Willingness to work with people with disabilities in future Brazilian professionals

The Quota Law in Brazil determines that the organizations with over 100 workers must hire people with disabilities.

The aim of this investigation was to verify the willingness of future professionals to work with people with disabilities.

A survey was conducted with 341 Brazilian university students.

The following factors were taken into account: the Quota Law favorability (attitude); the conceptions about disability (beliefs); the evaluation of consequences (positive or negative) which the individual attributes to the fact of working with people with disabilities; and the perception of the level of difficulty to insert these people (beliefs about control).

Three patterns of willingness have been identified: willingness guided by the focus on the disability; willingness guided by the instrumental focus; and willingness guided towards accessibility. It has also been verified that these forms of willingness were associated to the perception of difficulties in inserting people with disabilities.

These results empirically reinforce the fact that part of the difficulties in inserting people with disabilities is found in the social environment and conditions, suggesting that these aspects need to be taken into account in the studies on attitudes towards people with disabilities.