Downtown Disney Case Study

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Recommended: Discrimination against people living with disability

After recording the behaviors of disabled and nondisabled guests at Downtown Disney, it became evident that the social construction of disability may have an influence on the amount of interest or engagement shown between individuals. Based on the observations recorded, it appears that the nondisabled people seemed to show a lack of interest or regard for the disabled people involved in the interactions. Although it may not have been overt, it seemed nondisabled people exhibited subtle signs of superiority over disabled people, appearing to treat them as if they were helpless or burdensome. This attitude was most evident during an interaction that occurred in the World of Disney store at Downtown Disney. A heavyset man in a motorized scooter …show more content…

The young girl appeared to be developmentally delayed, and the two middle-aged women engaged in conversation while pushing her. When the young girl attempted to speak to the two women, her attempt at contributing to their conversation appeared to be ignored by the two women as they continued talking to one another. Because of her mental disability, she seems to be treated as childish and does not appear to be taken seriously by the two women (Johnson, 2006, p. 31), who appear more interested in each other than they do in listening to the mentally handicapped girl that they are caring for. This interaction in addition to several others seem congruent with the belief that stereotypes of disabled individuals “reportedly get in the way of full participation in… social life” (Wendell, 1996, p. 61). It appeared that nondisabled individuals would only engage with the disabled individuals if they appeared to need help of some sort, appeared to lose something or spoke directly to the nondisabled person involved in the interaction. Otherwise, nondisabled individuals and caregivers appeared to treat disabled individuals as burdensome, unimportant, or even invisible. This was particularly evident during an interaction between an elderly man in a wheelchair and a middle-aged man in a green shirt. Throughout the course of their interaction, the middle-aged man rarely spoke to the man in the wheelchair and spent more time speaking with a park employee and another guest. Additionally, there were several significant periods of time during which he would leave the man in the wheelchair alone. His actions seemed to show a lack of interest in interacting with the man in the wheelchair, as he spent less time speaking with him than he did speaking to others or leaving him completely

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