Not Belgian, but I admire your system, economy, politics, based on the info I have. But I've never been to Belgium and I want to see if my impression is accurate. How good would you say your country is?

The issue is that when you speak up to try and improve things, people always bring up that "it's not better anywhere else". If even other people suffering from the lacking services are going to be apologetic, it just makes life so much harder for people with disabilities. Because people read comments like yours and they assume that means that things are fine here. They often literally don't even know how bad it is because they've never had to deal with any of it.

There's a reason they send disabled children far, far away on long bus rides in remote areas. Out of sight, out of mind. And then the healthy children in the mainstream often never meet another disabled child in their life. When they get jobs and the disabled adults don't, it's the same result.

People can go their whole life not seeing, not knowing, not understanding, and as a result not caring. I understand being grateful for what you have. But if you don't ask for more, you don't get more either. It's the loudest voices that get the most attention, not the voices with the highest needs. That's how it is. And disabled people don't have the strength or resources to advocate as much as is necessary, so that burden falls on people like you and more importantly, the rest of society who doesn't have as much on their plate. There's nothing wrong with pointing out that things are not fine in our country.

/r/belgium Thread Parent