Welcome to Issue 2 of SRNA’s 2025 Magazine. This edition is themed on disability and strength. We would like to invite you to ask yourselves how these ideas intersect—because to some people, they don’t.
As we discussed in the first issue for 2025, disability is more often than not viewed socially through a deficit perspective—a perspective that says disabled people are less capable, that says disability can only ever be an impairment, interference, or limitation. In response to this, we asked that rather than view it this way, we try to view disability as a person interacting with the world differently, but not in any lesser of a way than anyone else.
Let’s consider a new concept relating to disability: strength. Strength, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is the quality or state of being strong, including the capacity for exertion or endurance, power to resist force, and power of resisting attack.
How do disability and strength intersect? If you take disability’s deficit perspective definition, strength and disability can feel like an oxymoron—after all, strength can mean capacity, while disability can mean a lack thereof. But if you consider a different definition of disability, one that highlights the ways disabled people interact with the world around them being different, but not lesser, the definitions align—after all, what requires more endurance than navigating a world that doesn’t always keep disability and accessibility at the forefront of its mind? What says strength more than a person navigating life with a disability, resisting the urge to call it quits when accommodations aren’t there or fall through?
Disability and strength are not oxymoronic. In this issue of SRNA’s Magazine, we will be covering what it means to be disabled and what it means to be strong, how to forge self-definitions while not attributing labels to other people, and how to be human when life requires those with disabilities expend more effort to meet the same goals.
We again invite you to find your own definitions for disability: one that makes you feel strong.
