Disabilities and Dragons: Accessibility in a Fantasy Setting

I’m going to preface today’s blog with two points: 

Firstly, I am a disabled person. I suffer from a joint disorder that leaves me prone to dislocation and injury, and subsequently I struggle with low energy and fatigue while my body attempts to hold me together. I suffer from arthritis and use a walking stick. 

Secondly, I work professionally in the Accessibility and Inclusion sector. I have worked with several organisations to make sure that a given location is accessible to users with different bodily experiences and needs. I am also close friends with the director of the disability writing collective Tentacles, and have learned a great deal about disability and accessibility through my relationship with them. 

With that in mind, I’m going to say something that many would consider controversial. 

Disabled people would be able to plunder your bloody dungeon. 

In 2019, disabled game designer and writer Sara Thompson released the 5e Combat Wheelchair. The online response to this poorly-balanced but otherwise innocuous magic item can charitably be described as “fairly negative”. In just about every forum where Combat Wheelchair was published you can find countless frothy comments decrying it as the “epitome of overpowered, Mary Sue homebrew that nobody should take seriously”. When it reached 4Chan it was roundly mocked by the hobby’s worst representatives. Slurs were used, obviously. While some critiques were offered in regards to the Wheelchair’s relatively unbalanced power level, these critiques were usually couched in wider discussions of the appropriateness of having a disabled TTRPG character. Among the internet’s dumbest assholes, the consensus was clear: Us crips have no place in adventuring.¹

In this blog, I’ll be looking at my two main arguments against this line of thinking. I’d like to stress that I’m not exclusively here to call anyone out. I want to approach this topic in good faith as someone who loves this hobby, and I understand that many people - including other disabled people - may disagree with some of the points I’ll make in this blog. I also recognise that a lot of ableism isn’t born out of genuine malice, but from a lack of context and understanding. 

Are we all on the same page? 

Okay, good. 

Let’s go. 

Disabled People Could Kick Your Ass

Okay yeah, coming on a bit strong there. 

Richard Whitehead is a 9-time gold medallist from my home county of Nottinghamshire. He is an athlete, long-distance runner, motivational speaker, and personal hero of mine. He also, due to a through-knee congenital amputation, doesn’t have legs. 

Richard’s story is obviously incredibly inspiring, but I bring it up because it offers an interesting case study into peak bodily performance in spite of disability. With the use of fairly standard, not-at-all-combat-optimised prosthetics, Richard Whitehead and the countless double amputees like him are able to access and engage with society. Through the use of specialised blade prosthetics, Richard has been able to out-compete his peers (and I’d dare say the vast majority of the able-bodied population) time and time again. When you consider the perseverance, endurance, and physical prowess exhibited by the average disabled athlete, the argument that a disabled person couldn’t be an adventurer fails to hold water. 

Hack and Slash 

As someone who professionally writes about access in architecture, I’ll be the first to admit that the average dungeon isn’t especially accessible. Hell, most modern banks aren’t accessible, let alone the Grim Catacombs of the Lich Queen.² This lack of accessibility alone feels like a barrier of entry to the average disabled adventurer. And yet, I am comfortable in saying that a disabled adventurer would find a way to access a dungeon because disabled people are doing that anyway.

A lot of modern disability discourse is centred around the Social Model of Disability, which argues that a disabled person is actually only disabled by their environment. A wheelchair user with access to a ramp, for instance, is no longer disabled from being able to access a higher level of a building. A dyslexic reader with coloured paper and dyslexic-friendly fonts is no longer disabled from reading a text. Disabilities come about when a human body interacts with an environment that is hostile to it - this is something that can happen to anyone, even the able-bodied. 

The difference between a disabled person and an able-bodied person is that the former is already proficient in “hacking”. In the incredible disability advocacy text Many More Parts Than M!, the authors discuss the “tricks, shortcuts, skills, or novelty methods [...] that adapt an inaccessible environment for unmet needs”. A person with a fatigue disorder might “hack” street furniture to rest while on the move, for instance; a person with limited mobility might become an avid amateur cartographer in order to avoid inaccessible or uncomfortable routes. It would be difficult, sure, but you’d be surprised at how fast the average disabled person would adapt to the hostility of a dungeon. 

