Leisure studies specialists have all but ignored the leisure patterns and needs of people with disabilities. As a result, says Prost (1992), we know little about the meaning of leisure among such people. McGill (1996, p. 8), makes a still more sweeping condemnation:

The stereotypes and flagging research interest aside, people with disabilities face still other problems. Prost (1992) goes on to note that many are chronically or sporadically unemployed, conditions so dispiriting that they are widely believed to stifle the pursuit of leisure of any kind, whatever the person's situation in life (e.g., Kay, 1990, 415; Haworth, 1986, 288). Furthermore, due mainly to the factor of unemployment, people with disabilities are commonly poor; this deprives them of the enjoyment of a number of leisure activities easily available to much of the rest of society. Finally, leisure is seen by many people as trivial and therefore hardly worth promoting for anyone, those with disabilities notwithstanding.

Nevertheless, a handful of scholars in the field of leisure studies have begun to entertain the idea that people with disabilities can benefit from pursuing the more substantial forms of leisure - referred to in this paper as "serious leisure." Based on his research on people with spinal cord injuries, Kleiber (1996, p. 13) suggests that serious leisure activities could become an important element in the rehabilitation process of the disabled, possibly "by reconnecting with the self what was temporarily `lost' or in setting a new direction for a new self." Patterson (1997) forged an even more direct link between disability and serious leisure by explaining how the latter can serve as a nonpaying substitute for work for people whose disabilities force them into unemployment. In serious leisure, he observes, these people can find many of the same positive benefits they once found in their jobs:

Serious leisure is often contrasted with casual leisure, defined as immediately, intrinsically rewarding, relatively short-lived pleasurable activity requiring little or no special training to enjoy it (Stebbins, 1997, p. 18). Although an oversimplification, casual leisure can be generally described as all leisure falling outside the three basic types of serious leisure. Casual leisure forms abound in nearly bewildering variety; they include strolling in the park, observing a fireworks display, going on a picnic, and taking an afternoon nap.

A fifth quality of serious leisure is the unique ethos that grows up around each instance of it, a central component of which is the special social world within which participants there realize their interests. David Unruh (1980, p. 277) defines the social world as an

Further, there should be two kinds of serious leisure education. The first would educate or train people with disabilities to find satisfaction in an amateur, hobbyist, or career volunteer activity. This kind of education involves informing them in detail about one or more of the activities which appeal to them and for which their disabilities do not disqualify them and then about how to participate in those activities. Thus one component of the job of leisure educator in the field of disabilities would be, for instance, to help people who are blind learn how to knit sweaters or play the piano, but not how to fish with flies or collect stamps.

This example indicates that particular disabilities are compatible with particular forms of serious leisure and incompatible with others. Rather than fill this paper with lengthy lists of compatible activities for each disability, let me suggest that leisure educators present a list of all serious leisure activities (accompanied by descriptions where necessary) to the individuals with disabilities with whom they are working and then encourage them to select the two activities they find most appealing. The two can then be explored, after which each person can decide which one to pursue, or to pursue both of them simultaneously. This procedure has the advantage of avoiding the subtle influence of stereotypes held by some of the non-disabled about what people with particular disabilities can and cannot do. As for the list, it could be developed from my discussion (Stebbins, 1998) of over 300 serious leisure activities and types of activities and augmented with selections from the practical bibliography of books describing how to get started in them.

In this regard, the liberal arts hobbies are possibly the most appropriate type of serious leisure for the largest number of people with disabilities. For as long as the disability does not inhibit reading at a general level of comprehension - i.e., the person is not blind, mentally retarded, or handicapped by a reading disability - every liberal arts hobby should in principle be accessible for him or her. This having been said, we cannot ignore, however, the many leisure constraints that place some of these activites well beyond the reach of some people whose disabilities are not in themselves barriers. For example, Henderson and her colleagues (1995) found in their study of women with physical disabilities that, when it came to leisure, they were more often constrained by energy deficiency, dependency on others, and concern for physical and psychological safety than women without disabilities. In other words, to participate in one of the liberal arts hobbies, the enthusiast must be in a position to acquire reading material: have money to buy it, find someone who can get it, have it available in a language he or she can read, locate a quiet place where reading can be done, among other requirements. As a general rule, disabilities from the neck down should not, in themselves, disqualify a person from participating in most of the liberal arts hobbies.

The second kind of serious leisure education would consist of instruction of a more general nature: informing people with disabilities about serious leisure as a kind of activity distinct from casual leisure. Here training would be the same for people with disabilities and as for those without them. Since the general public is largely unaware of the concept of serious leisure, the first educational goal here would be to inform them about its nature and value. Such information is important to anyone, disabled or not, who is searching for an optimal leisure lifestyle, or the pursuit during free time of a substantial, absorbing form of leisure. More particularly, such education would be composed of instruction on the nature of serious leisure, the general rewards (and costs) of such activity, the possibility of finding a leisure career there, and the variety of social and psychological advantages that can accrue to the person who pursues it (e.g., special identity, routine, lifestyle, organizational belonging, central life interest, membership in a social world). In some instances, people will have to be told how to get started in the pursuit that interests them. Elsewhere, I (Stebbins, 1998, chap. 6) provide information on how to do this in North America, which, however, may sometimes be inappropriate for other parts of the world. Thus, to more effectively guide the people they are working with, including those with disabilities, leisure educators outside North America may have to gather information on how to get started that is specific to their country and local community.

