Disability
It’s no different from the other Lego figures, one of the latest sold this season: the classic sunshine yellow face, a trendy cap, but, unlike any other, it is on a wheelchair. The new figure has a big smile on its face and falls in the “citizens and cities” group. The choice of adding disabled people to toys is a strong proof of their proactive social role. Anne Kunstmann of the pastoral service for disabled people of the archdiocese of Munich and Freising sees the figure on the wheelchair as “a little stone in the mosaic along the road to a normal relationship between disabled and able-bodied people”. Kunstmann thinks one should not ignore that disabled people are an integral part and an actual reality of our society, and the fact that a big toy company senses such change “is extremely positive”. This is the same approach taken by the local Caritas agency with its “rainbow preschool”, where disabled and able-bodied children are equally divided and the same number in each class, all doing the same things. The preschool’s social worker, Senet Ibrahim, himself on a wheelchair, thinks that “future toys will have to help children think and come into contact with disabled people early on, because they belong to society”.
