Autism Vox

It’s all about our attitude

by Kristina Chew, PhD on April 5th, 2006

The 2004 employment rate for people with disabilities fell below 20% after reaching a high of 25% in the 1990s, according to researchers at Cornell University. This low rate is due in part to “the misconception that accommodating people with disabilities in the workplace is prohibitively costly,” as Catherine Komp reports in The New Standard (March 9, 2006). And it is not so much changes in physical accessibility, in architecture or ergonomics, that disability advocates cite as the main carrier, but attitude.

“Most disabled people would tell you that the bigger concerns they have around the workplace are not around physical accessibility….They’re more around attitudes. I think it’s easier to legislate and see change around bricks and mortar than it is around attitudes,” says Andrew Imparato, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities.

The Department of Labor’s Job Accommodation Network (JAN) has been conducting a survey through September 2007 seeking feedback from 778 employers about employing people with disabilities.

Autism is sometimes considered an “invisible disability” because many autistic persons, like Charlie, have no “obvious” physical traits. Of course, an attitude like prejudice or assuming intellectual incompetence is also invisible.

And it’s up to us “neurotypicals”—”non-autistics”–to start changing ourselves from the inside out.

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POSTED IN: Stereotypes, Work