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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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

In Australia, the Disability Discrimination Act and associated Educational Standards prevent educational institutions from treating people with disability less favourably than those without disability – directly or indirectly. However, people with disability are still subject to both economic and cultural disadvantage in Australian higher education policy. In this article we describe this as a 'recognition–redistribution dilemma', whereby this population must both deny and claim their subjectivity. This is in large part due to the lack of transparency around how disability is defined, coded and recorded. Drawing on three stages of development of Australian higher education equity policy across three decades of higher education disability policy, the article provides insights into how people with disability have been categorised, classified and counted in higher education and the implications this has for how they are supported. Australian higher education institutions ask students with disability to identify not only that they have disability, but the 'category' of disability and whether or not they need support. The disability categories used are not fit for purpose and it is not clear whether the data being collected have value, in terms of how they advance social understandings of disability. Disability support staff understand and advocate for the need to focus on functional support, not disability definitions, but the policy and reporting environment does not reflect this need. Higher education institutions should only collect information from people with disability if it is needed to support the person specifically, or if it can be used to improve support more widely for people with disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on an empirical research study of deaf migration, using an intersectional lens. The study of migration and the lens of intersectionality are increasingly being deployed in academic circles but both are very recent when it comes to the study of deaf people. Our key reason for using the lens of intersectionality is twofold. Firstly, we believe that it enables us to highlight the experiences of people who tend to be neglected in the scholarly literature – in this article, our focus will a case study of two Black deaf African migrants. Secondly, we want to encourage the reader not merely to 'add' migration as an identity/experience of the lives of a community of deaf peoples but to examine and explore the interlocking relations of power that they experience. We believe intersectionality is an ideal lens through which to do so. In the literature on the study of disabled people when many identities are being examined it is not always clear if deaf migrants are included; in this article we do so. We studied interviews that had been held covering the life experience of two deaf migrants, which were undertaken within a larger research project. We found it useful to look at deaf migrants' different experiences within institutions such as education and the Home Office, in relation to their identities such as ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class or religion We found that while deaf migrants experience discrimination and racism from deaf and hearing people alike, they also find means of solidarity and support from different hearing and deaf people and groups. It is suggested that social policymakers and deaf communities can miss or neglect deaf migrants' wide range of life experiences – these need to be identified and included when forming policy. [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]

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 study investigated the experiences of people with developmental disabilities in self-advocacy groups to better understand the self-advocacy movement, which is currently in its developing stage in Korea. Face-to-face interviews with 18 people with disabilities were conducted. Study participants got involved in self-advocacy groups with the expectation of 'voicing our stories', 'meeting new peers', and 'expanding the scope of activity in their local communities'. They participated in various activities from leisure to group advocacy against discrimination based on disability. After participating in self-advocacy groups, they expressed self-confidence, improved their communication skills, and developed new goals for their own lives. Participation in self-advocacy groups helped them replace feelings of loneliness with belonging and expanded their involvement in independent activities and leadership roles. This article examines the experiences of people with developmental disabilities in self-advocacy groups in Korea. People joined self-advocacy groups to tell their stories, meet new people, and participate in more activities in the community. People developed communication, leadership, and self-determination skills and reported less loneliness, more confidence, and a greater sense of belonging. People wanted to increase their self-advocacy group's activities and membership, have leadership roles, and further advocate for non-discrimination and equal rights for people with developmental disabilities. Funding and supporters outside of service providers is suggested to give people with developmental disabilities equal power to lead the self-advocacy movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disabled citizens are overlooked and ignored in the Treaty on European Union and as a result the European Community has limited competences to address disability related issues, and specifically disability discrimination. This article argues that this situation needs to be remedied at the present Inter Governmental Conference, which is being held to review the Treaty. There are sound justifications, based on political, economic and social grounds, for extending the competences of the Community in this way. Disability discrimination results in many disabled citizens being unable to fully exercise the rights conferred on them by Community law, such as the right to free movement and the right to vote: furthermore, European economies are suffering as disability discrimination artificially restricts the contribution which disabled citizens could make as both consumers and workers; and, lastly disability discrimination is leading to poverty and social exclusion throughout the European Union today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For people with intellectual disabilities who do not enter the labour market, school is usually the main chapter of their socialization with the wider society. Nevertheless, little is known about their long-term perceptions of this period. We conducted interviews and focus groups on the school experiences of 16 Portuguese adults with intellectual disabilities. Results show differences between older and younger participants in their accounts of social relations