AMHERST, N.Y. -- A Western New York museum is the only of its kind in the entire country.
"It's a large minority population, and it's also the only minority population any one of us can join at any given point during our life," said Douglas Platt, Museum of disABILITY History Curator.
Whether it's something they were born with, or it happened later in life, about 22 percent of Americans identify themselves as having a disability. The Museum of disABILITY History in Amherst is celebrating their contributions.
"Disability isn't about being vulnerable, and it's not about being dependent because we are all vulnerable or dependent at various points in our life," Platt said. "From infancy through old age, we all need a different amount of support. We're not independent people. We're interdependent as people."
"The primary misconception to be is that people with disabilities are different from the rest of us," said Dave Mack-Hardiman, vice president of People Inc. Training Center Museum of disABILITY. "I think each person has areas of strength. Each person has areas that they're working on. We really don't see the differences that other people do and I think that's the main message. They have a history to be celebrated."
The idea for a museum started in 1998 and within a year they had produced one traveling exhibit. Their collection grew through the years, and in 2010, it opened as the nation's only brick-and-mortar museum solely dedicated to disability history.
"We're working to promote understanding, acceptance and the independence of people who have all kinds of different disabilities," Mack-Hardiman said. "We have all kinds of events and programs that celebrate their accomplishments as opposed to looking for deficits."
Despite the celebratory nature, the museum also documents a disturbing history.
"That history is pretty dark at times," said Mack-Hardiman. "People with disabilities were often misunderstood and sometimes mistreated, simply because people didn't understand what they were doing. It is dark, but we want people to understand that so that they have an awareness of the history and that they're ensuring that things like that never happen again."
While the Americans With Disabilities Act has made a lot of progress in the last few decades, advocates say there's still a long way to go.
"What we would like to see as a result of the museum is that everyone have an understanding of the history of people with disabilities and services continuously improve as a result of that," Mack-Hardiman said. "So that people in our society understand that people with disabilities have contributions to make and they're allowed to become as independent as they can."
"Hopefully we will evolve to become a more patient society because what we've learned about disability is that it's just another part of the human condition," Platt said.
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