Last Saturday evening, I was invited to speak at the 5th National Disability Recognition Awards, an event led by Chijika Ngonga and Samaritan Hope Givers to celebrate inclusion, resilience and excellence. Before I said anything about diabetes, I asked the audience a question.

“When you saw me walk onto the stage, how many of you saw a person with a disability?”
Very few hands went up. Their response wasn’t wrong. It was familiar. Most of us have been taught that disability is something we recognise instantly. We expect to see a wheelchair, a white cane or a prosthetic limb. We have become so accustomed to visible disabilities that we rarely stop to consider the ones that cannot be seen at all. The evening wasn’t simply a celebration of people living with disabilities. It was a reminder that perhaps the greatest barrier is not disability itself, but the assumptions the rest of us make about it.

I have lived with Type 1 diabetes for 35 years. Unless you notice the glucose sensor attached to my arm, you would have no reason to think anything is different about me. You would not see the calculations behind every meal, the insulin injections, the interrupted sleep, the contingency planning or the hundreds of decisions required every single day to keep my body alive. The work is invisible, but that does not make it any less real.

The more I reflected on that evening, the more I realised this conversation has very little to do with diabetes. Diabetes simply exposes something much bigger about how we see one another.
We tend to confuse visibility with significance.

Someone living with epilepsy may appear completely healthy until they have a seizure. A colleague with severe hearing loss may spend an entire meeting piecing together conversations that everyone else hears effortlessly. Someone living with lupus or chronic pain may smile through the working day before going home completely exhausted. Many people with autism spend years masking their differences simply to fit into environments that were never designed with them in mind.

We don’t usually question whether these challenges exist. We simply don’t think about them until they become impossible to ignore. Diabetes illustrates this perfectly. When diabetes is well managed, people often struggle to understand why it could ever be considered a disability. Yet when diabetes results in blindness, kidney failure or an amputation, nobody questions it anymore. Suddenly the disability has become visible.

The irony, of course, is that those complications are not the disability. They are often the consequences of years spent living with a condition that was demanding constant attention long before anyone else noticed.

That made me wonder whether we have been asking the wrong question all along. Instead of asking whether someone has a disability, perhaps we should be asking what challenges they are managing that we cannot see. It is a subtle difference, but it changes everything. It changes how managers think about flexibility at work. It changes how teachers think about the pupil who quietly struggles to concentrate. It changes how families respond to relatives whose health does not always announce itself. Most importantly, it reminds us that understanding should not begin only when someone’s circumstances become visible enough to satisfy everyone else’s definition of hardship.
The event also made me think about another phrase we use without questioning it: “Less abled.” Who decided that?
If someone has learnt to navigate a world that constantly asks them to adapt, are they ‘less able’? If someone has developed extraordinary discipline simply because their body requires it every day, are they ‘less able’? If someone has mastered resilience, planning, problem-solving and perseverance because life left them with no alternative, have they lost ability, or have they gained abilities many of us have never needed to develop? Perhaps disability and ability have never been opposites. Actually they have always existed together.

Those recognised that evening were not defined by what they could not do. They were recognised because of what they continue to contribute despite obstacles many of us will never experience. That distinction matters because it shifts the conversation away from limitation and towards potential. Inclusion is not about pretending differences do not exist. It is about recognising that difference does not diminish someone’s value or contribution.
As Zambia continues to talk about inclusion, employment and opportunity, I hope we also broaden our understanding of disability. Not every disability is visible. Not every barrier is physical. If we only recognise disability once we can see it, we will always arrive too late, whether that means offering support to a colleague, designing an accessible workplace or preventing avoidable complications from chronic conditions.

The question I asked the audience still lingers with me, but today I think there is a better one: “When we look at another person, are we only seeing what is obvious, or are we making enough room for what we cannot see?” I think perhaps the people we may call “less abled” have been teaching the rest of us what ability really looks like all along. Events like these remind us that recognition is not the finish line. It is the beginning of seeing one another with a little more curiosity, a little more compassion and a little less assumption. That may be one of the most powerful forms of inclusion we can build.

Kaajal Vaghela is a cultural wellness advisor with over three decades of lived experience managing Type 1 diabetes in Zambia and the diaspora. Having previously served as Chairperson of the Lusaka branch of the Diabetes Association of Zambia, she remains a passionate advocate for breaking down myths and building awareness about diabetes. For more personalised coaching or corporate wellness workshops, visit: www.kaajalvaghela.com and for any feedback: [email protected])