Does my wheelchair make you uncomfortable? How my disability may have cost me a job.

It won't change because those of us with visible physical disabilities or intellectual disabilities scare the living crap out those who are able-bodied. Their life could become ours in the blink of an eye and that's too scary to think about. They can't imagine how they could survive. It's because the majority of able-bodied people are not around those of us with disabilities. It's because the school systems find it easier to put children with physical disabilities in the same classrooms as children with intellectual disabilities, then say they are compliant with IDEA. It's pretty much segregation of those who society finds to be "lesser than". It will continue to be perpetuated, as well as the "super gimp" image. I can just hear the "you really inspire me" line of bs Ms. Manderson hears on a regular basis. It's so damned annoying I just want to slap the person saying it.
And while the ADA has opened many doors, the USSC has closed those doors in several opinions. A courthouse is accessible as long as someone is around to carry the person in the wheelchair up the stairs; a business doesn't have to accommodate if it "costs too much", etc., etc., etc. And I don't see the makeup of the current USSC being that far off from gutting many of the other protections of the ADA, let alone the IDEA or Sec. 504 of the Rehab Act. Yale and Harvard were competing to get students with disabilities in the 1980s and 90s because of several lawsuits against those universities for failure to comply with Sec. 504. They still aren't compliant.

Sad considering she has too work 300% harder to try to live a "normal" life.

Sad but true.