By Yesenia Fuentes, Photo: Yaorusheng/Getty Images, Atmos, July 26, 2023
Stephanie Wills has been legally blind since birth. She was born with chorioretinal coloboma, a condition where a person’s retina does not fully develop in utero. The affliction, which Wills has in both eyes, makes sunlight painful. She often keeps her eyes closed and sleeps during the day to capitalize on the night’s sunless hours.
In Panama, the tropical Central American country where Wills lives, sunlight is inescapable. “It never goes away,” she said. Neither does the heat. And you can’t have heat without light. They make her life as a disabled person exponentially harder. The climate crisis is only making her situation worse.
Wills is not alone: she is one of 1.3 billion disabled people across the globe. Despite making up 16% of the population, disabled people remain an overlooked and ignored group—in research, policy, and emergency response. Their marginalization is especially troubling given the Earth’s rapidly rising temperatures. Across the globe, heat records have been breaking left and right this year—from Spain to the American Southwest. Disabled people face acute risks from extreme heat and sun exposure, but they’re often left behind when disaster strikes.
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