In a lyrical love letter to guide dogs everywhere, a blind poet shares his delightful story of how a guide dog changed his life and helped him discover a newfound appreciation for travel and independence. Stephen Kuusisto was born legally blind--but he was also raised in the 1950s and taught to deny his blindness in order to pass as sighted. Stephen attended public school, rode a bike, and read books pressed right up against his nose. As an adult, he coped with his limited vision by becoming a professor in a small college town, memorizing routes for all of the places he needed to be. Then, at the age of thirty-eight, he was laid off. With no other job opportunities in his vicinity, he would have to travel to find work. This is how he found himself at Guiding Eyes, paired with a Labrador named Corky. In this vivid and lyrical memoir, Stephen Kuusisto recounts how an incredible partnership with a guide dog changed his life and the heart-stopping, wondrous adventure that began for him in midlife. Profound and deeply moving, this is a spiritual journey, the story of discovering that life with a guide dog is both a method and a state of mind.

What can society learn about disability through the way it is portrayed in TV, films and plays?

This insightful and accessible text explores and analyses the way disability is portrayed in drama, and how that portrayal may be interpreted by young audiences. Investigating how disabilities have been represented on stage in the past, this book discusses what may be inferred from plays which feature disabled characters through a variety of critical approaches.

In addition to the theoretical analysis of disability in dramatic literature, the book includes two previously unpublished playscripts, both of which have been performed by secondary school aged students and which focus on issues of disability and its effects on others. The contextual notes and discussion which accompany these plays and projects provide insights into how drama can contribute to disability education, and how it can give a voice to students who have special educational needs themselves.

Other features of this wide-ranging text include:

• an annotated chronology that traces the history of plays that have featured disabled characters
• an analysis of how disability is used as a dramatic metaphor
• consideration of the ethics of dramatising a disabled character
• critical accounts of units of work in mainstream school seeking to raise disability awareness through engagement with practical drama and dramatic texts
• a description and evaluation of a drama project in a special school.

In tackling questions and issues that have not, hitherto, been well covered, Drama, Disability and Education will be of enormous interest to drama students, teachers, researchers and pedagogues who work with disabled people or are concerned with raising awareness and understanding of disability.

Within the domains of criminal justice and mental health care, critical debate concerning 'care' versus 'control' and 'therapy' versus 'security' is now commonplace. Indeed, the 'hybridisation' of these areas is now a familiar theme. This unique and topical text provides an array of expert analyses from key contributors in the field that explore the interface between criminal justice and mental health. Using concise yet robust definitions of key terms and concepts, it consolidates scholarly analysis of theory, policy and practice. Readers are provided with practical debates, in addition to the theoretical and ideological concerns surrounding the risk assessment, treatment, control and risk management in a cross-disciplinary context. Included in this book is recommended further reading and an index of legislation, making it an ideal resource for students at undergraduate and postgraduate level, together with researchers and practitioners in the field.

Disability studies have long been the domain of medical and pedagogical academics. However, in recent years, the subject has outgrown its clinical origins. In Freaks of History, James MacDonald presents two dramatic explorations of disability within the wider themes of sexuality, gender, foreignness and the Other. Originally directed by Martin Harvey and performed by undergraduate students at the University of Exeter, Wellclose Square and Unsex Me Here analyse cultural marginalization against the backdrop of infamous historical events. MacDonald, who is cerebral palsied, recognizes that disability narratives are rarely written by and for disabled people. Therefore, his plays, accompanied by critical essays and director's notes, are a welcome addition to the emerging discourse of Crip theory and essential reading for disability students and academics alike.

In recent years, disability studies has been driven by a model of disability which focuses on the social and economic oppression of disabled people. Although an important counterbalance to a pathologising medical model, the social model risks presenting an impoverished and disembodied view of disability, one that ignores the psychological nature of oppression and its effects.