Beast of Burden 

Whenever disability is broached in relation to the fantasy genre, someone inevitably brings up the existence of magic. The assumption is that - in a world with dragons and wizards - a disabled person would simply be “cured” of their condition. This argument always smacks a little of eugenics to me, but I’ll overlook that for the sake of a simpler, less inflammatory point. 

In 2023, beige YouTuber and fledgling supervillain Jimmy Donaldson (Mr Beast) became the center of an interesting conversation after he spent millions of dollars funding surgeries that would reverse cataract-based blindness. This kick-started a fascinating debate about the ethics of quote "curing" a disabled person for the sake of content and clout, but it also opens an interesting discussion that is pertinent to our topic today: Who gets to be able bodied? The individual surgeries funded by Mr Beast are expensive and time consuming, but they are possible. Those 1000 people could have been "cured" of their blindness before Jimmy entered the picture had they the funds and access to the necessary resources. However, they didn't. Many of these patients had been struggling with cataract-based blindness for years before Jimmy came along and funded their surgery - had that never happened, they would perhaps still be blind or partially sighted today. 

What's to say that a similar wealth disparity wouldn't occur in a fantasy setting too? Our cleric PCs can regrow limbs and heal disabiling conditions, sure, but by virtue of them being "heroes" and "adventurers", we have to assume that they are not the norm. These abilities that they offer are, like the cataract surgery funded by Mr. Beast and his team, are expensive and time consuming. They cost money, and require specific resources. If you are a disabled youth in the slums of Generic Fantasy City #47, are you going to have access to these resources? Or are you going to make do with what you have, and adapt accordingly? 

My Power Fantasy Could Beat Up Your Power Fantasy 

Many RPGs - especially the 2014 and 2024 editions of 5e D&D - are built on power fantasy. The average TTRPG player can’t benchpress twice their bodyweight, or sprint 60 feet in 6 seconds. Fewer still can shoot fireballs out of their hands. When a Paladin pulls off a successful series of game-changing smites, it feels good because a power fantasy - one of hyper-competence in the face of overwhelming odds - is being indulged. 

I think that, subconsciously, the reason Sara Thompson’s Combat Wheelchair invited so much ire is because it defies the kinds of power fantasies a disabled person is permitted to have. The Combat Wheelchair is, as I have alluded to, ridiculously overpowered. It counts as a Mount, provides additional actions, can be controlled telepathically, and does not require attunement. It is an unbalanced item. 

Do you know what else is unbalanced? Almost every other magic item in D&D. The Sphere of Annihilation, an official magic item that has been part of Dungeons and Dragons since 1e, is a literal black hole that can be controlled telepathically. The Immovable Rod is capable of derailing entire encounters with almost no effort. There are countless videos with clickbait titles professing OP game-breaking builds YOU can use today to drive YOUR DM crazy. These are all parts of a power fantasy, and while you may occasionally have commenters complaining about how they unbalance the game overall, you will never see the same level of vitriol as that reserved for the Combat Wheelchair. 

The socially-permissible power fantasies of a disabled person are radically different, however. A disabled person must wish for the miraculous end of their condition: The ultimate power fantasy for the disabled person, in the eyes of society, is to finally be “normal”. 

I’d argue that disability-centric magic items like the Combat Wheelchair indulge in a power fantasy that the daily aids that we rely on are capable of incredible things. These wheelchairs don’t simply allow a person to move at the same speed as their able-bodied counterparts, but to overtake them. Geordi La Forge’s visor - a similarly overpowered disability aid in a fantasy setting - doesn’t just allow him to see like a sighted person, but gives him access to the entire electromagnetic spectrum. They invite an uncomfortable possibility to the able-bodied mind: That being disabled is actually an advantage under the right circumstances. That perhaps the abled body is simply not enough.

Conclusion

As I said up top, I am not here to call anyone out or to stir the pot with my woke lefty rhetoric. I would be sincerely interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter - especially if you are a disabled person who feels misrepresented by anything in this blog. One thing I have learned over the years in the Accessibility sector is that everyone is learning all the time: We have a duty to ourselves and one another to remain open to alternate ways of thinking and feeling if we ever want to improve our world, and the worlds that dwell in our wildest fantasies. 

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¹  “Crip” is being used in this context as a reclaimed slur. As I have stated, I am disabled, and the strength and perseverance that I and many other disabled people exhibit on a daily basis make me proud to be a crip.

² There’s probably some internalised ableism at work here, as the Lich Queen has been denied her last two PIP applications and is quite frustrated with the whole system.