In recent years, Italian and international films have increasingly featured people with disabilities as protagonists or central characters. Television programs, new specialized magazines, and articles in weekly and daily newspapers have repeatedly drawn attention to the private lives and challenges of disabled people. Significant developments continue: films about disability broadcast during prime time, theater companies of people with mental illness performing in historic venues, a celebrated photographer promoting sweaters by dressing disabled youth in them, the book "Un fratello da nascondere" winning the Andersen Prize for best children's book—its protagonist a teenage sister of a severely disabled boy (we discuss it here).
There is no question: the culture and public sensitivity surrounding disability have changed. The media now gives this issue attention that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. This forces us at Ombre e Luci to ask ourselves: Is there still room for our small magazine? Does it make sense to keep publishing it? After fifteen years, do we still have a purpose—and if so, what is it?
A direct line. Our readers are our friends, or friends of friends—people we've met once or spoken to by phone—who share with us a deep concern for disability. They carry worries and commitments we know well. They are bound to us by something we all recognize. Everything we write in Ombre e Luci is meant for each of them. It should speak to their lives and offer some small help. And everything they tell us, in one way or another, finds its place in our magazine as part of an ongoing conversation. This direct line with our readers gives us hope that in difficult moments, we might be for them the friend who understands, who has walked that same road, who will not demand explanations—because he has already lived them. Perhaps we can offer the word that will matter, because someone once offered it to us.
Our own direct experience with disability also shapes the work we do. We have always tried to report on what is new, what is emerging and strengthening in the fight for disabled people's rights and protection. We care deeply about these developments because we see them as important steps forward for civil society. Yet we believe that despite all useful and just innovations, the world of disability will always contain particular struggles, hidden suffering, and complex challenges that require constant, sustained attention and good will to address—insofar as we are humanly able.
A deeper message. The reality of physical and mental disability cannot be solved by efficiency and material assistance alone. Even when both are essential, they are not enough. Our readers teach us this regularly, and we believe it deeply.
We believe that the Christian message Ombre e Luci carries is for many of them the light necessary to illuminate and make bearable what would otherwise remain dark and unbearable in their lives. For this reason, we believe our small magazine still has work to do.
- The Editorial Board, 1999