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Counterspaces are fields of social action and activism in which people organize themselves to change oppressive social structures. Ableism, or discrimination based on disability, is expressed in everyday life. Its expressions may take the form of ableist microaggressions. This paper analyses a Twitter campaign, through a sample of 335 tweets published from August to December 2018 under the hashtag MeCripple, that exposed ableism and the daily microaggressions people with disabilities endure in Spain. It examines exposed ableist microaggressions, tests if the domains of microaggressions proposed by other scholars apply to Spain, and explores whether the campaign generated a space for coping and responding to ableist discrimination. It also shows that practices of online visibility generate heterotopic online counterspaces leading to cooperation and mutual support to counter ableist microaggressions. This article analyzes a 2018 Twitter campaign in Spain under the hashtag MeCripple as an offshoot of the MeToo movement. Most of the tweets under this hashtag report experiences of discrimination, insults, or contempt towards a person just for having a disability: we call these situations ableist microaggressions. The classification of ableist microaggressions used in this study serves to analyze experiences in both the U.S. and Spain. Tweets in this campaign expressed the importance of meeting each other on social media websites, such as Twitter, and bringing visibility to the discrimination faced by people with disabilities. This article suggests that public exchanges can help people unaware of ableist microaggressions better understand these forms of discrimination and mobilize them to form alliances to counter these aggressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role do texts play in LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) parents’ experiences of disability service systems? In interviews with 15 LGBTQ parents of disabled children in Toronto, Canada, participants selected documents to be used as a focus for discussion. Parents considered how LGBTQ identity and other intersectional identities influenced their experiences of institutional texts including adoption certificates, intake forms, and assessments. Findings suggest that documentation practices can operate as forms of systemic gatekeeping. LGBTQ identity was sometimes very significant in parents’ accounts, and sometimes less central than other aspects of their families' identities and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Emergency situations such as pandemics typically widen inequities, and Australian children and young people with disability already face significant inequities in the education system. In this paper we draw on survey data from over 700 respondents exploring education experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many families reported being left behind, finding it difficult to access education remotely, and that this was having a significant impact on wellbeing and mental health. We find that of all support offered by schools, social supports have a stronger association with learner engagement than educational interventions. This finding indicates the importance of social and emotional supports in learning. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted education for most learners; There is good evidence to suggest this impact is felt more keenly by students with disability, because there is disability discrimination in the Australian education system; This paper reports survey responses from over 700 families of students with disability exploring the impact of COVID-19 on education; Many families report being left behind and that students found it difficult to learn away from the school campus, which for many students and families led to poorer wellbeing and mental health; Our results suggest that supporting students to have social contact with peers made the biggest impact on students with disability feeling engaged with learning during this time. This shows it is important for teachers and schools to pay attention to social as well as educational aspects of school life when thinking about how to educate students with disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a qualitative case study of the experiences of visually impaired rural Chinese women migrating to Beijing. The aim is to understand the ways in which disability, intersecting with gender, prompts the migration of women with disabilities. By applying an intersectionality analytical framework, the present study argues that the migration decisions of visually impaired women are shaped by the 'push factor' of discrimination, the marginalisation of women and people with disabilities in the countryside, and the promise of improved life chances and marriage prospects in the city. However, women with disabilities are not just the victims of the intersection of gender and disability. Their rural-urban migration is also a form of agency; it is an attempt to maintain their autonomy and dignity, motivated by the opportunity to avoid the 'othering' to which they are subjected in their home villages. The experience of visually impaired women who have migrated from rural China to urban China have been very much overlooked to date. Despite the disapproval from their families and the less possibility to remain in Beijing in the long term, many visually impaired women from rural China migrate to here and work as masseuses. The research found that the migration of visually impaired women was an escape of taking the gender roles. The migration decisions were forced by the marginalisation of women with disabilities in the countryside and motivated by the promise of improved life chances and marriage prospects in the large city. The rural-urban migration demonstrates the capacity of visually impaired women to act independently and to make their own free choices, at the same time, it is also an opportunity to develop