According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, over half a million Australians have intellectual disability, 61% of those individuals having a “severe or profound limitation in core activities of daily life” (AIHW, 2008, page 1). Yet, as a collective society, intellectual disability, what the terms means and the challenges it poses are not widely understood.
This past weekend while in Sydney to celebrate my Aunty Tracy’s birthday (who is intellectually disabled as well as suffers from severe epilepsy) I sat down with own mum (Tracy’s sister) to get a first hand account of the challenges that growing up with Tracy posed.
Music courtesy of Klaus Topfinger, “Fire”, retrieved under a Creative Commons Licence from https:soundcloud.com/todeskurve/klaus-topfinger-fire.
(Image courtesy of Emma MacKenzie)
