Op-ed: ‘Wheelchair doesn’t make employee perfect’
November 19th, 2009
Columnist Helen Henderson writes in the Toronto Star about a scene on the ABC television series Private Practice, in which a hospital executive “feels trapped by the specter of political correctness” because she fears confronting a doctor with a disability.
Henderson says the scene underscores a real workplace problem: Employers are wary of disability hiring because they think “it’s harder to dismiss an underperforming person with a disability than one without a disability.”
A survey by Toronto’s Job Opportunity Information Network found that 36 per cent of executives said they felt uncomfortable reprimanding someone with a disability.
To be truly inclusive, Henderson says, a workplace must encourage people to speak up about legitimate concerns. She gives points to the producers of Private Practice for hiring Michael Patrick Thornton to play the doctor in the wheelchair. Thornton is partially paralyzed and uses a wheelchair in real life.
(Toronto Star photo from ABC)
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November 19th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
I’ve experienced this during my school years. K-12 I went to regular classes. My aide told me she had many talks with my teachers. They told her at times they wanted to be lenient on me. They just felt compelled to. My aide told them they weren’t doing anybody any favors by doing so.
Stereotypes run deep, they seem impossible to break but they must be broken.