80 The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 1 work with counselors-in-training. Webinars, disability-specific conference sessions, and engaging with community disability organizations are helpful ways to start, and we recommend counselor educators and supervisors engage in the same self-examination strategies mentioned above to begin combating any biases they may hold about PWD. More specifically, counselor educators and supervisors can introduce and teach the ARCA disability competencies to trainees and supervisees, deliberately integrate self-exploration activities regarding disability into coursework, direct trainees and supervisees to inquire about ability status in intake and assessment procedures, and use cultural broaching behaviors to model appropriate use with clients (Deroche et al., 2020). Limitations and Future Research There are important limitations to consider to contextualize the study findings. The data used in this analysis were the result of one open-ended prompt as part of a larger quantitative study. Although participants offered robust and illustrative responses, it is a significant limitation that no follow-up questions were asked. Additionally, because the study utilized the AMS (Conover et al., 2017b), we analyzed data using the AMS subscales. While this was an appropriate choice given the context, it limited our ability to compare our findings with other qualitative studies that used Keller and Galgay (2010) to explain their findings. We recommend that future research investigates the unique themes from this study in more detail to ascertain whether they are applicable to the larger PWD population. We suggest that focus groups combined with individual interviews may help to tease out nuances and could potentially lead to developing theory related to ableist microaggressions and best practices that will support PWD. Finally, we propose that more in-depth intersectionality research would benefit PWD and the professionals who serve them. The confounding nature of microaggressions combined with individuals’ unique identity compositions that often include both nondominant and dominant identities can make this type of research challenging, yet both are the reality for many PWD and this research is therefore needed. Conclusion Ableist microaggressions are ubiquitous and damaging to PWD. Through our analysis, we found that participants’ experiences corroborated prior researchers’ findings related to established ableist microaggression categories and added new knowledge by introducing six novel themes. We envision a disability-affirmative counseling profession and offered concrete recommendations for clinicians, supervisors, and counselor educators. Together, we can create a reality in which all PWD who seek counseling services will experience relief, validation, and empowerment as we work to create a society that provides access to all. Conflict of Interest and Funding Disclosure The authors reported no conflict of interest or funding contributions for the development of this manuscript.
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