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Most university courses involve students sitting examinations and submitting written research papers. Many universities provide each student with individual comments on their assessment items. Generally these comments are written throughout the assessment item by the marker to provide the student with guidance on where they can improve and what areas were answered correctly. While hand written comments throughout a paper are extremely valuable for most students, where the student has a vision impairment or another print disability the use of hand written comments can deny such students receiving vital guidance. This note discusses my experiences with comments on assessment items and identifies strategies to ensure that all students have equal access to feedback on their work.

Inclusive practice is well embedded across society and has developed over time. However, although policy and public view have moved forward, the way organisations address the agenda for inclusion often represents a superficial interpretation of this concept. Qualitative data were gathered using new ethnography to explore the experiences of a library-based reading group for visually impaired readers. The voices of the individuals shed light on the individual and collective experience of reading. These insights challenge the traditional views of distinct provision that are designed to address targets for inclusion of individuals with disabilities. We argue for a clearer focus on the unintentional consequences of practice in the name of inclusion that leave individuals feeling marginalised. This paper suggests the alternative focus on social justice as offering a discourse that focuses on society and away from the individual. (Contains 1 figure.)

This paper presents some results of research carried out with a group of blind and partially sighted youths who are enrolled in a school for people with visual disabilities in Brazil. This research aims to promote different articulations between the body and cognition. Based on actor-network theory, it considers that having a body means learning to be affected by widely differing actors. The field research was carried out through body expression activities, which seek to promote connections between the body and heterogeneous materials, such as a ball, a rattle or a colleague. The paper indicates that cognition is the effect of these collective body experiences. It also underlines that these body experiences have produced new ways of knowing amongst the blind and partially sighted youths. In the conclusion it is stressed that psychology research on disability must be done "with" (and not "about") people with visual disability. (Contains 2 notes.)

In this paper, the author explores how children with impairments can act as self-monitoring, autonomous individuals in their play in a community playground. In addition, the notion of children with impairments as creative agents in their play is examined. The evidence presented in this paper is derived from the views and perspectives of children with impairments as playground users, and was collected from the children's photographic scrapbooks and the researcher's own observations of children's play in a naturalistic playground setting. The theoretical perspective for this paper draws on the emerging "social model of childhood disability" and provides scope to attempt to understand the culturally constructed play-worlds of children with impairments. (Contains 13 figures.)

This paper undertakes a critical examination of the International Paralympic Committee's desire to use the Paralympic Games as a vehicle to empower individuals with a disability. We achieve this by applying Pierre Bourdieu's sociological concepts of habitus and capital to semi-structured interviews conducted with Paralympic stakeholders. Interviewees included current and former Paralympians, active and retired disability sport administrators, social researchers of disability and disability sport, and disability rights advocates. The paper starts by highlighting the distinctive cultural context of the Paralympic Movement, before exploring the potential for the Paralympic Games to act as a source of empowerment, through the creation of sporting and lifestyle role-models. Findings suggest Paralympians are considered most likely to gain empowerment from the Paralympic Games, yet their specific impairment, athletic lifestyles and failure to identify as "disabled" were identified as potentially limiting the ability of the Paralympic Games to empower others.

Given the well-documented links between poverty and disability in the majority world, and the mandate given to address this issue by international agreements, such as the recent United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, this paper examines the issue of how best to promote economic empowerment in the Kenyan context. The paper presents findings from recent field research, based on a series of 10 case studies, conducted in Kenya during June and July 2010. The main aim of the study was to compare the effectiveness of segregated and inclusive strategies. The paper concludes that, while inclusive strategies have a number of advantages over segregated strategies, and have achieved considerable success, segregated strategies may still have an important role to play.

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.

Existing historical understandings of disability are dominated by European and American experience and tend to assume Judeo-Christian ideas of stigma and exclusion are universal norms. This paper emphasises the unique experience of disability in India and the role of poverty, gender, caste and community in compounding the marginalisation felt by people with disabilities. It argues, with Kudlick, that "disability" is as important as "race" or "gender" as an analytic tool in the historical understanding of oppression and disempowerment. Moreover, the paper sees reclaiming history and insisting on inclusion of the experience of disability in the writing of Indian history as a critical factor in affirming the right of Indians with disabilities to full social and economic participation. Finally it emphasises the need for "disability history" to look beyond colonial and post-colonial welfare paradigms and to investigate disability as an aspect of rights based history.

