Just an FYI - The terms crippled and not like normal people are highly offensive. Those of us in the field of serving people with special needs - in my cause young children with autism - have a duty to let people know just how hurtful comments like that can be. I have worked with older children with autism who do browse and are members of internet forums.
I am sure you meant no offense and I mean no offense to you. Having taught 8th grade, I can tell you the term normal people is a relative term anyway.
Excuse me, I don't know who you are talking about, but there is a difference in my mind between having a disability or impediment, and being crippled. And in general, that has to do with the spirit of the person in question. I have met people with very similar situations some of which I'd call disabled and some of which I'd call crippled.
I have been having, over the past year, increasingly hard times getting myself up the stairs because of problems in my knee. When its bad, I pull myself up stairs using the bannister if needed. I have a disability, but I am not going to let myself be crippled.
The person who looses a leg and determines to themselves that they are going to go ahead with their lives, going to do whatever they can, and to hell with the missing leg, they have a disability. But they are not crippled. But... the person who sits there at home, feeling sorry for themselves, resigning to themselves that they just have to accept that they can't do anything because they lost a leg- they are crippled. And I don't feel bad that they are, because they choose to be.
I'm not saying that having a disability can avoid reducing what you can do simply by deciding that. It can't. A long time ago, I set out to prove to myself that a doctor saying I could never walk or run was, in fact, an idiot. I proved that to myself by running the New York Marathon. I didn't win, nor come close, but by God, I finished. It took two years training and striving and over working myself. But I did it anyway. Since then, my problems have gotten worse. I couldn't do that again if I did all I could.
I accept that. That's ok. Likewise, problems with my flexibility resulting from the same source means I can't bend over easily anymore with irritating regularity. That's ok, too. I have my girlfriend to help, and I have a pair of grabbers when she isn't around.
Those people who are what I'd define as crippled? I hope I bloody well do offend them. I hope I bloody well do hurt them. I hope I bloody well instill them full of great rage and pain. Maybe, just maybe, it will inspire them to stop sitting there convinced of their own patheticity, get off their arse, and give life a shot, if just to spite me.
As for them not being like normal people... Well, a normal person is someone who categorically fits into the normal curve within a distance of three standard deviations. Abnormal people are, generally speaking, crazy. Disabled people make up a considerable percentage of our population, certainly more than the 0.2% that fall out of that range of "normal".
Now, that they are not like most people? Well... that's just being honest. They simply aren't like most people. Most people are lucky. They aren't burdened going through life with serious additional burdens. Like your students autism, or my CP, psychosis, vision problems, and on and on. God decided to gift upon me many, uh, disadvantages. He placed what I consider to be a particularly efficient thought processing center in my head and then screwed everything else up to make up for it. I think I'm a better person for it.
I'm not like other people. For better or worse, I probably qualify quite sincerely as abnormal. But that's ok. I can take it. I can take most things.
I can take most insults, too. I can take that bloody fool Neil from GB insulting me left, right, and center. It runs like water off my back. Because along with everything else, I had to grow up living with insults, emotional abuse, and a good dose of physical abuse. Fortunately, I was happy to respond in kind.
But what I can't take is people who try to treat physically disabled people in a coddled manner, simply by getting people around them to stop referring to the fact that they are, uh, physically disabled. Or mentally disabled. Or both. If I went around pretending that I'm perfectly average, boy would I be in for a surprise. Disabled people have to accept their disability, in their mind, in their heart, and in their soul. Then they have to develop the will to work twice as hard as everyone else to overcome it.
Now, I am not saying that making fun of such people is right. Malicious insults are never right. But on the opposite side, neither is mollycoddling.