Are perceptions of disability changing over time?
To begin thinking about the way perceptions of disability can change, consider disability as part of a continuum or spectrum. At one end of this continuum, we locate the highest calibre non-disabled persons, perhaps Olympic athletes and Nobel Prize winners; at the opposite end are people with the most severe disabilities. In between these two extremes, we find graduated levels of ability/disability involving a mix of physical and mental abilities/disabilities. Thus, the exact point on the continuum where a specific level of ability shifts to disability is not the same for every Canadian. So when a respondent decides to report a disability on a survey such as PALS, the answer is based on that individual’s “threshold of disability” on the continuum rather than an exact “location”. This also means that having a disability can be a transitory condition, since people can move into and out of a state of disability depending on their individual circumstances. For example, someone who has had
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