A couple of days ago on Facebook I saw a post from ABC TV about a show coming to iview called You Can’t Ask That and it was about 3 questions you should never ask someone in a wheelchair. Now two of the questions I guess I agree that you should never ask someone in a wheelchair, but the first of the three questions ‘why are you in a wheelchair’ is something that you should ask somebody in a wheelchair. But only in certain circumstances, so nobody start going up to random people in wheelchairs in the street and ask somebody in a wheelchair and say that The Movie Boards said that it was okay that you asked them.
Before I get too much further into things there was an excellent point made about ‘soup questions’ in a movie that Gus Van Sant directed in 2000 Finding Forrester, to quote the movie “The object of a question is to obtain information that matters only to us.” And asking a random person why they are in a wheelchair is not a soup question.
There is an exception to this rule if the person asking the question is under the age of about 6 and they have not been prompted to ask it by their parents then the person in the wheelchair should answer the question, ESPECIALLY if they are in the wheelchair as a result of some sort of accident.