Friendship with people with differing abilities

Bruce MacKay spoke last night on friendship with people with disabilities. He outlined different approaches to defining disability and pointed out that views of disabilty dominant until recently, views which led often to institutionalization of people with disabilities, made friendship difficult.

As an alternative Bruce talked about differing abilities and suggested that we benefit from friendships with people different than ourselves. In part this is based on the realization that we are all mortal and vulnerable to disability ourselves. We are all 'TAB's, temporarily able bodied.

For the last few days I've been struggling with a nasty bug and have felt very mortal. Bruce's approach made an awful lot of sense to me.