Where is everyone? Or rather, where is the disabled population? It's not something that most people think about, is it? Especially when walking into an engineering firm, or computer science department at a university, and yet....they are no where to be found. We wanted to understand why that is, and what the United State's statistics say about this apparent gap.
So, on Wednesday, December 12, 2012, Dr Jeanine Cook hosted a webinar (via Google Hangouts) to discuss the situation. And what she found was very interesting. Let's start with "how do you define disability". It doesn't sound like a hard question, but there doesn't seem to be an easy answer. For, (almost) every source Dr Cook found, a different definition for disability was used. How can statistics be accurate when the same pool of people changes each time?
What was found is that the limited numbers of disabled individuals going to university usually go into 2 year programs. While there is nothing wrong with this, the fact is that the better jobs are saved for those with 4 year degrees.
Dr Cook then looked into why this is...why are most disabled people not going to college, and when they do, why are they choosing to only get an associates degree. There were a few possible reasons, but the one that was staring us in the face was that most disabled people are (either intentionally or unintentionally) being discouraged from doing anything. As a group of people, they are being told that it would be better for them to just live on governmental assistance.
We realize that the definition of disabled does include people who would not be able to work due to the severity of their situation. But that is only a select few of a much larger group that isn't even given a chance to prove themselves.
At Project Enable, we seek to change this mind set in our participants. We understand that living with a disability can be difficult...to the point that it becomes part of the very definition of disability. As a staff, we have no desire to belittle your struggles...but as humans, we would hope that you would be given the chance to rise above those trials. We want you to know that you are not defined by your disability unless you choose to let it define you. All we are offering, is a chance to see that you have other options, and one of those options is to see yourself as a successful computer scientist or civil engineer.
Definitions are tricky things, as we quickly found out in the webinar. They shouldn't be the thing that stops you.
