The attitude of modern society towards disabled people (based on the expert survey in Murmansk region)

The attitude of society to people with disabilities is an important indicator of social processes and the state of society. In the past and present, it has changed a lot. An important scientific task is to study the attitude of different members of society towards disabled people to understand the risks and development prospects for their social inclusion in a particular regional community. The research analyzes the dynamics of this relationship and describes the results of an empirical study based on an expert survey conducted in Murmansk region. The authors demonstrate the dependence of attitudes to disabled people in a regional society on the category of disability. The researchers reveal that people with mental disabilities are in the most unfavorable social situation. In general, the regional society has little awareness of disability, the specific practices of disabled people, their life paths, and subject characteristics. Besides, their possibilities to be involved in social life with other people are contradictory. On the one hand, the need for integration and inclusion is widely accepted. On the other hand, there are public concerns about the feasibility of interaction as well as financial, spatial, environmental, communicative and other barriers. The authors conclude that regular cooperation of disabled people with different members of the regional society will establish true tolerant relations between them.