This paper explores connections and tensions between psychoanalysis and disability studies. The first part of the paper considers contemporaneous engagements with the psyche by a number of disability studies writers. These scholars have remained accountable to a politicised disability studies but have pushed for critical encounters with the psychoemotional, phenomenological, metaphorical and relational aspects of disablism. Against this critical backdrop, this paper makes a case for a social psychoanalytic disability studies. Whilst vigilant to the pathologising and individualising tendencies of some forms of psychoanalytic theory, the paper explores a social psychoanalytic encounter with disablism in terms of splitting the subject as a key process implicated in the exclusion of disabled people. It is concluded that social psychoanalytic disability studies can play a huge role in understanding and challenging disablism; which Thomas defines as "a form of social oppression involving the social imposition of restrictions of activity on people with impairments and the socially engendered undermining of their psycho-emotional well being" (2007, 73; emphasis added). (Contains 1 note.)

This paper argues that the dominance of the global North in the universalising and totalising tendencies of writings about disability has resulted in the marginalisation of these experiences in the global South. This constitutes an intellectual crisis for disability studies in the periphery. The experience of colonisation and colonialism in the global South was both disabling and devastating for the inhabitants. The production of impaired peoples continues as a result of a multiplicity of phenomena including: war and civil strife, nuclear testing, the growth of the arms trade, the export of pollution to "pollution havens" and the emergence of sweatshops. Yet the agendas of disability pride and celebration in the metropole may appear to stand in stark contrast to the need to prevent mass impairments in the global South. The paper concludes by attempting to articulate a southern theory of disability that challenges some of the implicit values and concepts of contemporary disability studies and includes analyses of the lasting disabling impact of colonialism.

The links between disability and domestic violence have been under-examined to date, leading to the marginalisation of disabled women affected by domestic violence in theory, politics, and practice. This paper draws on the findings from the first national study in the United Kingdom of the needs of disabled women experiencing domestic violence and of the services available to meet these needs. Utilising the concept of intersectionality to locate abused disabled women along axes of oppression/domination, the paper highlights the complex nature of women's abuse experiences as well as the inadequacy of professional responses which leave women without support and protection. (Contains 4 notes.)

This paper aims to discuss how science and technology studies (STS) can inform disability studies and challenge dominant approaches, such as the medical and the social models, in the ordering and representation of disability. Disability studies and STS have followed somewhat parallel paths in the history of ideas. From a positivist approach to their research objects to a strong social constructivism, both disciplines have moved to postmodern conceptualisations of science, technology and disability. In the same manner, this paper brings the conceptual vocabulary of actor-network theory (ANT) to the field of disability studies. ANT enables the ordering of disability as a simultaneous biological, material and semiotic phenomenon. The focus of the analysis shifts from merely defining disability as an impairment, handicap, or social construction (epistemology) to how disability is experienced and enacted in everyday practices, in policy-making, in the body, and in the built environment (ontology). This adoption of an ontological approach to disability allows the analysis to not only discuss how disability is done, but also to follow how disability groups and carriers of disability expertise and experience intervene in policy-making by developing "research in the wild" and confronting scientific experts in different fora (ontological politics). (Contains 3 notes.)

This paper analyses the experiences and perceptions of parents and carers with respect to children accessing a variety of leisure activities, as well as short breaks and respite care. The children in question have wide-ranging needs and, for example, will be across the Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The findings are based upon focus group interviews with parents and carers. They reveal a wide range of experiences and emerging themes such as concerns about staff training, public attitudes, isolation, mainstream or specialist provision, transport and accessibility. In the light of the 'hidden' nature of such disabilities, the paper focuses upon three of the most consistent and important themes to emerge: a sense of isolation and lack of engagement, staff training and attitudes, and the tension between whether to engage in mainstream or special provision. The paper concludes that practitioners and statutory bodies should consider these barriers in more detail when developing inclusive practice that will encourage families to engage with leisure activities. However, it also reveals the fragile nature of progress on inclusion.

