Stop making it weird: Why I’m not clapping
Issue title: Special Section: Proceedings of the 2016 Annual APSE National Conference, 21-23 June 2016, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Article type: Research Article
Authors: Davis, Cassandra J.a; * | Thibedeau Boyd, Jolene M.b
Affiliations: [a] Association for People Supporting EmploymentFirst, Rockville, MD, USA | [b]Community Involvement Programs, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Correspondence: [*] Address for correspondence: Cassandra J. Davis, 414 Hungerford Drive, Suite 224, Rockville, MD 20850, USA. Tel.: +1 612 385 5122; E-mail: cassy@apse.org.
Keywords: Unconscious beliefs, low expectations, special treatment, inspiration porn, disability is not exceptional, inclusion, community engagement, #stopmakingitweird
DOI: 10.3233/JVR-170868
Journal: Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 321-325, 2017
November 2016
Accepted November 2016
Published: 2 June 2017
Abstract
BACKGROUND: People with disabilities today have greater opportunities for inclusion and full community engagement than ever before. There is an increasing importance placed on supporting higher expectations: More people have jobs where they work alongside co-workers without a focus on disability. Innovative leaders recognize that all employees do better when they have support tailored to their unique skills and work styles. Yet many disability professionals continue to hold unconscious beliefs that influence their actions, well-intentioned as they may be, and ultimately create situations that are unnatural and bizarre—in a word, “weird”.