They wouldn't be who they are now because they wouldn't have had the experiences they have had as the person they are now, and thus it would be different. I think that as a parent it is natural to say that you wouldn't want your child to have the difficulties they do now, but I wonder, if we asked the children, would they want things to be different? Let me give you an example:
I've recently found out that I was misdiagnosed as a baby. When my parents discovered that I couldn't see we went to various specialists who proclaimed that there was nothing wrong with my eyes, or the optic nerve to my eyes but that my blindness must be cortical ie something to do with a problem in the visual cortex of the brain. They didn't know what, or why, it just was. Then two years ago I developed glaucoma in my right eye and it was then discovered that I had cateracts in both eyes. I saw a consultant who said that cateracts don't develop in normally healthy eyes and that his belief was that the problem with my eyes wasn't actually cortical at all but that there was possibly an issue with my retinas, but that this could not be established due to the fact I have cateracts which cannot be removed as they are complex...
Fast forward to late last year, and I managed to get an appointment at moorfields in London. After a long consultation it is now believed that I actually had juvanile glaucoma as a baby but that this didn't present as it usually does and so was never picked up. Is there anything that could have been done then? if it had been picked up then, possibly, but as it wasn't there's no way of knowing and we're beyond the point of no return to the extent that I anticipate I will probably have my right eye surgically removed in the not too distant future.
My mum has been quite affected by all this. Saying that she wants a definitive diagnosis, that she wonders if anything could have been done, if only we'd known then maybe I could have seen and so on.
I am unaffected. It's done. These things happen and I am the person I am because of it most probably. And if someone offered me sight tomorrow I honestly don't know if I would take it, because becoming sighted would be like becoming disabled - I would have to learn to do everything as a sighted person, to read and write and recognise people from their faces and the list goes on. My mum doesn't understand this, she said that seeing would just be normal though, but it wouldn't be, not to me. Not being able to see is normal to me, and I've known no different in the same way as someone who can see has known no different and questions how someone who cannot can do certain things.
Most people I know see beyond my "disability", but there are certain aspects of my disability that have made me who I am. I don't look at people and judge them on their appearance; I take people as people and judge them on who they are, not what they look like. If I could see it's unlikely I would think like that, since visual chemistry is something we are programmed to have. That's just one example but ykwim.
Of course in instances where a child is severely disabled one might think differently. But if someone has never known any different is it really their disability they would change? or peoples' perceptions of them based on their disability.