This paper addresses the challenges of building capacity for collaborative participatory research with disabled people's organisations in European countries. The paper presents initial findings from the project "European Research Agendas for Disability Equality" (EuRADE), which seeks to build the capacity of civil society organisations to participate in future research collaborations in partnership with academic institutions. The findings draw on survey data identifying the research capacity, needs and priorities of 68 organisations in 25 countries and focuses, in particular, on responses from national or European level representative organisations of disabled people. The findings demonstrate a high degree of motivation and readiness for collaboration in academic research but raise concerns about the readiness of academic institutions to engage disabled people as equal partners within social model and rights-based approaches. Respondent organisations identified a wide range of research needs that raise challenges for collaborative responses from the academic community. In this way, the findings provide a basis for developing user-led agendas for European funded research within the emancipatory paradigm, and identify important opportunities for new international research collaborations between activists and academics. (Contains 1 note.)

Research on disability issues in countries of the South is primarily dominated by a focus on generating large scale quantitative data sets. This paper discusses the many challenges, opportunities and dilemmas faced in designing and undertaking a qualitative research study in one district in India. The Disability, Education and Poverty Project (DEPP) aims at exploring the role of education in the lives of young people with disabilities living in poverty. A central focus of the research is to engage with the young people with disabilities themselves and to understand how they construed their lives and experiences. This paper discusses three issues which are of central concern to the project: identification of the sample group, appropriateness of the research methods and, finally, an examination of the assumptions underpinning the research process. (Contains 4 notes.)

Based on ethnographic research conducted in north-west Cambodia in 2000-2001, this paper examines why disabled people experience systematic marginalisation in the labour market. Although there are no official data on the relationship between disability and employment status in Cambodia, this research suggests that disabled people are more likely than their able-bodied counterparts to be unemployed, in low status occupations, earn less or be out of the labour market altogether. Consequently, disabled people are more likely to live in poverty, experience social isolation and poor mental health. I argue that disabled people's social status effectively shapes their work patterns through (mis)conceptions that associate "disability" with "inability" to work and to be employable. This paper illustrates how geographical processes fix disabled people in their socio-spatial place, which together with ideological and structural inequalities distinguish and entrench their poverty from that of other social groups.

Drawing on interviews with parents of children with complex disabilities in several school systems in a US state, this paper examines how temporal units such as the school day and school year and practices organized around artifacts like clocks and calendars work as "devices of temporal distanciation" to separate children with disabilities from other children and exclude their families from critical relations with schools. The paper focuses on two kinds of effects: the ways differentiated timetables separate children and the ways constructing school time in bounded, discrete units limits the ability of parents and children to make key elements of their lives visible to the school. (Contains 2 notes.)

This paper examines how early church doctrine influenced the construction of and response to intellectual disability. Though the main focus of the paper is on intellectual disability, much of the discussion is more broadly relevant to other types of impairments and human differences. The vehicle for this examination is the work of the key figure in the development and codification of church doctrine, Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430 CE). The paper concludes that while church doctrine mitigated the stark association of reason and human value found in classical Greek thought, it did not engender an attitude of equality in this world. The ideas of grace and the "divine plan", while opening up a limited space for acceptance and broad equality in the eyes of God, also reinforced and legitimated an inferior position in this world, leaving those considered to have an intellectual disability on the margins of social life and subject to a charity ultimately undertaken for the salvation of the giver, rather than for the welfare of the recipient. Subsidiary themes related to the construction of intellectual disability, such as "object lessons to the wise" or as "monsters", use as sources of amusement, innocence and their association with children and the charity ethic, are also examined. (Contains 2 notes.)

Disability research is conducted within a highly politicised "hotbed" of competing paradigms and principles. New researchers, who want to work within the social model, are soon faced with complex and challenging methodological and philosophical dilemmas. The social model advocates research agendas that are focused on the emancipation and empowerment of disabled people but, in reality, these are rarely achieved. To be successful researchers need to engage with innovative and creative methodologies and to share their experiences of these within environments that welcome challenge and debate. This paper focuses on Lifeworld and assesses its value as a tool for emancipatory research. Using examples from a study with parents, whose children were in the process of being labelled as having autism, the paper illustrates how the principles that "underpin" the methodology offered a supportive framework for a novice researcher.

