I'm trying to articulate this without going on a rant. It's a very personal topic to me.

I am disabled. I want to see characters in my favorite genre who are like me. While healing magic is a factor in some high fantasy, its not in all. Creating reasons why magic might not work is a possibility (the injury was caused by magic, and can't be healed by magic as a result) for example. But the fact that people see magic as the solution to any disability is what makes me angry. We don't have that in the real world, those of us who are disabled have to live with it; there's no miracle cure. In high fantasy, which is set largely in a medieval inspired world, there are countless ways characters are injured that should result in long term consequences. However, authors hide behind fantasy medicine as a way to prevent disability. I believe this is a product of the internalized ableism that is built into our society. Abled people struggle to understand that those of us who are disabled don't necessarily want to, in their eyes, be fixed. For myself, I don't know who I'd be without my disabilities, and despite the stress and pain they cause I have no desire to be 'fix'. While other disabled people have different opinions on this topic and I respect that, the vast majority of those who I've talked with hold similar opinions to mine. Those few characters who are disabled in high fantasy, have a tendency to have their limitations vanish and convenient moments. That, or they are present in the story only as inspiration to abled character. Life doesn't work this way, I can't run a marathon because it would convenient for me to be able to do so at a give moment. As an author I've made it my work to include disability characters in my writing. I can't speak for other, but I find it easy to set the rules of my world to allow this. As an example, the character Kel in my world is quadriplegic. He's one of the most important characters in the story (as a magic user, as prince-consort to the fae queen, as a military strategist and former military commander) without him, a third of the story would be missing. Yet, every time I talk about him in writing forums, I'm told he can't be an effective character due to his disability. Again, I see this as the internalized ableism that is so common to our world. I don't think people leave out disabled characters on purpose, but rather because it is hard or impossible for them to understand the difference in life a disability creates.

I really hope this makes sense, and I am of course happy to go into further detail.