Originally published here.

A ‘‘sea change’’ in public attitudes, legislation, and poli-tical power at the end of the 20th century in the UnitedStates has helped set the stage in the early 21st century forthe entry of people with disabilities into the labor force.Major pieces of federal legislation have altered nationalpolicy with the intention of maximizing the work forceparticipation of people with disabilities. At the sametime,anewtheoreticalparadigmofdisabilityhasemerged,which emphasizes community inclusion, accommodation,and protection of civil rights.

This ‘‘New Paradigm’’ of disability can be applied in concert with rigorous beha-vioralscience methodologies toshedlightontheoutcomesof recent federal policy changes regarding the labor forceparticipation of people with disabilities. In so doing, socialscience can be used in more meaningful ways to under-stand both the intended and unintended consequences of federal policy.

The New Paradigm has its roots in the many social movements that grew up inthe civil rights era of the 1960s, such as consumerism, self-help, and deinstitutio-nalization (DeJong, 1979). For example, the 1970s saw the Independent Livingsocial movement, which sought a better quality of life for people with disabilitythrough equalopportunity, andintroduced an independent living analytic paradigmin which disability occurs solely in the context of the rehabilitation process.Concurrently, the first major piece of disability-related national policy, the Reha-bilitation Act of 1973, was enacted by Congress, prohibiting organizations receivingfederal funds from discriminating against ‘‘otherwise qualified handicapped’’individuals.

In the 1980s, disability-rights advocates endorsed shifting the definitionof disability from a focus on functional impairments and vocational limitations to asociopolitical perspective, further supporting the civil-rights-based, minority groupmodel of disability (Hahn, 1986). These new paradigms were not universallyembraced, and national disability policy continued to lack coherence and direction(Hahn, 1985). Much disability policy remained rooted in economic paradigms thatpitted benefits to individuals with disabilities against costs to the rest of society, thusreinforcing the medical-rehabilitation model. This perspective is seen even in theADA, which, although fundamentally designed as a piece of civil rights legislation,was limited in scope by such economic arguments (Watson, Tucker, Baldwin, &O’Day, 1994).

The New Paradigm views disability as an interaction between characteristics of an individual and features of his or her cultural, social, natural, and built environ-ments (Hahn, 1999). In this framework, disability does not lie within the person butin the interface between individuals’ characteristics (such as their functional statusor personal or social qualities) and the nature of the environments in which theyoperate (U.S. Department of Education, 2000). While the old paradigm views aperson with a disability as someone who cannot function because of an impairment,the New Paradigm views this person as someone who needs an accommodation inorder to function (U.S. Department of Education, 2000). Moreover, it acknowl-edges that people are entitled to accommodations as a civil right under the ADA.

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