and educational methods, which result from changes in special educational policies in Portugal. Overall, members of both groups evaluate their school experience positively. Our results indicate that although there is a move towards more inclusive schools, discrimination is still prevalent. These results are discussed in terms of their psychosocial consequences, as well as their implications for educational policies, and inclusion. This study contributes to a better understanding of the school experiences of people with intellectual disabilities and how policies impact them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines disability and employment policy in Turkey after the country's ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2009 through the perspectives of disability non-governmental organisations (disability NGOs) and policy-makers. Drawing on an exploratory qualitative study, the article analyses how disability NGOs and key policy-makers perceive the impact of this development on disability and employment policy. The article shows disability NGO representatives and policy-makers find the employment policy's over-reliance on the quota method inadequate to put the human rights model into practice. They call for greater policy emphasis on accessibility and effective anti-discrimination enforcement to complement the quota method, which reflects the idea that the human rights model has gained wider acceptance among them. The article, however, also reveals that disability NGOs and policy-makers hold divergent views on what constitutes a human rights approach to disability employment, especially concerning segregation in employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on work in Critical Disability Studies (CDS) to trace continuities between ableism and colonialism in Canada, and illuminates three ways in which ableist violences have historically functioned, and still function, as colonial tools. These violences include: subtle and obvious pathologizing of indigenous bodies rooted in a logic of purification/elimination of defects; tropes of 'inspirational disability' which have ongoing material, colonial effects, including the exaltation of white settler Canada; and eugenic institutions – a naturalized part of our national context – which subjugate indigenous ways of life while creating and reproducing white settler space. We challenge CDS scholars – especially those who, like ourselves, enjoy white and settler privilege – to call attention to the colonial effects of eugenic, ableist assumptions and to remain accountable to the colonial impulses inherent in their/our work. We conclude by charting possibilities of what decolonizing in CDS might mean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the rich lived experience of members of a 20-year-old workers' cooperative in Brisbane, Australia – primarily made up of members who have intellectual disabilities – and reveals the need for significant social support to ensure people can access meaningful work. Drawing on the findings of our case-study research conducted with the Nundah Community Enterprise Cooperative, we argue that cooperatives can be a vital contributor in creating meaningful work for people with disabilities. Importantly, our case study strengthens the case that meaningful employment can be created and supported by such a holistic cooperative model, which also includes a role for meso-level community organisations. Overall, the case study is really the story of what cooperative solidarity and mutuality can achieve as one way of overcoming the social distress or social injury of not having meaningful work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article documents the experiences of people with a physical health condition or disability who have experienced a loss of or change in disability benefits under the welfare reform programme in the United Kingdom. A theoretical model was constructed using in-depth interviews and grounded theory methods. The findings show that participants experienced the benefits system as dehumanising, and felt that they lived in a judgemental and invalidating society, where they were perceived as 'scroungers' and faced discrimination from others. These experiences negatively affected their mental and physical health and well-being. They also negatively affected participants' identity, leading to experiences of shame, hopelessness and social isolation. However, many participants attempted to resist these negative impacts (e.g. through seeking support or taking political action). The findings demonstrate the significant impact of benefit changes on well-being and identity, thus highlighting important implications for claimants, and staff in healthcare, the benefits system and government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses reports of cases of Canadian legal processes to explore social constructions of fatness as disability, as well as illness, cultural aesthetic, and blame. The review of cases in Canadian human rights, civil, administrative, and employment law suggests that fatness has been constructed as a disability in Canadian law. This has led to favourable outcomes for fat persons seeking redress for discrimination. Illness, cultural aesthetic, and blame also surface as recurrent themes. To consider all four themes, a concept of mythopoeia -- myth-making process -- is introduced. This adds to models of social construction by focusing on where 'un-reality' is constructed in a non-hierarchical view of marginal identities. Fatness constructions/mythopoeia of disability, illness, cultural aesthetic, and blame overlap as well as diverge. This suggests that fatness may be an incomplete fit with current classifications in human rights law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study used propensity score analysis to compare the economic well-being of people with and without hearing impairment in the UK. Using nationally representative 2009/10 Life Opportunities Survey, our study found that economic well-being was significantly worse for people with hearing impairment than people without hearing impairment. Hearing impaired people (1) had lower household income, (2) experienced greater difficulties making ends meets, (3) were unable to pay for unexpected but necessary expenses of £500, and (4) were less likely to work in paid jobs even after accounting for other demographic characteristics. The findings underscore the barriers and discrimination against people with hearing impairment in the UK. Policy measures to increase access and engagement of hearing impaired people should be considered, including increasing investment in better employment opportunities, sign interpretation, and disability benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voting is a human right for every citizen yet many people with intellectual disabilities do not vote or have little support to exercise their right to vote. This article explores views on the wider aspects of voting against the backdrop of the