I find this really interesting. I have a son with autism. He's now coming up to eleven and I tend to view this in terms of opportunity to contribute according to his ability and wanting to maximize that. That's sort of the vision we have for him. For example, during the election campaign we wanted to make it a family event. I also have a seven-year-old daughter, so we looked for opportunities for him to be able to do things.
By definition of “contribute”, I mean not simply being busy but actually doing something that adds to what we are doing. For example, when we were delivering brochures, he'd go out with my wife and he'd run up and down the sidewalks, which he loved to do, and together they were able to do more than my wife could have done alone. Another example was putting labels on envelopes and things that he wanted to do that would mean he was able to contribute, more than only our volunteers working on their own.
In terms of my interest in these issues in general, I like to think of them more in terms of contributing according to ability, as opposed to tagging people with the term “disability”, as you said. I'm interested to know, first of all, where autism may fit, as an example for me, in terms of the definitions we were talking about.
Secondly, is there a differentiation in some of the statistics when we talk about income levels or post-secondary education between people with a physical disability versus someone with something like autism?