What comes to mind for someone when asked to consider physical disabilities? Pity and embarrassment or hope and encouragement? Maybe a mix between the two contrasting emotions? The average, able-bodied person must have a different perspective on the quality of life of a physically disabled person than a disabled person. Nancy Mairs, Andre Dubus and Harriet McBryde Johnson are three authors who have shared their experiences as physically handicapped adults. Although the three authors wrote different pieces, all three essays demonstrate the frustrations, struggles, contemplations, and triumphs from the perspective of a disabled person and are aimed at a reader without a physical disability. Nancy Mairs, born in 1943, describes herself as a radical, pacifist and crippled feminist. She is paralyzed because she suffers from multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic disease that causes damage to nerve cells and the spinal cord. In her essay Disability, Mairs's focus is on the way disabled people are represented, or rather not represented, in the media. There is more than one audience that Mairs could have tried to reach with this piece. The less obvious audience would be disabled people who can connect to his writing because they can identify with it. The most obvious audience would be physically abled people who have yet to notice the lack of disabled people represented in the media. Its aim is to persuade the public that disabled people should be shown more often in the media, to help society better cope and realize the presence of disabled people. Mairs begins by saying: “For months I have been consciously looking for a representation of myself in the media, especially on television. I know I would recognize this because... middle of paper......I live most of their life as a perfectly able-bodied person until a tragic accident might one day rob you of the function of your legs and you have to learn to manage disability. Mairs illustrates that being disabled is more common than the media portrays and it is difficult to deal with feelings of alienation due to one's disability. These three authors evoked a sense of sympathy from the reader, but also implied that they did not want non-disabled people to pity them. The goal of these authors is to reach able-bodied people and help them understand how to treat a disabled person. Disabled people don't want to be pitied, but sometimes they still need our help, just like if you saw someone with an arm full of grocery bags having trouble opening a car door. They want us to accept them not as a different species, but as functional people.