Practicing Physicist's Perception of the Viability of Physics Teacher and Professor Careers for Individuals with Disabilities

The perceptions that physics mentors have about disability in physics influences how they interact with their mentees, and negative biases against disability can influence students to feel discouraged within the physics community. We administered the Disability and Physics Career Survey (DPCS) through physics-specific listservs and at physics-specific conferences to measure practicing physicists' knowledge about disability and their beliefs about the viability of physics careers for individuals with a variety of disability diagnoses. This study uses Cochran's Q and McNemar's R to compare how practicing physicists' perceptions of the viability for the careers of teacher and professor depend on the impairment that an individual is diagnosed with. We find that practicing physicists view these careers as non-viable for those with cognitive impairments and hold other unconscious biases that we outline and interrogate.