1997 saw the introduction of the "Community Care (Direct Payments) Act" in the UK. This piece of legislation introduced a mechanism that enabled local authorities to make cash payments to disabled people aged between 18 and 64 in lieu of directly provided services. The years since 1997 have seen the introduction of additional legislation resulting in direct payments now being an option for many more groups of people, including the carers of disabled children. Following the changes in the legislation, government now wishes to see local authorities significantly increasing the numbers of families that receive direct payments. This paper will report on a research project carried out within one local authority in the north-west of England that has one of the largest numbers of carers of disabled children receiving direct payments in the UK. Using a variety of methods this paper explores how the local authority has made direct payments so widely available to carers and the effect that this has had on their own and their children's lives. (Contains 4 tables.)

In order for the sociological study of disability to enable, then it must be ready to conceptualize complex terrains of knowledge and activism. Research has to work alongside disabled people, their allies, their practices, their resistances and their theorizing. This paper makes a case for a framework of understanding that situates such work. Disability studies tends to understand its concepts (e.g. disability, exclusion, inclusion, impairment, politicization, people) as entities rooted in arborescent and hierarchical forms of knowledge. These modernist misconceptions can be challenged through understanding knowledge, practice, living and activism as rhizomatic, captured as lines of flight which are always becoming. As a new reader of Deleuze and Guattari, I make a case for disability research understanding parents and their disabled children as deconstructing or (re)deterritorializing the areas of policy, politics, practice, theory and activism. Creating burrows for shelter and eventual breakout, becoming 'angel makers', drawing on narratives of parents of disabled babies, this paper maps out a vision of parents not blocked by the strata of disabling society, but enabled by lines of flight, resistance, flux and change. This paper aims to be Deleuzoguattarian but only in ways that fit the complexities of parents' accounts.

The awareness that museums must be inclusive and participatory led to practices adapted to visitors' requirements and co-creative experiences, encouraging interaction with exhibitions, and thus fostering memorable experiences. Yet, constraints remain for people with disabilities, reducing their satisfaction and desire to return. Despite the high number of people with visual impairments worldwide, there is a lack of research on factors that may impact their co-creation in museums. This paper aims to identify factors influencing the co-creation of people with visual impairments experiences in museums, either facilitating or constraining it. Based on focus groups discussion, the results of the study conducted suggest that the co-creation of people with visual impairments in museums is influenced both by aspects related to visitors, as well as by disabling features of the museums' physical, communicational, and attitudinal environments. Conclusions and implications drawn are critical to improve the experience of people with visual impairments in museums. This article highlights that despite the high number of people with visual impairments worldwide, many still face constraints when visiting museums. The article reveals that several museums offer opportunities for interacting with the whole museum environment and co-creating value, to trigger memorable experiences. This paper fills a research gap by analysing how a set of factors influence people with visual impairments to get involved in co-creation in museums, either facilitating or constraining it. The research found that the factors that influence co-creation of experiences of people with visual impairments in museums can be related to the visitors or to the museums, including physical, communicational and attitudinal aspects. The article provides guidelines to improve the co-creation in museums of people with visual impairments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract\nPoints of interestResearch on the experiences of academics with disabilities regarding access to higher education spaces is vast, but not much has been done to assess if such research goes beyond analysing physical spaces. This paper follows the capabilities approach to contribute knowledge in this regard, drawing from research conducted in one South African University. Ten academics with disabilities were interviewed, and data were analysed thematically. Findings suggest that it is not enough for academics with disabilities to be employed at the University. Denial of social and physical access to various spaces has epistemic and professional advancement implications. The possibilities for alternative spaces and freedom of choice to function optimally for academic identity advancement can still be enhanced. The paper makes recommendations that can be explored for policy and practice to advance human development of academics with disabilities.We draw attention to how ableism relates to capabilities and freedoms to develop academic identities in multidimensional spaces of higher education.Marginalising spatial configurations go beyond just inability to attend academic gatherings, but also to participate in knowledge production for academic identity development.Academics with invisible disabilities can receive even more limited support, causing them to take longer to develop academically.Academics have agency and responsibilities towards developing their identities, but these are often limited by the nature of spaces.Advanced technology provides alternative ways of thinking about self-ability versus disability in an academic workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The golden summer of sport is now over, but what is the legacy of London 2012 for disabled people? Nadia Ahmed, a disabled student, discusses the difficulties she has faced in finding accessible accommodation in London. She argues that while the Games are over, the United Kingdom still has lots of hurdles to leap when it comes to disability. The article focuses on her own personal experience of not being able to get wheelchair-accessible accommodation in Tower Hamlets, a London borough that is a close neighbour of Stratford where the Olympic and Paralympic games were held. The article raises questions about disability equality following the Paralympics.