This innovative work argues that a psychological framework of disability is an essential part of developing a more cohesive disability movement. Brian Watermeyer introduces a new, integrative approach, using psychoanalysis to tackle the problem of conceptualising psychological aspects of life with disablism. Psychoanalytic ideas are applied to social responses to impairment, making sense of discrimination in its many forms, as well as problems in disability politics and research. The perspective explores individual psychological experience, whilst retaining a rigorous critique of social forces of oppression. The argument shows how it is possible to theorise the psychological processes and impressions of discriminatory society without pathologising disadvantaged individuals.

Drawing on sociology, social anthropology, psychology and psychoanalysis - as well as clinical material - Towards a Contextual Psychology of Disablism shapes a view of disabled subjectivity which is embodied, internal, and political. Presenting a range of conceptual ideas which describe psychological dynamics and predicaments confronting disabled people in an exclusionary and prejudiced world, this volume is an important new contribution to the literature. It will interest students and researchers of disability studies, including those working within psychology, education, health and social work.

JA(3)zef Boruwlaski was the most famous dwarf of the Enlightenment age. Polish-born, he travelled extensively throughout Europe, appearing and performing at royal courts and salons, before settling in Durham in his later life until his death at the age of 97. He was described in Diderot's Encyclopedie and the press of his day - both on the continent and in the UK - sustained an interest in him and kept tabs on his life and experiences. His memoirs, published in a bilingual (French and English) version in 1788, show him to have been an intelligent and sharp observer of the world he inhabited. The life story of this miniature gentleman is not only highly interesting in its own right, but also offers a new perspective on the culture of the Enlightenment. Through a meticulous survey of source materials in Poland, France, and the United Kingdom, the author has managed to unearth and reconstruct many heretofore unknown details about Boruwlaski's life and adventures, about his travels first on the continent and then in the United Kingdom. It is not typical biography, but rather an attempt at identifying certain social roles that were imposed upon Boruwlaski: a plaything of the salons, a source of entertainment for the masses, an adventurist against his own wishes. At the same time, his story is that of a man who spent his whole life trying to escape from such roles imposed upon him. Boruwlaski's memoirs are included in full, containing many of the letters he sent to his wife, with critical annotation. The author also investigates for the first time the sizeable differences between the many different versions of the memoirs published during his own lifetime. This monograph offers not only an opportunity to rediscover the fascinating life story of an intriguing man, but also gives a unique point of view on Europe's uppermost elite in the Enlightenment age - as people who remained deeply fascinated with deformities and oddities despite their own self-professed 'refined' tastes.

'A bold wake-up call for those who doubt what people with learning disabilities can do' - Sally Phillips 'A call to arms to confront continued discrimination' - Sir Norman Lamb 'A gem of an anthology... this collection will contribute to our growing understanding, acceptance and celebration of "neurodiversity"' - Simon Baron-Cohen Success is a crucial part of being human. But what if society thought success and aspiration didn't apply to you? A human rights campaigner. A critically acclaimed actor. A civil rights activist. A singer-songwriter. A Paralympian and elite swimmer. A fine artist. An award-winning filmmaker and drag artist. An elected UK mayor. These professionals have achieved astounding and awe-inspiring success. They've won national accolades in competitive fields such as film, theatre, music, fine art, campaigning and politics... and like 1.5 million people in the UK today, they all also happen to have a learning disability. In Made Possible, these eight remarkable individuals present their authentic experiences - in their own words - and show us what society misses out on by overlooking them, pitying them, patronising them, simply tolerating them and labelling them in terms of their conditions. Edited by social affairs journalist Saba Salman, this collection of groundbreaking and illuminating essays shatters preconceptions and offers a glimpse of the many types of success that can be achieved by people with a learning disability. Crucially, it reveals how people can make invaluable contributions to society when their potential is acknowledged and supported by those around them.

