There’s no question the world of Science suffered a great loss with the passing of physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking. But experts on people with disabilities say his life was also important in other ways.
Many people can envision pictures of Stephen Hawking, using a wheelchair and talking through a computer device due to his amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
But could that disability actually have helped open his window into the cosmos, he was so famous for studying? Professor of Disability Studies Stephen Kuusisto is with Syracuse University’s Burton Blatt Institute.
“For a great mind like his, though he was robbed of speech, he was essentially granted a kind of compensatory capacity to be really probative and richly internalized. So I was never surprised that he was able to accomplish so much with a really major disability.”
He does find the general public often believe people with a disability lead isolated or sad lives.
“So they see the disability and then they use it as a kind of symbolism to really erase the whole human being, and that’s a problem that people in the disability field continue to grapple with and educate about and speak about. And we see the same thing with Stephen Hawking.”
At the same time, Kuusisto notes the Americans with Disabilities Act and a U-N charter on disability rights are helping.
“Around the globe now we’re seeing countries and peoples everywhere really engaging with disability and seeing it as part of the human fabric. That’s a big change and it’s happened in the last 30 years. So, I’m very optimistic that we’re seeing a remarkable turn toward inclusion and understanding about disability.”
He’s also glad to see that perhaps in the case of the great physicist Hawking, the disability might have played a positive role.
Stephen Kuusisto, who’s blind and often uses a guide dog, has a talk and book-signing at Barnes and Noble in Syracuse, Thursday March 29th at 7:00. His book, “Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet's Journey” has been described as a love letter to guide dogs everywhere.
