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Holiday gift-giving is always both a pleasure and a challenge. This year, many of our loved ones continue to face unprecedented hardships that may change how we think about what the most appropriate and appreciated holiday gifts might be. Family, friends, and coworkers with disabilities, in particular, have had a rough time in 2020, and deserve gifts that not only convey love and kindness, but also provide real, personalized comfort and usefulness that enhances their lives.
As the saying goes, “It’s the thought that counts.” And as with all disability matters, giving gifts to disabled people calls for the right kind of thought and consideration. Here are four ways to approach choosing gifts for the disabled people in your life.
1. Buy gifts from disabled people
While choosing gifts that disabled friends and family will enjoy and identify with, why not also support other disabled creatives and entrepreneurs by giving products created and sold by disabled people?
The 2020 Disability Holiday Gift Guide is a good place to start. It’s the original disability holiday gift guide by Emily Ladau of Words I Wheel By and Kate Caldwell of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurship Education for People with Disabilities (CEED) project. This guide highlights inexpensive clothes, jewelry, and accessories designed and sold online by disabled people, often with some kind of disability theme.
If you spend time on disability social media, you may know other disabled people and organizations with their own “merch” to sell. And you can always do some of your own exploring for disability-related gifts on do it yourself sites like Etsy as well. And if you spend time on disability social media, check to see which of your favorite disabled content creators have “merch” to sell.
2. Give disability-targeted products
The most direct approach to giving gifts to disabled people is to look for products that are specifically designed and marketed to disabled people for disability-related purposes. Some are meant to be practical or educational. Others offer less tangible but just and meaningful emotional benefits. And there are a number of ways to begin your search.
New Mobility Magazine has a great resource for practical items that it’s calling the 2021 Consumer Guide: How to Reinvent Yourself. This resource is specifically for wheelchair users, though a number of their suggestions could be useful for people with other kinds of disabilities. It is organized into seven categories, each curated and reviewed by an actual wheelchair user.
Adaptive tools and equipment can be life-changing, even lifesaving for people with disabilities. So it can be a good direction for gift-giving. But don’t just buy the first cool thing you see.
Make an effort to find out what exactly would be useful to the person you are giving to. Different disabilities pose different challenges, calling for different solutions. Plus, chances are good that precisely because adaptive products can be so essential, the person you are buying for may already have some of the most obvious adaptive items. Try to find out what kinds of devices they might be missing, and what unsolved barriers they still face in their homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods. And don’t be shy about asking a disabled person straight out what they want. An expensive item that’s poorly matched to the recipient’s needs isn’t a better gift just because it’s a surprise.
Children and youth with disabilities can certainly use practical tools for independence. But there are other, unique considerations as well.
Buying gifts for kids with disabilities isn’t all that different from buying for any other child. At the same time, more and more classic toys are being developed that have strong thematic meaning for disabled children. While not every disabled child identifies with other disabled people or images of disability, a doll or action figure, book, movie, or TV show that depicts disabled people like them in positive ways can bring a real boost in self-esteem, and help them develop a more healthy self-image.
Meanwhile, there are also plenty of products that address the gray areas of both disability and childhood, between fun and education, between adolescence and young adulthood. Disability parenting blogger Ellen Seidman offers an annual gift-giving guide for disabled youth: Really cool gifts for kids and teens 2020. It offers a great mix of specialized adaptive products, semi-therapeutic and educational items, and fun things any teen would like, but might be especially well suited to youth with disabilities.
3. Give connection
It seems obvious to say now, but still worth underscoring, that easy access to up-to-date internet devices can open up new worlds for disabled people. Having some kind of well-chosen, internet-connected smartphone, tablet, or computer should be considered standard equipment for most disabled people, regardless of the nature or apparent “severity” of their disability.
Internet-connected devices like these are typically among the most accessible consumer products for people with disabilities, more or less right out of the box. They enhance everyday communication, personal organization, and connection to a wider disability community. And in the past several months, they have proved all of us what so many disabled people have known for years – the viability of working from home, whether by necessity or choice.
There’s also the fact that while these devices are so easily adapted for specific disabilities, they are themselves not “special” equipment. Everyone has them. That means that any other user can help a new disabled user get the most out of them, and fixing them when they go wrong doesn’t require months on a waiting list for approval and service.