Two other dimensions should also be considered when discussing serious leisure with people who have disabilities: the time of onset of the disability and the prognosis for its rehabilitation. Thus, for each person being served, we should establish whether the disability was acquired after age 12 to 15 or at birth or in early childhood. And, regardless of when it is acquired, we must know the prognosis for reasonable rehabilitation. Why age 12 to 15? Because, by this age, some children have already developed considerable skill, knowledge, and experience in a serious leisure activity, most often an art, sport, or one of the hobbies. Should they acquire a disability after this age and it does not disqualify them from participating in this leisure, there would appear to be little leisure educators can or should try to do in such cases. Even where the disability does disqualify them, their earlier experience with a serious leisure activity could become a building block for educators working with the person to develop a new lifestyle based on a different physically or mentally compatible form of leisure. For the newly disabled person already understands the idea of serious leisure; he or she knows it can bring substantial rewards, offer an exciting social world and personal identity, and so on. Nonetheless, such people might still want to exam the broad list of activities to find the "best fit" for their personality and interests as seen in the light of their new condition.

A disability that holds out hope for a reasonably complete recovery in a relatively short period of time - say, 3 to 5 years -could differentially affect motivation to adopt a new leisure pursuit when compared with a disability predicted to last indefinitely, perhaps a lifetime. For example, a person disabled by a stroke who is told he or she will fully recover within four years may well be much less inclined to take up a new form of serious leisure than someone whose multiple sclerosis will, with growing certainty, permanently remove him or her from a sizable range of activities. Part of the educator's job in these instances, then, would be to learn the prognosis for rehabilitation of the people with whom he or she is working and adopt a pitch for engaging in serious leisure in harmony with that prognosis.

The two main goals of this paper has been to inform leisure educators, including leisure counselors and leisure volunteers, about serious leisure and to suggest ways to apply it in the field of disabilities. Taken separately, the educators, the counselors, and the volunteers are trying to describe and explain to their target groups leisure as it relates to their distinct functions, and this paper has exhorted them to include serious leisure in the instruction they provide. Additionally, when compared with the educators performing their traditional role of classroom teaching, the counselors and volunteers are perhaps more likely to be involved in assisting actual participation in serious leisure. Such help is not unusual in itself, since people from all walks of life occasionally need guidance and encouragement in taking up and routinely pursuing a serious leisure activity. What is unusual, however, is that people with disabilities may more often need assistance of this sort than many other categories of people, if for no other reason than that some of the former lose (or fail to gain) the confidence they need to engage in complex, challenging activity of any kind (Niyazi, 1996).

Furthermore, counselors and volunteers should work closely with individuals with particular disabilities to ensure on a practical level that they receive the training, equipment, and physical space needed to reasonably and effectively pursue their chosen leisure. This implies that, to provide this service, counselors and volunteers working in this area should be acquainted with a wide range of serious leisure activities. It implies further that they should not only know how the activities are done and where neophytes can learn how to do them, but also what the distinctive costs and rewards enthusiasts in general and the disabled in particular are likely to experience. These workers do not, however, have to be able to do all these activities, clearly an impossible requirement.

Judith McGill's (1996) pilot project shows the broad scope of the leisure educator's role is on this practical level. Herself a leisure consultant, McGill formed a committee from among the staff working at the Brampton Caledon Community Living Association located in Ontario, Canada, to work with and thereby help 11 people with disabilities. This was effected in two ways: developing, strengthening, or maintaining strong leisure roles and related identities of the 11 and, through memberships and social relationships in its clubs and associations, strengthening their sense of belonging to the local community. Reaching these goals required, in the first instance, getting to know the 11 people, which the staff accomplished by holding several informal conversations with each one. In these sessions, the staff learned about personal leisure preferences and "passionate" leisure involvements as well as about the meaning of and motivation behind each person's leisure and his or her patterns of participation in it. The staff and the 11 disabled people also explored the hopes and dreams of the latter and the barriers to fulfilling these dreams. Then a staff member worked with each person to develop a plan for circumventing the barriers, thus turning the dream into reality.

By no means all the 11 subjects in McGill's pilot study wound up pursuing a serious leisure activity, in part because they were never informed about such leisure in the manner and detail recommended in this paper. Nonetheless, her research does provide a variety of practical suggestions for helping people with disabilities develop, maintain, and strengthen their leisure roles and identities, which could be roles and identities founded on serious leisure were her approach used in conjunction with a list of its many activities. Perhaps the most important recommendation to emerge from McGill's research and from this paper is that leisure educators must listen closely to the leisure hopes, fears, and desires of people with disabilities as they work with them to help them achieve an optimal leisure lifestyle as organized around a serious leisure pursuit.

Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the social situation of Mental patients and other inmates. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Haworth, J.T. (1986). Meaningful activity and psychological models of non-employed. Leisure Studies, 5, 281-297.

Stebbins, R.A. (1998). After work: The search for an optimal leisure lifestyle. Calgary, AB: Detselig Enterprises.