a community of visually impaired people who work as massage therapists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neurodivergence is currently underrepresented among staff in higher education. Acknowledging such underrepresentation, this narrative review critically explores the experiences of neurodivergent academics as reported within the scholarly literature. This review of the literature, which utilised Scopus, ProQuest Central and Education Source via Ebsco databases, identified 34 relevant articles after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Findings from this review challenge universities to acknowledge and redress the negative experiences of neurodivergent staff across issue-areas of disclosure, stigma and discrimination. Moreover, in recognising the positive experiences of accommodated neurodivergence in the academy, medical model supported views of the 'disabled' scholar are undermined. Universities that value diversity and inclusion need to be open to the content of this narrative review along with the suggestions for future research directions. This paper discusses the lived experiences of neurodivergent staff (people who have brains that work differently to most others) in higher education. It reveals what published articles have reported on this matter. Neurodivergent staff can enjoy positive experiences in higher education. For example, they describe receiving accommodations and applying their abilities. These staff can also have negative experiences after telling people that they are neurodivergent. They can be seen and treated in bad ways. This review is useful because it shows that universities need to do more to include neurodivergent staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successful inclusion is a subject that addresses the question of how well a society can prevent discrimination and ensure access to information, products, services, and spaces for all. Disability may not necessarily lead to exclusion, unless society fails to respond to the needs of people regardless of their impairment. Digital tools combined with ethnographic research may help researchers explore users' needs, perceptions, behaviors, and attitudes and can aid in understanding the interactions between the human, the space, and the digital within the urban realm. This paper thus outlines a diversity of digital tools in the context of the disability-inclusive city. Through ethnographic encounters with Joe, Ann, and Vanessa, we then explore how these tools can be applied to practice. Centering on Joe, we attempt to exemplify some of the key issues that need to be addressed when looking into the terrain of disability, the city, and digital tools. This paper explores how mobile phones and mobile applications can support people with disabilities in accessing the city and its services. The research also explores how modern technology, such as mobile applications can support city officials in understanding better what makes cities more disability friendly. With the help of Joe, Vanessa and Ann from Maribor, Slovenia, the authors have tried out a selected number of mobile applications and observed how these can help people with disabilities use the city and its services. The research with Joe, Vanessa and Ann showed that mobile phones and mobile applications can be useful for moving around the city, but people with disabilities may still face difficulties using mobile phones while moving. The research also showed that technology can make cities more disability friendly, but it cannot remove all the barriers that people with disabilities face in their everyday lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an analysis of the depiction of autism in The Boy on the Bridge, a post-apocalyptic, dystopian, horror, fiction novel to critically deconstruct the representation of autism specifically related to 15-year-old science prodigy Stephen Greaves. Using a critical content analysis approach, three relevant constructs were identified with depictions including savant/super-crip, non-human othering, and psycho-emotional disablism. Each of these areas is discussed related to the current literature on disability, generally, and autism, more specifically. This analysis demonstrates that cultural understandings of disability are dominated by the medical model, and continue to stigmatize and pathologize while excluding positive social identities. Consideration of the potential damaging aspects of literature portrayals of autism in fictional works is needed to move the autism genre forward in a humanizing and inclusive manner. This study brings awareness to some assumptions around disability by pulling apart one way that autism is presented for public understanding. Even fictional stories can play a role in awareness and understanding of disability such as knowing that autistic people can also be gifted. Notions such as savantism are presented and discussed to help readers understand the various layers in disability. Disability can be presented positively and/or negatively in popular media in both obvious and subtle ways. It is up to readers and viewers to carefully consider how information on disability from popular media might be biased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by giving a description of the relationship between austerity and the neoliberal policy focus on work in the UK, and how this impacts negatively on disabled people. It examines why Black disabled people's employment experiences have been missing in the literature despite the fact that they are more affected by austerity. Black disabled people's experiences in the job market tend to focus on racism and discrimination, whilst other struggles linked to disability, and what this implies for Black people, are poorly understood. A case study, of Black disabled workers, living with the sickle cell condition, is examined to comprehend why more nuanced intersectional research might be needed to understand why some Black people's experiences of employment remain