The integration of able and disabled people will be for the benefit of society, however, it is very unlikely that it will occur at all. People remember other people through their personality or physical structure. When people meet someone new, they usually associate that person with something unique about him: long nose, short hair, ect. This is how we learn to know people. So naturally, when someone meets a disabled person, they would associate him with his crutches, his wheelchair, or his cast.
Society also conveys the negative things of being disabled. Just as Mairs said that she "haven't noticed any women like me [disabled] on television" I have never seen anyone disabled on television either. The only disabled things I see on the television are of those sad crippled puppy commercials, which although it does create sympathy, it links in my brain that the disabled are basically needy puppies. Although my perception of disabled people have definitely changed from then, others may not have.
I bet you have seen disable people in the media, you just haven't noticed it. What about Professor X from X-Men? Or Gary Bertier in Remember the Titans? Admittedly, they make a big point about Bertier's accident, but that's because it is a sudden and devastating thing. Afterwards, he's seen as pretty functional (despite the no football thing, which is pretty applicable to all people in wheelchairs), and not much more is made of his disability until he dies. Both of these men are distinctive for their own reasons outside of being crippled. Most people associate Professor X with telepathy, not the wheelchair.
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