The Three Main Attitudinal Barriers

Physical obstacles are not the only barriers in impaired service users lives, there are multiple other ones such as attitudinal and cultural. However, the one that I believe is displayed in everyday life constantly is our attitudes. On a day to day basis, service users with impairments have to handle the ways in which people treat them because of their impairment, we do not see beyond the impairment, we focus solely on it.
I feel that the three main attitudinal barriers that impaired service users have to face are ignorance, fear and inferiority. I say ignorance because in today’s society, we are quick to dismiss those with impairment as capable of carrying out a simple task, or being able to uphold a stressful job that involves a lot of hard
Not only that but we are ignorant towards what they are capable of doing that does not involve work, for example, a deaf person is able to enjoy music. I know this because a deaf boy I used to go to school with used to talk about the music he listened to after he had won an iPod. But before that, I had no idea that they could, and that illustrates how ignorant I was towards what he is able to do, even with an impairment. It should not matter whether or not an individual has an impairment, we do not look beyond it and that is what creates a barrier. As well as ignorance, a lot of people in today’s society are afraid that they will offend an impaired service user by saying something that they themselves deem inappropriate but in reality, it is not. Inferiority often creates tension between impaired service users and those who are not impaired. The reason being if an individual who is impaired and is not able to fully participate in certain aspects of life, we expect that to have an effect on how they work as well as viewing them as second-class citizens because they are not able to do what we are able to do. It is a