a writer who i otherwise greatly respected up until then (who i now think wrote a lot of good books and was a complete moron in one specific way) had the same question about including disabled characters in books. this person was even disabled themselves, which a) made me want to hit my head against the wall repeatedly and b) did make me leave the panel. i so infrequently walk out of panels, but hello, pinhead, don't deny my existence.

so, i applaud you for not throwing things.

i expect that the program chairs will be very much looking for panel reviews; if a person wanted this one to be found, a person might link to it in the wiscon lj community or else putting in the technorati tag.