior year as a Business Management major. He has Type 1 Diabetes. These are his responses to questions about his experiences with ableism.
What would you say is your earliest remembered experience with ableism?
How do you feel ableism holds you back socially, professionally, academically, etc.?
Professionally and academically it’s mostly unaffected, but socially whenever I go out somewhere wherever there is food most places don’t have nutrition information on hand so I have to guess.
Basically, I always have to know pretty close to exactly the amount of carbohydrates that I’m eating so that I can appropriately give myself doses of insulin.
If I don’t know, I have to guess. and that can be dangerous for my health.
When has ableism impacted you the hardest? What were the consequences of it?
I am fortunate enough to have good health insurance, so I’m going to take a moment to speak on behalf of all diabetics. The ableism that is the insulin market is a huge failure and honestly a humanitarian crisis. One vial of the Novolog insulin I use, which I use about 3 a month, costs about 351 dollars.
So if I had no insurance, I would be paying over 1000 dollars a month just to be alive.
That’s really the only thing that has made me stressed for the future.
What do you feel would be a good solution to this problem socially?
Awareness helps but only so much as [long as] the source is credible.
Like how autism speaks is a trash organization.
The issue with diabetes is mostly economic.
Do you feel our government is ableist? Why?
For sure.
The ADA only covers a tiny fraction of people with disabilities.
The rest of people are forced to deal without protections.
What kind of laws do you think should be passed to help combat this issue?
Regulations for the [pharmaceutical] industry are a must to help people.
Expansions on ADA should cover more people.
Nonprofits should be held to higher scrutiny.
Any final statement about this subject that you would like to make to conclude?
Ableism doesn’t get enough attention because you can’t group people affected by it.
Most disabilities are so different that unification of purpose is almost impossible.
It would be good if people affected by ableism could better advocate for themselves and one another instead of individual causes.