Scottish referendum using focus groups involving people with intellectual disabilities (n = 12), family carers (n = 7) and paid carers (n = 5). Findings revealed that people with intellectual disabilities had similar concerns to the general population about the referendum. Regarding voting, all groups identified the need to discuss issues and for practical support and accessible information to ensure informed choices were made when voting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The labelling of disabilities in Indonesian society and legislation has changed over time. More recently, the grassroots has used the termdifabelto allude to the conceptualisation of ‘differently able’. The persistence of the grassroots in defending the termdifabel,while in the UNCRPD ratification era the elites have turned to usingdisabilitas, alerts us to the power of labels and the role they play. This article provides a critique of the issue of language and the labelling of people with impairments and how it influences the paradigm of policy and service responses, and thereby the future role of differently able people. Given the background on the evolved disability terminology, this article suggests thatdifabelshould also be adopted into broader English usage (i.e. ‘diffability’). Such a term provides a more positive characterisation of people with impairments and reminds us of the importance of emphasising abilities and acknowledging differences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Disabled young people in many low and middle-income countries experience significant levels of educational exclusion due to disabling social and physical environments and are more likely to be illiterate than their non-disabled peers. Most social sciences and development literature, however, tends to homogenise the educational trajectories of disabled young people and focuses predominantly on the perspectives of educationalists, development experts and carers in assessing educational needs and institutions. Consequently, the experiences of young people across multiple categories of social difference, and their agency in shaping their own educational trajectories, remain largely unknown. This article contributes to filling this gap by exploring the educational narratives of young people with different impairments in mainstream, special and integrated schools in Ghana. The article shows how exploring individual narratives provides new insights into the educational needs of and ‘appropriate’ education for disabled young people in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, I question where ‘disability’ has been in humanitarian discourses and practices linked to the Ebola epidemic. Policy and practice have generally focused on issues linked to biosecurity in relation to West Africa but not on creation of disability linked to breakdown of health systems. Those same discourses of containment and biosocial risks are now being used in relation to people who have survived Ebola but have disabling symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The history of intellectual disabilities is largely a story of discrimination and social exclusion portraying people with intellectual disability as abnormal and inferior. This article describes a particular methodological approach to inclusive life history research with a small group of women with intellectual disabilities in Iceland. The article documents how, through a four-year collaborative research process, the life histories became counter-narratives to dominant historical beliefs and stereotypes. In addition to the personal empowerment of the women and the construction of a collective memory, this project has also resulted in public sharing of their stories through speaking up and giving presentations, and thus potentially also changing the historical memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that First Nations children diagnosed with autism in British Columbia, Canada are under-represented in publications regarding autism and the prevalence thereof, and that this group appears to be under-detected. The aim of this review of publications regarding autism and aboriginal populations in Canada and other countries is to examine possible explanations. The research review results suggest that possible reasons for under-detection of autism among aboriginal populations, and consequently First Nations peoples, can be diagnostic substitution and symptom presentation, ethnic or cultural, area of residence or the impact of historical oppression and discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses survey data from the microfinance industry in Uganda to investigate whether there are differences among industry staff members in beliefs and views regarding persons with disabilities. For several of the questions, various staff sub-groups respond significantly differently. A recurring result is that staff members who have a relative with disabilities often express views that differ from the views of other staff members. Moreover, we find significant differences related to the age of the staff members. For instance, younger staff members are more positive and optimistic regarding the potential to reach more clients with disabilities. The employment position of the individual staff member also appears to be relevant: credit officers are relatively more likely (than other staff types) to indicate that discrimination could be a problem in the microfinance industry. Interestingly, we do not observe any differences in views and beliefs that are related to staff member gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically explores the working lives and views of disabled senior staff working in UK organisations. The qualitative research at the core of the article establishes that some disabled people are confounding established notions of disabled people only working in peripheral employment roles by exploring the working lives and perceptions of disabled managers. The findings do, however, point to continued barriers to what disabled staff in senior positions can be seen to do and be organisationally. Here both practical and ontological risk inheres in organisationally induced change, openness about impairment and risky identities. Such ideas, it is argued, present limits to further promotion and workplace inclusion for some disabled managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article addresses different perspectives on the body in relation to conceptions of normality. It shows how a body perspective can be taken into account from an individual perspective without losing a structural perspective. This is accomplished using the phenomenological conceptionsthe lived bodyand the body assituated. This article is part of a sociological qualitative interview study, focusing on disability, identity, and gender, and specifically on conceptions of the body and gender, as experienced by Swedish young women labeled as having an intellectual impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]