In recent years, the concept of fluctuating or recurring impairments has grown both in the public consciousness as well as in frequency of note within policy documentation and legislation. However, contention still surrounds the perceived legitimacy of such impairments, including chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis, epilepsy and diabetes, which have the potential to vary in intensity over time, versus more "traditional" and accepted forms of disability. By drawing on current conceptual discussion and research activities in Canada around what have been termed episodic disabilities, as well as legislative developments in the United Kingdom, this paper will provide an overview of how fluctuating or recurring impairments have to date been conceptualised, contested, and the central issue of competing definitions within this context.

In May 2010, amidst the "global financial crisis" a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government succeeded a 12-year reign of New Labour in the United Kingdom, and ushered in massive welfare cuts. Although New Labour tabled major welfare and disability benefit reform, they arguably did not activate the harshest of these. This paper focuses on the backlash of youth and disability in the form of demonstrations; two groups that are being hit hard by the political shift to work-first welfare in an era of employment scarcity. The case of young disabled activist Jody McIntyre is used to explore parallels and divergences in neoliberal and "populist" discourses of "risky", "troubling" youth and disability.

The concept of "care" has been fraught with negative connotations within the disability movement; the concepts of empowerment, choice and control have been developed as alternatives. The peer-support movement in the mental health sector draws from this tradition, and is uncomfortable with the provision of care. Drawing on the feminist ethic of care, we will argue in this paper that "care"--in the sense of caring about, rather than caring for--should be seen as fundamental within peer support. The practice of peer support evidences a kind of "care" that does involve some interdependence, and taking of "responsibility". The challenge is to make this a "responsibility towards", rather than a "responsibility for". If this is successfully achieved, care can indeed become acknowledged as part of "standard peer support", and the basis for the development of autonomy and self-determination. (Contains 8 notes.)

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. (Contains 2 figures.)

Through a close reading of Three Days to Walk, a memoir of disability by Chinese writer Zhang Yuncheng, this paper develops a new understanding of self-narrated life writing and its intersection with disability consciousness in the contemporary Chinese context. It examines the changing nature of disability life writing since the end of the early 1980s, a time when the images and voices of disabled began to emerge from effective cultural invisibility and silence. In a move away from state-sponsored "triumph over tragedy" biographical narratives typical of the immediate post-Cultural Revolution period, "Three Days to Walk" is characteristic of a new popular trend to publish self-narrated life stories that reveal unique and intimate histories of disability experience both imbued with and propelled by a burgeoning sense of disability consciousness in the Chinese context. (Contains 14 notes.)

Research in higher education, linked to national and international policy, suggests the need for educationalists to show greater understanding and awareness of the lived experiences of undergraduate students with disabilities. These sources argue that this knowledge should then be used to inform their understandings as tutors and facilitate inclusive and effective teaching strategies. This research had a primary focus on first-year students with disabilities' learning experiences; their transitions from school or college to university and their feedback on positive and negative learning experiences at both levels. Rich, complex stories were uncovered taking the research beyond the lecture theatre and seminar room, into the students' union bar and back to the Year 10 classroom. It is the intention of this paper to relay some of the stories shared, in particular drawing out findings related to effective learning practices and to note the significance of placing a socio-cultural lens on the question of inclusion in education. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

This current issues piece will explore how autobiographies written by people with autism can help identify sensory processing differences that might be viewed as possible attributes in an enabling society, but for which ableist perceptions are often negative. In concrete terms, these constructions may be preventing people from entering employment and making an economic contribution. The first autobiography written by someone who identified as being on the autism spectrum was by David Eastham in 1985. Since then, over 50 such books have been published. The emergence of such autobiographies challenges assumptions about what it is to be on the autism spectrum. It was often assumed people with autism were incapable of such social communication, as autobiographies assume abilities such as self-awareness, imagination and the ability and desire to communicate. These were all traits that were thought to be absent in someone diagnosed with autism. Consequently, the presence of these autobiographies destabilises and questions the dichotomy that was set up between what constitutes "normal" and "abnormal" behaviour.

