Disability simulation reinforces ableism
Disability simulation exercises—blindfolding participants, using wheelchairs for a day, wearing earplugs—are presented as empathy-building tools. In reality, they systematically reinforce the exact prejudices they claim to combat.
──── The simulation paradigm
Schools, workplaces, and diversity training programs routinely use disability simulations under the assumption that temporary experience builds understanding. Participants navigate obstacles while blindfolded, attempt daily tasks in wheelchairs, or communicate using sign language they don’t know.
These exercises are framed as consciousness-raising activities that will make non-disabled people more supportive of disability rights and accommodations.
The opposite occurs.
──── Trauma manufacturing
Disability simulations deliberately create negative experiences for participants. They design frustration, confusion, and helplessness into the exercise structure.
Participants struggle with unfamiliar equipment, navigate environments designed for different bodies, and experience artificial limitations that actual disabled people have adapted to over years or decades.
The simulation creates a trauma response to disability itself, not to the barriers disabled people face.
──── Competence assumptions
Simulations operate on the assumption that disabled people are constantly struggling with basic tasks that non-disabled people find easy. This fundamentally misrepresents disability experience.
Most disabled people are competent at navigating their daily lives. They have developed skills, use appropriate tools, and modify their environments. The simulation strips away this competence and presents disability as inherent struggle.
A wheelchair user isn’t constantly frustrated by their mobility device—they’re skilled at using it. A blind person isn’t perpetually confused by their environment—they’ve developed navigation strategies.
Simulations present incompetence as the disability experience.
──── Medical model reinforcement
Disability simulations reinforce the medical model of disability, which locates problems within individual bodies rather than social barriers.
Participants experience difficulty and conclude that disability itself is the problem, not inaccessible design or discriminatory policies. The simulation makes disability feel inherently limiting rather than socially constructed.
This strengthens the assumption that disabled people need to be “fixed” rather than that environments need to be made accessible.
──── Inspiration extraction
Simulations often conclude with participants expressing amazement at disabled people’s “resilience” and “inspiration.” This transforms disabled people into motivational objects for non-disabled audiences.
The message becomes: “Disabled people are so brave for doing normal things despite their limitations.” This is inspiration porn—using disabled people’s existence to make non-disabled people feel good about themselves.
Disabled people become symbols of overcoming adversity rather than people demanding equal access and treatment.
──── Temporary experience fallacy
A few hours or days of simulation cannot replicate the lived experience of disability, but participants often believe it can. This creates false confidence about understanding disability while actually increasing misconceptions.
Participants don’t experience:
- The social development that comes with lifelong disability
- Adaptive skills built over years
- Community and cultural aspects of disability
- The difference between impairment and disability
- Systemic discrimination and structural barriers
They experience artificial struggle and mistake it for disability.
──── Accommodation resistance
Ironically, disability simulations often increase resistance to workplace and educational accommodations. Participants conclude that disabled people should just “work harder” to overcome their limitations rather than requiring environmental changes.
The simulation reinforces the belief that struggle is inherent to disability, making accommodations seem like special favors rather than accessibility requirements.
──── Charity model activation
Simulations activate charity model thinking—the belief that disabled people need help and kindness rather than rights and equality. Participants feel sorry for disabled people rather than angry about discrimination.
This shifts focus from systemic change to individual charity, from rights-based advocacy to pity-based support. Disabled people become objects of sympathy rather than agents of their own liberation.
──── Professional benefit extraction
Diversity consultants, training organizations, and educational institutions profit from disability simulations while disabled people receive no benefit.
The simulation industry creates revenue streams from performing disability awareness while actual disabled people remain excluded from decision-making about their own representation.
Non-disabled professionals become experts on disability experience through simulation rather than disabled people being centered as the actual experts.
──── Participation coercion
Disability simulations often involve subtle coercion—social pressure to participate, grading based on engagement, or professional development requirements. This forces non-disabled people into artificial disability experiences that may be traumatic.
The irony is profound: programs designed to build disability empathy routinely violate consent and bodily autonomy.
──── Scientific validity problems
No research demonstrates that disability simulations actually reduce ableism or improve attitudes toward disabled people. Most studies find temporary attitude changes that disappear within weeks.
Some research suggests simulations actually increase negative stereotypes about disability by associating disability with struggle and limitation.
The continued use of simulations despite lack of evidence reflects the industry’s commitment to feeling good about addressing ableism rather than actually reducing it.
──── Alternative approaches
Effective disability awareness involves disabled people as teachers, consultants, and decision-makers rather than simulation subjects.
Disability history and culture education provides context for understanding disability as social identity rather than medical tragedy.
Environmental audits focus attention on barriers rather than bodies, examining how spaces and policies exclude disabled people.
Disabled speaker bureaus center disabled people’s actual experiences rather than non-disabled imagination about disability.
Policy analysis examines how systems create disability disadvantage rather than focusing on individual adaptation.
──── The values question
Disability simulations reveal what non-disabled people actually value about themselves: their ability to navigate environments designed for their bodies.
When that temporary ability is restricted, they experience existential threat rather than practical inconvenience. This suggests that non-disabled identity is more fragile than disabled identity.
The simulation threatens their sense of competence and independence, revealing how deeply their self-worth depends on physical and cognitive functioning that they take for granted.
──── Structural analysis
Disability simulations function as pressure release valves for ableist systems. They allow institutions to perform disability awareness while maintaining exclusionary practices.
Schools can run simulation exercises while keeping disabled students in segregated classrooms. Employers can conduct disability sensitivity training while refusing to hire disabled workers.
The simulation creates the appearance of progress while preserving the status quo.
──── Value measurement impossibility
How do you measure the value of a disabled life against a non-disabled life? Disability simulations implicitly answer this question by treating disability as loss and limitation.
They cannot simulate the community, culture, identity, and perspective that often develop through disability experience. They can only simulate the struggle, creating a fundamentally distorted value assessment.
──── Conclusion
Disability simulations reinforce ableism by design, not accident. They create artificial struggle, reinforce medical model thinking, and extract inspiration from disabled people’s existence.
The simulation industry profits from performing disability awareness while actual disabled people remain marginalized. Non-disabled people get to feel enlightened while disabled people continue facing discrimination.
Real disability awareness requires disabled people in positions of power, accessible environments as the default, and recognition that disability is a form of human diversity rather than medical tragedy.
The question isn’t how to make non-disabled people understand disability through simulation. The question is how to create systems where disabled people have equal power to shape the conditions of their own lives.