What exactly does disability mean? If someone has a disability and they’re successful, are they really disabled? If you need some inspiration, take a look at these 10 majorly successful people with disabilities. These are the men and women who have managed to overcome obstacles most of us can’t even comprehend and achieve major success in life that would be amazing even if a non-disabled person accomplished it.
In today’s modern society that prides itself on accessibility, acceptance and diversity, disabled persons have troubles achieving even a modicum of success. Whether it is due to the social stigma that accompanies disability of any sort or physical impairments imposed by people who design the world that surrounds us solely for the benefit of non-disabled people
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Although disabled people living in the modern world have their work cut out for them on the road to success, it was far worse in the old days. The further back we go through human history, the harder it was for people with disabilities to have a life worthy of a human being. The culmination of that would be Sparta. Every baby was inspected on birth any if even a hint of disability was discovered, the elders would leave it in the woods to die either from exposure or by wild animals. Even though the Spartans are best known for this practice, plenty other ancient civilizations used it, in order to keep the numbers of what they saw as “unproductive” members of society down to a minimum. We will never find out in what measure has this savage practice hurt the human kind and how many genius minds have we lost to it. Perhaps the list of the greatest mathematicians of all time would look completely different, if the practice of killing babies with disabilities hasn’t been so successful.
Not everyone on our list of 10 majorly successful people with disabilities were born that way. Some suffered an injury or an illness that left them with a disability. What all 10 have in common is that they didn’t let their disability stop them from achieving success. Due to various fields they have been active in, it is hard to compare their success or contribution to humanity, so we listed them in no particular order.
