[3] Her parents, Jerome and Sonia Posner, were Russian immigrants whose egalitarian and humanistic views later influenced her academic work.
[1] The family had a Jewish heritage that Wright said did not profoundly affect her worldview or formative years, but which probably influenced her parents' avid commitment of equality and justice.
[1] In high school Wright was expelled from the honors society for distributing leaflets in support of the janitors' strike, but was reinstated at her mother's demand.
[1] While a stay-at-home mother, Wright was contacted by Roger Barker, another former student of Lewin, to collaborate on a book about physical disability; she agreed.
[3] She said that her review of the literature was what fueled her passion for developing appropriate and culturally responsive ways of working with people with disabilities, as the methodology at the time was biased against them.
[3] She proceeded to collaborate with many other now notable rehabilitation psychologists, such as Tamara Dembo and Gloria Ladieu Leviton, on topics related to disability.
[1] Lewin's influence is prominent in the work, as Wright drew heavily from his view of social psychology that all differences in physical appearance provoked attention from observers.
[7] In 1983 she republished an extensively revised version of the book retitled Physical Disability—A Psychosocial Approach to reflect the importance of the interactions with the environment.