Their model of policy and research excludes disabled folk and reproduces a violent form of knowledge production. The k is a pre-req to effective policymaking.

Because research that informs policy and curricular development within these areas of education leaves out individuals labeled with intellectual disabilities, or fails to consider cognitive ability diversity, it endangers and even impedes the well-being, safety, social belonging, and status of labeled individuals as citizens. Efforts to challenge the status quo of research and practice in education around civic and sex education for and with individuals with intellectual disabilities requires engaging with the lived experiences of individuals labeled with intellectual disabilities, whether as sexual beings or as members of the polity. Such a move requires a comprehensive shift in how research is conducted and how individuals with intellectual disabilities are seen as epistemic agents. People labeled with intellectual disabilities must be included as active participants within rather than passive objects of educational research. At minimum this entails the active and respectful solicitation of their experiences and social meanings to inform theory and research, policy making, and curriculum development. Doing so is a matter of producing knowledge that promotes conditions of social justice and epistemological progress. Acknowledging and correcting epistemic injustices done to individuals with intellectual disabilities would be a first step in addressing such problems of exclusion. Of course, doing so will involve deeply transformative measures, including breaking down institutional and academic barriers that segregate individuals with intellectual disabilities, developing broader understanding among scholars of intellectual disability as a construct, and integrating ethical standards for researcher practices in various fields that are informed by individuals with intellectual disabilities. Perhaps foremost, however, it requires educational researchers to commit themselves to the view that ethical educational research cannot take place in a context wherein the notion of people with intellectual disabilities as researchers is outright laughable.

Pettinicchio et al, 2022

(David – professor of sociology @ University of Toronto, Michelle Maroto - professor of sociology @ University of Alberta, and Jennifer Brooks – research associate in the Yang-Tan Institute on Employment and Disability @ Cornell, “The Sociology of Disability-Based Economic Inequality,” Contemporary Sociology 54.1, 2022)

We cannot imagine a better time to consider how these knowledge gaps play out than during one of the most significant exogenous shocks of our time—the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, bringing disability into focus through a sociological understanding of economic inequality offers an opportunity to look to what the discipline has to say about the future of work, financial situations, and precarity as the pandemic continues to take its economic toll—a toll felt disproportionately by already marginalized communities, including people with disabilities. The pandemic has certainly generated new kinds of inequalities or, at least, a new set of terms with which to think about inequality. For the most part, however, it has exacerbated extant disadvantage, while policy responses to help mitigate the negative effects of the crisis revealed who gets left out (Landes et al. 2020). This should not be surprising to sociologists. As Link and Phelan (1999) have long noted, preexisting inequalities based on group status characteristics directly and indirectly determine social, health, and economic outcomes during and following moments of crises. People with disabilities are at risk of being further left behind in recovery, especially when policies, as Phelan and colleagues (2004) put it, favor the privileged and powerful. Recent mixed methods work by Pettinicchio, Maroto, and Lukk (2021) and Maroto, Pettinicchio, and Lukk (2021) on COVID- 19’s impact on people with disabilities reveals how extant disadvantage carries into financial situations during times of crisis. Many people with disabilities were out of the labor market when the pandemic hit, which means they were relying on nonemployment income. Many were unable to receive pandemic income supports because these benefits were tied to having worked. Those individuals who felt financially secure before the pandemic seemed to weather the economic downturn better, as did those with good jobs. But even those with good jobs expressed concern for their financial futures. Importantly, financial insecurity is also tied to worsening mental health status, as people with disabilities struggling economically during the pandemic have reported increasing stress and anxiety (Ciciurkaite et al. 2022; Pettinicchio et al. 2021). In this paper, we have focused mostly on American examples, with references to British and Canadian contexts as well. However, it is noteworthy that although there are differences (in some cases significant ones) when it comes to specific national policy and economic outcomes among western industrialized countries and crossnationally more generally, people with disabilities typically continue to face major labor market and economic barriers in most contexts. Mizunoya and Mitra (2013) examined employment rates of individuals with disabilities in the global South. Illustrating both commonalities with the global North and patterns in disability and work more particular to the global South, they show that 9 out of the 15 countries they studied have a statistically significant employment gap between those with and without disabilities. Persons with disabilities have lower employment rates than persons without disabilities, especially among women and those with multiple disabilities. Further, Mizunoya and Mitra (2013) also suggest that most individuals with disabilities who work for pay in the global South are selfemployed. Work is important beyond its economic benefits. It is a ticket to social membership and social integration. In addition to its economic importance, having a job provides a sense of challenge and accomplishment, an identity, social support, an escape from boredom, higher levels of self-worth, a sense of purpose, and structure to one’s day (Saunders and Nedelec 2013). When it comes to financial security, employment income is only one aspect (albeit an important one). Having money in your savings account can provide added stability, particularly in times of economic distress. This is important given that work (and employment income) has generally become more precarious, especially among historically disadvantaged minority groups, including people with disabilities. This, against a backdrop of eroding safety nets and a transfer of risk from states to individuals, continues to leave members of these communities at even greater risk of experiencing economic hardship and poverty. The long-term trend of economic marginalization and exclusion of people with disabilities, despite laws and political movements to mitigate these, should raise broader, more systemic-related questions and analyses. As Marta Russell (2002) put it, the concern is not that these trends are aberrations of ‘‘the system,’’ but rather that they have become normative. They are the system.