Throughout the history of the United States, work-based social welfare practices have served to affirm the moral value of work. In the late nineteenth century this representational project came to be mediated by the printed word with the emergence of industrial print technologies, the expansion of literacy, and the rise of professionalization. In Work Requirements Todd Carmody asks how work, even the most debasing or unproductive labor, came to be seen as inherently meaningful during this era. He explores how the print culture of social welfare-produced by public administrators, by economic planners, by social scientists, and in literature and the arts-tasked people on the social and economic margins, specifically racial minorities, incarcerated people, and people with disabilities, with shoring up the fundamental dignity of work as such. He also outlines how disability itself became a tool of social discipline, defined by bureaucratized institutions as the inability to work. By interrogating the representational effort necessary to make work seem inherently meaningful, Carmody ultimately reveals a forgotten history of competing efforts to think social belonging beyond or even without work.

With contributions from distinguished authors in 14 countries across 5 continents, this book provides a unique transnational perspective on intellectual disability in the twentieth century. Each chapter outlines different policies and practices, and details real-life accounts from those living with intellectual disabilities to illustrate their impact of policies and practices on these people and their families. Bringing together accounts of how intellectual disability was viewed, managed and experienced in countries across the globe, the book examines the origins and nature of contemporary attitudes, policy and practice and sheds light on the challenges of implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCPRD).

'Keith became really quiet... He completely withdrew from what was going on. It was unbelievable... He was unhappy all the time. He wouldn't eat at the dinner table. He would throw his plate on the floor. We couldn't believe it.'

People with learning disabilities living in residential care regularly experience separation and loss when their keyworkers move away. Clinical experience suggests that these transitions are critical for the emotional well-being of clients, for whom supportive relationships with staff are essential. In Saying Goodbye the authors aim to raise awareness of some of the processes that occur when keyworker relationships end, in the hope that such endings can become less painful for both staff and clients. Specific recommendations of how to plan the end of staff-client relationships are included.

The book draws extensively on the words of the participants themselves, looking at parallel accounts of loss and change. People with learning disabilities are rarely asked about their experience of care and this is the first study to examine how these clients, as well as staff, experience the end of keyworking relationships.

The pressures Asian Americans feel to be socially and economically exceptional include an unspoken mandate to always be healthy. Nowhere is this more evident than in the expectation for Asian Americans to enter the field of medicine, principally as providers of care rather than those who require care. Pedagogies of Woundedness explores what happens when those considered model minorities critically engage with illness and medicine whether as patients or physicians. James Kyung-Jin Lee considers how popular culture often positions Asian Americans as medical authorities and what that racial characterization means. Addressing the recent trend of writing about sickness, disability, and death, Lee shows how this investment in Asian American health via the model minority is itself a response to older racial forms that characterize Asian American bodies as diseased. Moreover, he pays attention to what happens when academics get sick and how illness becomes both methodology and an archive for scholars. Pedagogies of Woundedness also explores the limits of biomedical "care," the rise of physician chaplaincy, and the impact of COVID. Throughout his book and these case studies, Lee shows the social, ethical, and political consequences of these common (mis)conceptions that often define Asian Americans in regard to health and illness.

Although the field of disability services and societal understanding of disability issues have advanced in recent decades there remain controversial subjects and unresolved disputes. These cover a wide spectrum from legislation impacting the entire disability community such as the ADA, to culture clashes within a minority group such as the deaf community. Experts analyze and discuss nine of these controversies of particular interest to professional social workers. They are ones about which there are obvious disagreements and no readily available solutions . All sides of the issues are examined to enable readers to draw their own conclusions. The overall intent is to draw attention to each controversy and to motivate professional social workers to engage in personal as well as public dialogue about them.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Social Work in Disability and Rehabilitation.