In 2008 the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) commenced operation. The CRPD has created a dynamic new disability rights paradigm that empowers disability people's organizations and creates a new paradigm for disability scholars. This paper analyses the impact of the CRPD and provides practical guidance as to how this convention can be used to drive change. Prior to this convention, persons with disabilities were protected by a range of general human rights conventions. Despite receiving nominal protection under general human rights conventions, persons with disabilities have had many of their human rights denied to them. The CRPD goes further than merely re-stating rights. It creates a new rights discourse, empowers civil society and renders human rights more obtainable for person with disabilities than any time in history.

Western governments have emphasized paid work as a key route to social inclusion for disabled people. Although the proportion of disabled people in "mainstream" employment has increased in recent decades, rates remain significantly below those for non-disabled people. Moreover, disabled workers continue to face discrimination and a lack of workplace accommodation. This paper critically examines the potential of three alternatives to the current situation. First, how might stronger ties between disabled workers and the labour movement allow for greater control over the nature of mainstream work? Second, can more enabling work opportunities be created beyond the "mainstream" in social economy organizations? Finally, how might other forms of unpaid and creative work usefully challenge the dominance of paid employment as a route to social inclusion? (Contains 1 table and 4 notes.)

Students with disabilities are under-represented in higher education (HE) institutions in Botswana. The number of students with disabilities is on the rise but parity has not been attained. The struggle of students with disabilities to access and participate in HE remains an issue of great concern for disability activists and researchers. This paper sought to document the experiences of university students with disabilities in their struggle to access and participate in HE. Seven students with disabilities took part in the study. Data were gathered through semi-structured focus group interviews. Later on these data were triangulated with an access-audit of facilities. Constant comparison methods were used for data analysis. Six themes emerged, namely: attitudinal barriers; resource barriers; structural barriers; policy related issues; lack of support mechanisms; and lack of skills and knowledge. Implications of the findings to institutions of higher learning are discussed in order to promote wider participation for students with disabilities in HE in Botswana. (Contains 2 tables.)

United Nation's conventions exist to help facilitate and protect vulnerable people's human rights: including people with disabilities (Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2006) and children (Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989). However, for some families where a family member has a disability, there may be inherent conflicts in meeting stand-alone human rights conventions. These conventions should work together to ensure that young people with disabilities and challenging behaviour and their parents and siblings all have equal rights to full participation in social, economic and civic life. Yet service system deficits mean that this is not always the case. This paper argues that governments need to provide a whole of family and community support approach to ensure the human rights of all family members are met. This is a transnational complex ethical, moral and human rights issue that needs to be debated and addressed. (Contains 4 notes.)

The aim of this paper is to describe the classroom participation of primary school children with disabilities who attend regular schools in Norway; to explore how relations between children with disabilities and their environment change, and further to chart how schools act in response to such change. The analyses are based on a life course study with data gathered from interviews and questionnaires given to the parents of children with disabilities born in the period between 1993 and 1995. The results show an increasing marginalisation of children with disabilities who receive their primary school education at regular schools. Despite the fact that public policies in Norway are based on a relational understanding of disability, thus suggesting that educators would make considerable efforts to accommodate children with disabilities in regular schools, the reality is that schools take an individual approach to children with disabilities which reflects a medical understanding of disability. (Contains 2 tables.)

This paper examines linkages between women's experiences in accessing information, services and public policy relating to income support in Canada and the UK. Drawing on narrative interviews, the author finds mothers with disabilities are often embedded in complex relations of care, experiencing both embodied and social barriers. Additionally, by employing critical discourse analysis, it is clear that policy in both contexts is written not only inaccessibly and confusingly, but is directed toward an able-bodied, independent, resource-rich ideal citizen. Thus, policy in both contexts is disabling and pathologizing. There are differences in resources that are written into the policy and available through the UK network of Citizen's Advice Bureaus that would indicate that the UK offers a breadth of services and avenues for advocacy that are unavailable in Canada. Further, the Canadian policy appears to be more adversarial and surveillance-based than the UK policy. (Contains 3 notes.)

The year 2009 witnessed the publication of a themed edition of "Research in Drama Education" on disability (vol. 14, no. 1). This is a "first", and the author comes to this review as a disability studies academic with no background in writing on drama or the arts more generally, and this was the preferred approach to reviewing expressed by the journal editor. In presenting a fresh gaze on the themed edition the author hopes to better open up the work on drama and disability to wider scrutiny, to transcend shibboleths, to offer a reflexive account back to the contributors. There are as might be expected from a collected edition of this kind very disparate ideas presenting in the 12 papers in the themed edition. In this article, the author draws out what seem the most important messages in the themed edition. (Contains 1 note.)