invisible. While there has been a lot of attention on disability and impact of austerity and employment in the England, certain experiences have been missing in analysis. The study explains why Black disabled people's employment experiences are neglected in disability, ethnic minority as well as within employment research. Black people's experiences in the job market tend to focus on racist discrimination or identities, whilst other struggles linked to class, sexism and disability discrimination are poorly delineated. A case study of Black disabled workers with a genetic condition, sickle cell, is given to argue that more nuanced research is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little research has been conducted, understanding the impact of educational-inclusion and workplace anti-discriminatory policies on lived-experiences of people with dyslexia. This paper consequently analyses qualitative-biographical accounts of 15 adults with dyslexia; applying the social relational model of disability to conceptualise these. Findings illustrate, the embodied-experiences of dyslexia defined within a disabling-educational system and discriminatory-workplace; culminating in psycho-emotional impact on participant's self-esteem leading them to pathologise experiences of failure through an individualistic deficit-explanation of self. The article concludes suggesting these lived-experiences must be acknowledged in education to develop inclusive practices adequately preparing individuals for adulthood, not just for the workplace. This article draws on the social relational model of disability (i.e. recognising both the social and the biological) and applies it to the experiences of people with dyslexia. Participants discussed the psychological and emotional impact of experiences of exclusion throughout their life histories. Participants discussed painful school experiences during childhood which had a lasting emotional impact. Even though legislation requires 'reasonable adjustments' must be made in workplaces, people with dyslexia still experience discrimination The research views dyslexia as an alternative reading and writing style which needs to be considered by schools and employers, looking to create an inclusive environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the oral health of people with disability and the disadvantage they experience compared to those who do not have a disability. There are many influencing factors for this including service provision and appropriate training for staff. A potential solution is proposed demonstrating that even advanced dental care is possible for people with complex disability. This meets the principal of equitable care for people with disability. The example concerns the provision of a lower anterior bridge for a gentleman with mid to end stage Huntington's disease and significant uncontrolled choreic movements. Intravenous conscious sedation is used to facilitate complex treatment and to demonstrate a clinical skill which can open doors for the treatment of adults with disability [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical review of the development of the disabled people's movement in South Korea since 1945, reflecting both its achievements and the obstacles it has faced. In particular, political positions and responses to the movement's agitation against socio-cultural discrimination and inequality are discussed. Further, three key theoretical foundations of the movement are examined in order to describe the diversity inherent therein. This paper concludes that the disabled people's movement has heavily influenced the values, norms, and systems of Korean society, but it has predominantly focused on integrating disability issues into policy and legislation, not on changing society and culture. Hence, the Korean Disabled People's Movement is currently facing many challenges that are major threats towards its future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research about disabled identity reflects diverse perspectives on the merits and challenges associated with such an identity. This paper explores the impact of disabled identity on the inclusion of disabled students in higher education and employment contexts. It considers their experiences of inclusion in a university setting and its associated work-based placements and discusses the extent to which students had to negotiate a range of experiences of disabled identity. The paper suggests that many disabled students, especially those with behaviour-related impairment labels, are subject to continued exclusion in university and, more particularly, work settings, and this contributes to an employment disadvantage compared with their peers. To this end, the paper highlights the importance of enhancing inclusion for disabled students, especially in employment settings, through a focus on reducing destructive identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Victimologists have for many years explored the construction of identities associated with the ‘victim of crime’, and how certain groups in society are understood as more ‘deserving’ of victim status than others. This paper considers the victim subjectivities ascribed to people with disabilities11 In Ireland, ‘people with disabilities’ is the preferred term to ‘disabled people’.as victims of crime in Ireland by exploring the legal frameworks that shape their encounters with the criminal justice system. The legislative bricolage that exists is shaped by disjuncture, whereby anti-discrimination measures grounded in people with disabilities’ equal rights to access the justice system sit alongside those that construct them in terms of incapacity. Criminal law overwhelmingly pathologises people with disabilities as crime victims, with impairment dominating their victim status. The paper suggests that notions of victimhood that associate people with disabilities with dependency and passivity will do little to raise awareness of the disabling barriers that characterise their encounters with the criminal justice system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the part findings of an evaluation of a dual-screen installation entitled ‘Resistance: Which Way the Future?’ by the writer and director Liz Crow. Central to the installation is the experience of disabled people during the Holocaust period, the values underpinning this neglected period of history and how this relates to understanding the experiences of disabled people today. Simultaneously, this paper raises issue with a previous comment which suggested that disabled people and eugenics are a form of ‘emotive rhetoric’. On the contrary, this paper asserts that the link between eugenics and disability cannot be overstated, and is a significant moment in history where the lived experiences of disabled people – people described as having ‘learning difficulties’, surviving artefacts, and recorded testimonies – have still yet to be explored. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Natural data on the Australian Human Rights Commission’s website outlining the complaint cases generated from Disability Discrimination Act, 1992 (DDA) were used to examine the social construction of disability employment discrimination. Using a social model and human rights citizenship lens, some 987 complaint cases were analysed to assess the prevalence of disability discrimination in employment, and its relationship to the types of disability, gender, entity undertaking the actions and organisational context. Of all complaint cases across the Australian Human Rights Commission’s operations, by far the largest proportion involves disability discrimination. Within the disability discrimination complaint cases, employment makes up the greatest proportion of these cases. In examining the patterns of discrimination seven major themes emerged involving: distinctive patterns across disability type; access to premises; human resource mismanagement; selection of new employees; integration of assistive technology; perception of cost of disability inclusions; and inflexible organisational workplace practices. The discussion examines the underlying reasons for the emergent themes where employers misunderstood key legal concepts that underpin the DDA including: unjustifiable hardship; inherent requirements; reasonable adjustment; direct; and indirect discrimination. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the findings as a way of understanding the social construction of disability discrimination in employment to signal ways to better develop inclusive organisational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There are many grounds for arguing that people with a range of disabilities have more in common than they have differences. However, those grounds to date have not resulted in a unified social movement. This paper examines one possible reason for that lack of unity: the particular force of being unreasonable in modern society. However, being unreasonable is not limited to those with a psychiatric diagnosis, nor does a lack or loss of reason take a simple common form within that group: it is a highly nuanced and context-specific matter. This complexity is discussed in relation to a set of inter-related questions about legalism, morality and post-enlightenment concerns with order and rationality. The paper concludes with a discussion of scenarios available to new social movements concerned with disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The return of the Labour government to power in 1997 brought an increased focus upon inclusive education for children with special educational needs (SEN). Alongside this there has been a desire to enhance the opportunities young people have to access physical education (PE) and school sport. Previous research has shown that children with SEN often have fewer opportunities to access physical activity due to physical, social and emotional barriers to participation. With the advent of a new Con–Lib-Dem government in 2010 and a planned review of inclusion policies and practices, this paper examines the extent to which children with SEN have arrived at utopia in relation to their entitlement and access to PE. The paper identifies four themes central to successful inclusive PE, whilst suggesting there is still some way to go for children with SEN to have the same opportunities in physical activity as their non-disabled peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores 'being fat' in terms of three contrasting models of disability. First, the medical model with its predisposition for ever increasing pathology, secondly the social model formed from a political movement of disabled people and finally the affirmation model with its reinforcement of positive disability identities. In utilising these models the general question of whether being fat should be regarded as a disability and/or impairment is explored. This in turn poses fundamental questions concerning the theoretical nature of disability itself. The critical role of both disability legislation and discrimination are examined along with a post modern analysis of what appears to be a moral panic over weight gain. The paper draws upon research and other writing to propose that both being fat and disability are complex social phenomena requiring further cross theorising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by exploring similarities in the experiences of queers and disabled people, such as familial isolation, high rates of violence, stereotypes and discrimination, and the difficulties associated with passing and coming out. Rejecting pathologization and politicizing access as well as using humor and parody as political tools have been important for both movements. The paper then considers similarities and differences in Queer Theory and Disability Studies as intellectual disciplines, by examining their debt to feminism, their opposition to hegemonic normalcy, their strategic use of universalist and minority discourses, their deconstruction of