The Invisible Barriers: A Conversation with Dr. Nicole Halliwell, Occupational Therapist and Educator
Part of Every Kid Can's ongoing interview series, where we speak with professionals, advocates, and educators who work alongside people with disabilities every day — to better understand the barriers they face and how youth can be part of the solution.
Every Kid Can was founded on a simple belief: that social isolation and inaccessible opportunities shouldn't stand between kids with disabilities and their peers. To understand these barriers more deeply, we've been sitting down with professionals across the disability field. This installment features Dr. Nicole Halliwell, an occupational therapist with 15 years of experience across the lifespan, who now teaches full-time in a doctoral-level OT program after years in pediatric, school-based, outpatient, and early intervention practice.
What Does an Occupational Therapist Do?
Halliwell's career has spanned nearly every setting occupational therapy touches — schools, outpatient clinics, early intervention, and now higher education, where she trains the next generation of OTs. At its core, she explained, occupational therapy supports people's engagement in daily living, helping them do the things they want and need to do — a practice that "can take many forms," shaped by whoever the client or student in front of her happens to be.
The Barriers That Remain
Halliwell's answer focused less on physical obstacles and more on something harder to point to: the quiet, often unspoken social rules that exclude people with disabilities without ever naming them directly. She described a pattern she's seen repeatedly, both professionally and personally — people without exposure to disability, or carrying unconscious bias, often respond in ways that single out disabled individuals without meaning to: staring, visible discomfort, avoidance, or subtly restrictive "rules" about how someone is allowed to participate.
"Sometimes this is structural," she said, "but a lot of the time this is social/interpersonal and based on cultural/social/societal norms which are somewhat 'invisible' or 'unspoken.'" In her view, these unspoken norms are often the more persistent barrier — harder to identify and address than a ramp or a doorway, but just as capable of shutting someone out.
How We Can Do Better
Halliwell's advice centered on preparation through genuine understanding, not just good intentions. She encouraged young people to seek out first-person accounts — books and resources that reflect the lived experience of people with disabilities and their families, including siblings — as a way of replacing uncertainty with real understanding. She pointed to nervousness as a common root of exclusion: "I think people are scared or nervous when they aren't sure what to expect or things are different from what they have experience with."
She also raised an important nuance around language: while person-first language ("person with a disability") is often taught as the default respectful approach, she noted that many in the neurodivergent community — including many Autistic individuals — prefer identity-first language instead. The through-line, she emphasized, is honoring how someone identifies rather than applying a single rule to everyone.
Halliwell closed with a concept she called central to her own field: therapeutic use of self — approaching every interaction with authenticity, self-awareness, and empathy, building connection from a genuine place rather than a scripted one. Her broader suggestion for building real connection: focus on shared strengths and similarities rather than letting difference become a barrier.
Every Kid Can is a youth-led initiative working to expand social and sensory inclusion for people with disabilities across our community. This interview is part of a series in which we speak with professionals, educators, and advocates to better understand the barriers to inclusion and how young people can help close them.