A full understanding of disability recognizes that it has a powerful human rights dimension and is often associated with social exclusion, and increased exposure and vulnerability to poverty. Disability is a human rights issue. The World Bank (1999) report points out that one in five of the world's poorest are disabled, for whom access to basic rights is a daily struggle. Though arising from physical or intellectual impairment, disability has social implications as well as health ones. In most countries, government services for disabled people are still small-scale rehabilitation projects separated from the rest of the community. People with disabilities are amongst the poorest of the poor. Barriers built by disability and poverty can only be removed by the concerted and integrated effort of the government, NGOs, corporates, movie mughals and educational institutions. It is the duty of the rest of society to acknowledge the rights of the poor and the disabled. This can no longer be treated as philanthropy but is a responsibility.

Experiences of nature have been shown to be beneficial for disabled children; however, opportunities for disabled children to experience nature are often limited. The social model of disability may provide a theoretical base for increasing access to nature for pupils at Special Educational Needs (SEN) schools. Using results from interviews conducted with teachers from seven SEN schools, considered alongside responses from interviews with staff from six environmental centres, this paper seeks to identify the specific constraints that may act upon the opportunities for disabled pupils to visit environmental centres. The research finds that a "medicalised" approach to access may impede upon environmental centres' ability to cater effectively to the needs of SEN school groups. Dialogue between environmental centres and SEN school teachers is recommended as a means of facilitating SEN school group access.

This paper reflects critically on the meaning of play, especially as it relates to disabled children and their experiences. We explore the close alliance of play to cognitive and social development, particularly in the case of psychologies of development, and reveal a dominant discourse of the disabled child as a non-playing object that requires professional therapeutic intervention. We argue that this pathologisation of play on the part of disabled children is closely tied to normalisation of childhood, in which non-normal bodies are increasingly expected to be governed and corrected not only by professionals but also by parents/carers. In order to rescue more enabling visions of the disabled child and their play we turn to three perspectives--the new sociology of childhood; social oppression theories of disability; critical developmental psychology. These resources, we suggest, allow us to reconfigure what we mean by play and disability in a contemporary climate that celebrates competition and marketisation over the intrinsic potentialities of all children. We argue that how we conceive play will per se undermine or promote forms of inclusive research, policy and practice.

This paper presents a review of the challenges that disabled people experience in participating in the Kenyan labour market. It draws on existing literature and on a narrative of the experiences of one disabled academic in a Kenyan university to highlight some of the forms of discrimination that disabled people have to cope with in their workplaces. The goal is to further our understanding of the nature of barriers that disabled people face in the work environment in Kenya, with a view of exploring ways of addressing those barriers and developing some recommendations for improvement. It is clear from the interview with a disabled academic that, despite strides made by the Kenyan government in terms of enacting the Disability Act, which aims at boosting disabled people's participation in employment, there is still a big gap between the law and its implementation. What is needed is constitutional change and implementation of the existing law at all levels, as well as provision of resources to support this change. (Contains 4 notes.)

This paper questions the way in which the diagnosis of Aspergers syndrome has come to be widely accepted and used as an essentially medical category. It does so by drawing upon sociological and historical analyses of society, psychiatry and psychology, as well as the writings of service users, other practitioners in the autistic spectrum disorder field and the author's own clinical experience. It is argued that the seeming popularity of this label within Western society may have as much to do with widespread social and cultural change during recent decades as with the supposed deficits of those who attract the diagnosis. The aims are to ask what this might mean for health and social care practice in this field and to encourage the growth of theories and approaches that are grounded more firmly in an awareness of the social environment, while also reflecting the varied experiences and standpoints of people who carry this label. (Contains 1 table.)

With the rhetoric of independence, new cash for care systems were introduced in many developed welfare states at the end of the 20th century. These systems allow local authorities to pay people who are eligible for community care services directly, to enable them to employ their own careworkers. Despite the obvious importance of the careworker's perceptions of a welfare system aimed at independence for disabled people, this perspective is under-researched. This article explores this perspective by outlining three examples of careworker strategies (a continuing carer biography, searching for new horizons and acting pragmatically) identified in a cross-national case study of cash for care in the UK and Norway. The strategies are mainly derived by considering different positions in the labour market and different ways of carrying out this carework. Overall, the paper intends to contribute to the understanding of the complex welfare dilemma between user independence and the nature of carework.

