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Had this conversation with someone who chose to no longer be at my table after meeting a blind NPC
(files.catbox.moe)
Another player who was at the table during the incident sent me this meme after the problem player in question (they had a history) left the group chat.
Felt like sharing it here because I'm sure more people should keep this kind of thing in mind.
I'll echo the words of my friend, who is a permanent wheelchair user:
"Yes, I identify with my disability as part of who I am, but I would still take a cure without hesitation"
Yes, people with disabilities identify with their disability, so even in a fantasy setting I can see how their disability would be part of their character.
But every disabled person I know would figuratively leap at the opportunity to reverse their disability with magic. It is also basically impossible to use a wheelchair while holding something like a wand or a staff or a fireball in one hand, so if there's enough magic around to push a wheelchair, there's probably enough to make your legs work. That's why somebody has a good reason not to expect a wheelchair in a fantasy world. I can see how somebody who doesn't really know any disabled people would panic at the idea of a wheelchair being part of the narrative or something like that, and I can sympathize with it.
The only people I have ever seen claim that disabilities aren't so bad and you can live completely normal etc. are people with no disabilities at all. I'm not disabled, my eyesight is just shit and I don't know what I'd be willing to do to get normal eyesight. Just to get rid of a pair of glasses. I can't imagine the lengths someone actually disabled would go to in order to get a cure.
In our world we do have the magic to push a wheelchair around, and it's not even hard to do this. Tinkerers can cast the spell of self-propelling wheelchair in their garages.
But magicing someone's legs to work is still a far way off.
(Remember, when magic is well explained and documented, and people get used to it, they tend to call it technology.)
If by "not even hard" you mean "costs as much as a car", then sure. My friend also let me know just how costly power chairs are.
It's expensive for sure, but that's mostly because powered chairs are made by medical companies and in comparatively low numbers.
A mobility scooter has almost all components a powered chair has, and these can be had for as little as €1000.
The technology behind a powered chair isn't hard.
And even if we use the high price of a power scooter: How much does it cost to make a paraplegic person walk?
"Not even hard" and "costs as much as a car" aren't mutually exclusive when it comes to the field of medicine, especially in the US. Many drugs cost pharmaceutical companies pennies to manufacture, but they still sell them for hundreds per pill simply because they can. Medical equipment often employs similar price gouging for no other reason than to profit as much as possible from people who have little choice but to pay.
My friend talked a lot about the forces at work. Not all of it was simple capitalism. Disabled people are notoriously hard to design for because each disabled person is different and has different needs. This kind of business is not scalable and disabled people are already a minority. Even proper hand wheelchairs are fucking expensive cuz only a couple companies make them.
That does make sense. But still, making a powered chair is not at all technologically difficult. You need the chair, two motors and an input system that works for the user.
Sure, if there's a lot of bespoke parts and manual labour, coupled with basically no economy of scale, it's going to be expensive. But it's not difficult.