essentialist identity categories and their use of concepts such as performativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary disability discourse is marked by a struggle between medical and social meanings and models. The latter reflects the aspirations and youthful radicalism of the disability movement, while the former regards itself as the legitimate voice of truth in all matters associated with bodily function and process. This paper argues that the battle lines between these two camps need not be redrawn. Despite hints to the contrary, the proposed extension of the social model to accommodate a sociology of impairment does not involve a rapprochement with the medical model. On the contrary, a sociological account of impairment seeks to augment the armoury of the social model by developing one of its weaknesses, namely the cultural critique of medicine. This paper examines some of the ways in which medicine has been involved in the 'aesthetic invalidation' of disabled people and proposes that 'geneticization' is an important current contributor to this form of disability discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses current literature surrounding issues of abuse and disability, and discusses whether the forms of abuse experienced by disabled people results from an individual vulnerability, or as a consequence of social attitudes towards disabled people. Three case studies form supportive evidence, and have been compiled from personal research, they represent a combination of abusive features, rather than any one individuals situation. The study hopes not to suggest that all disabled people are especially vulnerable to abuse, but asks if society and existing welfare services acknowledge and respond to allegations of abuse without prejudice to disability. This study formed my dissertation paper as a student on the BA (Hons) Social Work and Welfare Studies at the University of Central Lancashire, and I would like to thank my dissertation tutor, Bob Sapey, for his guidance and support throughout the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout history different practices have attempted to silence the experiences of disabled people. In this paper we explore some of these practices including the medical, familial, and self-subjugating practices English-speaking Canadian polio survivors experienced throughout their lives. We analyze participant’s experiences of silence and silencing through a Foucauldian lens, drawing on the three modes of objectification to explain the institutional and cultural discourses around polio subjects that acted upon and through the polio body to silence it. Participants’ oral history accounts demonstrate how sociocultural and medical practices effectively silenced survivors from speaking about their polio experiences. However, the trope of silence is also uprooted within oral history traditions. We will demonstrate how participants broke their silence and shifted their perspectives on polio and disability, and how this process contributed to their resistance of hegemonic conceptualizations of disability as defective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using evidence from a participatory action research process with over 100 asylum seekers and refugees in Scotland, this study explores participants’ views on mental health problems, stigma and discrimination. The study found that migration can have adverse effects on mental health and well-being, due to racism and the asylum process, and this is worsened by stigma and discrimination. This stigma is influenced by both social and cultural causal factors, including fear, past trauma, isolation, racism and the stress of the asylum process coupled with negative cultural beliefs about mental health problems. The paper considers the international relevance of this approach and the value of a model grounded in principles of community development and grassroots action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the accessibility situation in a developing country such as Zambia. The global view of accessibility for disabled people is provided to examine the accessibility situation in developed and developing countries, highlighting the role of the environment in achieving rights for disabled people. Recognition of disability rights relating to accessible built environments is a necessary element to ensure their participation. Limited disability research, lack of disability policies and systems, evaluation of disability rights and support from developed countries have been cited as contributing to the non-recognition of disability rights and low participation by disabled people in Africa. An international perspective of disability, accessibility and participation and the experiences of developed countries are examined and their potential for advancing accessible built environments for participation in developing countries considered. However, accessibility concepts, having been developed in western countries, are presented with caution acknowledging the geographical, social–cultural and economic differences that exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently disability studies has ignored questions regarding the psychological nature of oppression. Proponents of the social model have viewed such concerns as diversionary, diluting their emphasis on material and economic barriers to inclusion. This paper argues that the discipline’s role of reflecting and interrogating disablism will remain incomplete and lacking in transformative power without undertaking a psychological conceptualisation of disabled personhood. Some prior attempts at elaborating the social model to include the psychological realm have been presented; these are critiqued, and argued to lack truly psychological conceptualisation. Preliminary ideas regarding a proposed psychology of disablism are presented. The focus of this work will be the exploration of bi-directional links between disablist ideology and disabled subjectivity, operationalised through