This chapter explores Realabilities, a video-based children's television program featuring unique characters, each with a distinct disability. Beyond utilizing video technology to directly teach cognitive and social-emotional skills to children with autism, Realabilities demonstrates how video can be used to foster positive behavioral intentions and cognitive attitudes towards children with autism and other disabilities. Realabilities also reveals how a video medium can promote a stop bullying platform, especially since children with disabilities are at least two to three times more victimized by bullying than their typical peers. One hundred and sixty-six students from schools in Manhattan, NY, and Baltimore, MD, showed more favorable behavioral intentions and cognitive attitudes towards hypothetical peers with disabilities following a three episode viewing of Realabilities. Finally, Realabilities not only showcases the realities of disabilities but shares the potential strengths that children with disabilities possess. This is particularly illuminating, since the Affect/Effort Theory suggests that children are more motivated to interact with others when they possess positive expectancies of their social interaction partners.
