This paper highlights a panel discussion dealing with different perceptions of disability and how these perceptions are influenced by the experience of living with, working with, and teaching children with handicaps. One panel participant, a Native American, discusses her experience in accepting and loving her handicapped daughter. She counsels children and parents on a Navajo reservation and understands their way of life and attitudes. Most of the handicapped children on the reservation do not attend school; they are hidden away from the public. At the tribal schools, children with physical or emotional handicaps sense the teachers look down on them because they need extra help with class work. The second panelist works with disabled children and also has a handicapped daughter. She emphasizes that the needs of disabled children are the same as nondisabled children. Planning for the future for a disabled child must include provisions that such care can continue even into adulthood. Focusing on the person as opposed to focusing on their disabilities is a first step in accepting disabled individuals. The third panelist, an educator who has experienced prejudices because of her Native American and African heritage, believes that, rather than the family, today's teacher has to be more concerned with teaching children about their own capacity to learn and about accepting differences in people because problems in many contemporary families leave children unprepared for school. To make this a better world, we need to put ourselves in the other person's perspective and learn that a disability, as one perceives it, can be beautiful. (LP)