Since the late 1990s disabled women's advocacy organizations have fought against oppression and have made great strides in Korea. This paper aims to describe the accomplishments, challenges and future directions of disabled women's advocacy organizations in Korea. A qualitative design was employed to explore disabled women's perspectives. Participants were leaders in disabled women's advocacy organizations and were recruited from each of the organizations existing in Korea in 2007. Among seven potential participants, five were interviewed. Accomplishments to date include significant gains in the recognition and visibility of disabled women, advances in the use of gender-sensitive approaches to the development of disability policies and the growth of networks among disabled women's organizations. Disabled women's advocacy will continue to become stronger in the future through increased organizational membership, the development of a distinct organizational identity, the articulation of more focused policy concerns and continued network development. (Contains 1 table.)

In this paper we demonstrate how universal design theory and the research available on museum-based touch tours can be used to develop a touch tour for blind and low-vision theatregoers. We discuss these theoretical and practical approaches with reference to data collected and experience gained from the creation and execution of a touch tour for Hart House Theatre's production of "Hamlet" at the University of Toronto. Finally, we offer up the possibility of using universal design theory to create a touch tour that would be attractive to all theatregoers.

This article presents a selection of the results gleaned from research analyzing the way social exclusion processes are constructed among young adults between the ages of 18 and 25. The paper focuses on a subset of the population studied: young people with disabilities. Likewise, we limit our study to the dimension of school-related experiences. Our research methodology--based on individual personal narratives and first hand accounts--allows a dynamic, participative and integrated approach to the study of exclusion. Participants in the study were asked to reflect on their experiences and, thus, were given a voice. Our specific objective in this article was to identify and explain the barriers and aids to inclusion encountered in a variety of educational environments as expressed by interviewees who had experienced them personally. (Contains 5 notes.)

Exploring the friendships of disabled youth in forthcoming doctoral research raised many unsettling questions. Members of academic and disability communities thoughtfully asked how the researcher could legitimately understand, interpret and represent the experiences of disabled youth. The initial impulse was to rely on nearly two decades of clinical practice with children and youth with disabilities; however, the futility of this strategy quickly surfaced. Uncertainty about how to proceed arose. A colleague and mentor suggested that a careful reading of Sandra Harding, Donna Haraway and Mats Alvesson and Kaj Skoldberg might provide the conceptual tools required to address these concerns. This paper presents a student's stumbling, hesitant and sometimes "harried" attempts to grapple with their unfamiliar arguments while simultaneously exploring tentative connections with disability studies. The evolutionary cycle of queries, responses and reflections from a series of e-mails demonstrate a transition in thinking about research and representation. (Contains 1 note.)

There has been a growing debate during an increasingly poststructural era that has paved the way for open discussions regarding the interplay between impairment, disability and society. Some of these discussions have led to the conclusion that modernity is responsible for the production, construction and/or sustenance of impairment. The purpose of this paper is to trouble a special education impairment category, the US educational category of "learning disabilities" (LD). This is done by discussing the dilemma of whether or not impairment is real and by contextualizing it within US federal policy that has recently shifted to require what is called a response to intervention approach for determining LD labels. This significant policy shift helps illuminate how impairments are produced, constructed and sustained by social mechanisms. Finally, the same arguments are extrapolated beyond special education and are brought to bear on other medicalized fields.

This paper explores the antecedents, experiences and consequences of marginalization as reported and dealt with by disabled Iranian immigrants in Belgium. This work extends the work of Gallie and colleagues and Siegrist demonstrating that the forces of marginalization applicable to all immigrants are particularly pertinent to disabled immigrants. The research is based on 26 in-depth, face-to-face interviews, focus groups, interviews with government officials and immigration experts, ethnographic work and official government statistics. The findings detail how the combined forces of history, context and reasons for immigration; isolation, vulnerability and perceived loss of control; religion and rejection; lack of reciprocity in social exchanges; problems in obtaining jobs; and difficulties in negotiating an entry into Belgian society combine to sustain marginizalation. As a consequence, disabled immigrants in this group are generally excluded from society and discriminated against in terms of citizenship, education, jobs and general acceptance.