Plus, in recent years, affordable, off-the-shelf smart devices have been integrated into what were once prohibitively expensive and exotic “smart home” features available only at great effort and random chance to the most significantly disabled, people – or to the most wealthy. Now, anyone’s phone, tablet, or laptop can automate and actually perform basic physical operations of the home that are either impossible or difficult for people with certain kinds of disabilities. Not every connected device will be well suited to every disabled person, so choose components carefully, with involvement of the disabled person.
Internet-based devices and applications are a fascinating and liberating hybrid of specialized adaptation and mainstream availability, and of practicality and social enrichment. Buying, replacing, or upgrading these devices is a comparatively expensive gift, but the potential positive impact is enormous. And helping get a disabled friend or relative “on the internet” can be ideal as a collaborative gift for several friends or family members working together.
4. Give labor
What many people with various disabilities and chronic illnesses need more than anything else isn’t things, but rather help from another person to do things they can’t do for themselves – in other words, labor. And to be absolutely clear from the start, the very best kind of help is help they can feel free to direct, and help that feels more like paid work than a personal favor.
It probably isn’t feasible for most of us to pay for regular and indefinite home care or household services as a gift. But you may be able to give some of your own time and energy, or arrange for paid assistance for specific, one-time, or occasional tasks. These could include seasonal deep house cleaning, decluttering, reorganization, or redecoration. These are projects where a disabled person might know exactly what they want to do, but doesn’t have the physical or organizational ability to do it all on their own. It can also make a memorable gift to agree to accompany a disabled person on a fun day or weekend trip they’ve always wanted to go take, help with a holiday shopping expedition, or just offer yourself as an assistant for a weekly run of errands or two.
Another of the biggest ongoing challenges for many disabled people maintaining ready access to groceries and household supplies. It’s not always just paying for them, but also the physical logistics of shopping – getting there and back, having the time and stamina to shop carefully, and the capacity to get a full complement of groceries home and put away. It’s the labor of shopping that can be the greatest barrier for people with disabilities. This has been even more critical during the pandemic, when the risk of shopping in person is unacceptably high for people with certain disabilities and chronic conditions.
Aside from offering to do someone’s shopping for them yourself, you also help by buying gift or membership cards for online shopping services like Instacart, which allows online grocery shopping with delivery in person, (but contactless), from local grocery stores, and Amazon Prime, where some bulk supplies and groceries can be ordered for mail delivery. The advantage of these services over offering help yourself is that it is more empowering to the disabled person you are giving to. It allows them to shop at their discretion, on their schedule, and knowing that the labor is properly paid for, not a personal obligation.
Again, check for local availability and the delivery mechanics of the disabled person’s situation at home before making any final purchase.
5. Give comfort and luxury
Finally, don’t forget to return to one of the core guidelines of all gift-giving, especially at the holidays. Whenever possible, don’t forget to consider giving non-essential luxuries. Disabled people, too, “need” items that enrich their lives beyond mere adaptation and survival, especially now.
Think in terms of products that offer comfort in the most literal, tactile sense, for example heating pads, weighted blankets, (or just regular, convenient blankets), better, more versatile shower heads, and nicer bedding materials.
And of course, don’t forget favorite foods and snacks, both simple comfort foods and gourmet items that most of us would never purchase for ourselves, but are just right for special occasions, or no logical purpose at all!
In many ways, giving holiday gifts to disabled people is no different than giving to anyone else. Be creative. Give of yourself, not just your money. Choose your gifts selflessly. Give things that the recipients really want, not just what you are fired up to give to them.
These principles are doubly important for people with disabilities. They go to the heart of what people with disabilities struggle with most in their everyday lives – the inaccessibility of standard products and services, lack of individual thought and attention, and control disguised as kindness.
So make sure any items you give will be accessible – fully and independently usable by the person you are giving to.
Give the disabled people in your life things they want, not what you think they should have.
If you offer yourself and your time in service, offer time they can use to do something they want done, not just a specific task you think is important.
The holidays are a unique opportunity to do something special for people with disabilities you know and care about – something that brings both joy and empowerment. This year more than any other, be creative and considerate. A little effort on your part can do a lot to make 2020 a little less terrible for people who have borne more than their share of fear, isolation and hardship.
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