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My name is Stella Young. I grew up in a very small country town in Victoria. I had a very normal, low-key kind of upbringing. I went to school; I hung out with my friends; I fought with my younger sisters. It was all very normal. And when I was 15, a member of my local community approached my parents and wanted to submit my name for a community achievement award. My parents said, "Hmm, that's really nice, but there's kind of one obvious problem with that. She hasn't actually achieved anything." And they were right. You know I went to school, I got good marks, and I had a very low-key after-school job in my mum's hairdressing salon.

Years later, I was on my second teaching round in a Melbourne high school, and I was about 20 minutes into a year-11 Legal Studies class when a boy put up his hand and said, "Hey Miss, when are you going to start your speech?"

And I said, "What speech?"

And he said, "You know, like, your motivational speaking. You know, when people in wheelchairs come to school, they usually say, like, inspirational stuff. It's usually in the big hall."

And that was the moment I realized that this kid had only ever experienced disabled people as objects of inspiration.

For lots of us, disabled people are not our teachers or our doctors. We're not real people. We are there to inspire. Yeah, we've been sold the lie that disability is a bad thing, and to live with a disability makes you exceptional.

It's not a bad thing, and it doesn't make you exceptional. And in the past few years, we've been able to spread this lie even further through social media.

Life as a disabled person is actually somewhat difficult. We do overcome some things. But they have nothing to do with our bodies. I use the term "disabled people" purposely, because I subscribe to what's called the social model of disability. This model tells us that we are more disabled by the society that we live in than by our bodies and our diagnoses（诊断）.

I want to live in a world where we don't have such low expectations of disabled people that we are congratulated for getting out of bed and remembering our own names in the morning. I want to live in a world where we value disabled people's real achievement. And I want to live in a world where a year-11 kid in a Melbourne high school is not one bit surprised that his new teacher is a wheelchair user.