It is not only medical advances that have enabled people with disabilities to live fuller lives today than in generations past. In fact, I would assert that the SOCIAL advances are more profound in that regard. I am deaf. Yes, true, technology helps me a great deal--my hearing aid not as much as you might think (though it doesn't hurt), but video phones for example enable me to use the phone by hooking up to video relay service so I can use sign language over the phone. Captions allow me to watch television and movies. And so on.

But many of these technologies would not even exist (ie, people wouldn't have bothered to invest in developing them) if not for changing attitudes that say that people like me DESERVE fuller participation in life and should receive at least some of the things that could be so easily made available to us.

I have a responsible job--which among other things involve many telephone conference calls in which I work with other people out of state involved with the same three-year project I am to coordinate efforts. And I don't have this job JUST because of advances in technology. I certainly don't have it because I wear a hearing aid. I have it because the person hiring me recognized that, yes, a deaf person CAN do this job. That's a social advancement, not a medical one. And, at least for me, makes a more profound and pragmatic difference in enabling me to live a full life on my own terms.