interpersonal and institutional processes of lifelong socialisation. Reflections towards development of the under-theorised notion of internalised oppression are presented. Conclusions are that a combination of critical psychoanalytic insights and the participatory methods of liberatory and feminist psychology hold promise in driving disability transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disability research in Portugal is scarce and often lacks the perspective of disabled people. This paper tries to bring insights from leaders of disability associations about the community of disabled people in Portugal, the barriers to their politicization and links with disabled identity. It seems that most disabled people get trapped in a tragic paradigmatic vicious cycle due to a system-induced disempowerment which is sustained by a dominant individual and remediation model that extends to families, society, policies and politicians. The disabled associative movement has been unable to reach the majority of disabled people. Suggestions are thus made in order to transform this social reality by disseminating politically aware alternative disability paradigms and the possibility of a positive disabled identity, as well as by generating societal involvement in disability as a public matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary sociology has made sense of bodily difference by mobilising a number of tropes. 'Wounded' (or vulnerable), 'monstrous' and 'abject' stand out by virtue of their ubiquity though they do not exhaust the repertoire. These categories highlight the conceptual tensions between the sociology of the body and Disability Studies. In this paper, I will examine the value of these tropes to Disability Studies and suggest that while they can help to clarify the processes that bring about the misrecognition of disabled people, understanding the nature and scope of the lives of disabled people in modernity requires a more embodied language rather than one that has been generated from a sociological imaginary that is strongly influenced by a non-disabled subject position in which repulsion for the other -- which one must become -- is never fully resolved. Disability has had little impact on sociological theories of the body and when sociology ventures into disability it has tended to conflate it with an ontology of human frailty or gloss it with tropes that may be instructive about the generic or gendered modernist structure of exclusion but it tells us little about the specific forms of invalidation experienced by disabled people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will look at different ways of enabling people with learning difficulties to engage in leisure opportunities: the Support Model and the Access Model. These models will be put in their social context and then critiqued. The support model will be be contextualised in the theory of normalisation, access in disability theory. The support worker role will be shown to be useful in motivating people with learning difficlties into new activities, as well as having a protecting element, and unwittingly, disguise the level of discrimination people with learning difficulties are subject to. The access worker role will be shown to have strengths in understanding discrimination. With this analysis, it has the potential to dismantle disabling practices. However, the needs of people with learning difficulties have ramifications for disability theory. In practice, that means that ideas of self-advocacy need to be taken on board. Through interviews with sports personnel, social workers and people with learning difficulties, the implications of creating fully comprehensive access will be examined. I will conclude that both effective support and comprehensive access must be in place before people with learning difficulties are able to make a meaningful choice as to how they are enabled to participate in sports. It is only at that point of choice that the two models become complementary rather than competing discourses of provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that the oppression experienced by disabled people in society is sometimes replayed in the counselling room by counsellors who are unaware of their own disablist attitudes and prejudices. Whilst the provision of Disability Equality Training (DET) within counselling courses would ameliorate the problem, I believe that disabled people would be most empowered by a counselling approach which recognises the potential for oppression within the counsellor-client relationship. One solution may be the creation of a new counselling approach, disability counselling, which includes the social model of disability as one of the foundations. An alternative solution may be found within the emerging counselling approaches that treat counselling as a social and political process and place emphasis on developing comprehensive anti-discriminatory practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the goal set out by the United Nations in its Standard Rules on the Equalisation of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities. The objective 'equalisation of opportunities' means both to render unlawful discrimination against persons with disabilities in every area of society, and to eliminate those very discriminatory conditions in society which render real participation impossible. The two conflicting approaches to handicap, the individual-centred and the person-environment approach, are both visible in the Standard Rules. This article suggests that the individual-centred approach it structurally related with the understanding of equal treatment as a relationship with formal characteristics, no matter what the setting in which it occurs, while the person-environment approach is related with an active social policy emerging from an understanding of equal treatment as a question of substantial right. There is thus a conflict inherent in the Standard Rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]