The incidence of disability rises sharply as individuals reach their sixth and seventh decade of life. The life expectancy of an infant born in America today is approximately 75 years, and by the time that infant reaches the age of 75 that horizon of longevity may well have been pushed back. Advances in medical practice such as the development of trauma care centers and treatment of life threatening diseases tend to increase rather than decrease incidence of disability among younger persons. Historically, as author Hugh Gallagher notes, people with disabilities have been viewed as sick people who somehow never get better. They are medical failures.
Disability is seen as a fate worse than death.
Persons with disabilities have been hidden away in attics or institutions of confinement, or, in the worst case, killed. This fear, mostly never articulated, leads people to feel uncomfortable around people with disabilities. Or even to somehow find ways to deny a disability exists. In our society, people with disabilities are mostly on the margins. Disability is, after all, a common condition of life.