| Many people who have a disability don't let it prevent | | | | 5. Tanni Grey Thompson OBE is probably the best |
| them from leading full and rich lives, indeed some are | | | | known disabled athlete, representing Britain in |
| an inspiration to both disabled and non-disabled people | | | | distances from 100m to 800m. She has won 14 |
| alike. Below is a list of disabled people who have | | | | Paralympic medals including 9 gold's and she has |
| achieved outstanding success despite their disability. | | | | broken over 20 records. She has also won 5 London |
| 1. Stephen Hawking is probably one of the world's | | | | Marathons as a wheelchair athlete and has become a |
| best known high achievers with a disability. He is an | | | | TV presenter. |
| internationally renowned physicist / mathematician | | | | 6. Marla Runyan is a legally blind marathon runner and |
| who suffers from Motor Neurone Disease. At 35 he | | | | has set several track and field records at the |
| was Cambridge's first Gravitational Physics Professor | | | | Paralympics in Atlanta, 1996. She has represented the |
| and received the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics | | | | US at the 2000 Olympics and became the first legally |
| Award. He has written a best selling book which was | | | | blind athlete to compete in an Olympics. |
| later made into a film called A Brief History of Time: | | | | 7. Itzhak Perlman is an Israeli-American violinist, |
| From the Big Bang to Black Holes. | | | | conductor and teacher. He is a renowned musician |
| 2. Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the 32nd | | | | who contracted Polio at age four and today uses |
| President of the United States. He contracted Polio in | | | | crutches or a wheelchair and plays the violin while |
| 1921 which left him paralysed from the waist down. | | | | seated. In 1986 he received the Medal of Liberty |
| Refusing to accept his paralysis he tried different | | | | from President Reagan. He is also an advocate for |
| therapies and methods to try and walk and did | | | | people with disabilities and promotes laws to allow |
| master walking short distances using iron braces and | | | | easier access to buildings and transport. |
| a cane. He was careful not to be seen in a wheelchair | | | | 8. Francisco Goya (1746-1828) was a Spanish painter |
| in public. He established a foundation to help others | | | | who suffered an illness which left him deaf at 46. He |
| with Polio and directed the March of Dimes program | | | | went on to create some of the best known Spanish |
| which eventually funded an effective vaccine. | | | | art of the 19th Century. He provided inspiration for |
| 3. Another successful politician, Pat Stack is a left | | | | the work of later artists including Picasso and Monet. |
| wing revolutionary and part of the Socialist Workers | | | | 9. Helen Keller was an American author, political |
| Party committee. A child born from a Thalidomide | | | | activist and lecturer who was blind, deaf and mute. |
| pregnancy he uses a wheelchair. A great political mind | | | | She was the first deaf and blind person to be |
| and brilliant orator he holds meetings every year at | | | | awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree. |
| Marxism in London and wrote 'Stack on the Back' for | | | | 10. Albert Einstein, the famous mathematician and |
| the Socialist Review until 2004. | | | | physicist, had a learning disability and did not speak |
| 4. David Blunkett was an MP, Education Secretary, | | | | until he was three years old. He found maths and |
| Home Secretary and Secretary of State for Work | | | | writing difficult at school but went on to become one |
| and Pensions at various times. He has been blind since | | | | of the best known scientists of all time winning the |
| birth and has never let this fact hold him back in any | | | | Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. |
| aspect of his life. | | | | |