Takes the recent wave of German autobiographical writing on illness and disability seriously as literature, demonstrating the value of a literary disability studies approach. In the German-speaking world there has been a new wave - intensifying since 2007 - of autobiographically inspired writing on illness and disability, death and dying. Nina Schmidt's book takes this writing seriously as literature,examining how the authors of such personal narratives come to write of their experiences between the poles of cliche and exceptionality. Identifying shortcomings in the approaches taken thus far to such texts, she makes suggestions as to how to better read their narratives from the stance of literary scholarship, then demonstrates the value of a literary disability studies approach to such writing with close readings of Charlotte Roche's Schossgebete(2011), Kathrin Schmidt's Du stirbst nicht (2009), Verena Stefan's Fremdschlafer (2007), and - in the final, comparative chapter - Christoph Schlingensief's So schoen wie hier kanns im Himmel gar nicht sein! Tagebuch einer Krebserkrankung (2009) and Wolfgang Herrndorf's blog-cum-book Arbeit und Struktur (2010-13). Schmidt shows that authors dealing with illness and disability do so with an awareness of their precarious subject position in the public eye, a position they negotiate creatively. Writing the liminal experience of serious illness along the borders of genre, moving between fictional and autobiographical modes, they carve out spaces from which they speak up and share their personal stories in the realm of literature, to political ends. Nina Schmidt is a postdoctoral researcher in the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies at the Freie Universitat Berlin.

Assistive Technology for People with Disabilities, Second Edition, includes eight comprehensive chapters that focus on devices and software to enhance the lives and promote the independence of people with disabilities. Updated with new research, content and features to address current developments in the field, the book approaches assistive technology and education in a lifespan, multidisciplinary manner by discussing the use of current technology in the fields of special education, rehabilitation, speech-language pathology, and other disciplines. Featured devices and software will help you understand how areas such as mobility, communication, education, independent living, and access to information media affect learning and living for individuals with disabilities. You will also gain a great understanding of the foundational and historical perspectives of AT, assessment, universal design, and the ADAPT framework, which is a tool to help educators make decisions about appropriate AT, student needs, and the demands of the environment. Developed from the authors' years of experience teaching both K-12 students and adults, as well as their own framework for understanding assistive technology application and integrating technology into instruction, this new edition addresses assistive technology that promotes knowledge and skills, practical application and a myriad of opportunities that good technology provides for persons with disabilities.

Literary Nonfiction. Disability Studies. Poetry. Art. This collection brings together the diverse voices of women with various disabilities. The women speak frankly about the societal barriers they encounter in their everyday lives due to social attitudes and physical and systemic inaccessibility. They bring to light the discrimination they experience through sexism, because they are women, and through ableism, because they have disabilities. For them, the personal is definitely political. Here, Canadian women discuss their lives in the areas of employment, body image, sexuality and family life, society's attitudes, and physical, sexual and emotional abuse. While society traditionally views having a disability as "weakness" and that women are the "weaker" sex, this collection points to the strength, persistence, and resilience of disabled women living the edges.

This honest, to-the-point guide illuminates the experience of young Autistic girls and explores the situations they can easily fall victim to. Powerful case studies show how easily misunderstandings can arise for Autistic girls and help the reader to identify common patterns of abuse. Providing professionals with access to safeguarding strategies that are straightforward to implement and highly effective, this is essential reading for everyone who wants to better understand the challenges faced by this vulnerable group, and ensure they have access to the same opportunities to secure a good education and build safe and happy relationships as their peers.

First published in 1999, the groundbreaking Exile and Pride is essential to the history and future of disability politics. Eli Clare's revelatory writing about his experiences as a white disabled genderqueer activist/writer established him as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability and permanently changed the landscape of disability politics and queer liberation. With a poet's devotion to truth and an activist's demand for justice, Clare deftly unspools the multiple histories from which our ever-evolving sense of self unfolds. His essays weave together memoir, history, and political thinking to explore meanings and experiences of home: home as place, community, bodies, identity, and activism. Here readers will find an intersectional framework for understanding how we actually live with the daily hydraulics of oppression, power, and resistance. At the root of Clare's exploration of environmental destruction and capitalism, sexuality and institutional violence, gender and the body politic, is a call for social justice movements that are truly accessible to everyone. With heart and hammer, Exile and Pride pries open a window onto a world where our whole selves, in all their complexity, can be realized, loved, and embraced.

This case study of transportation policy for disabled people illustrates the flaws in policymaking that lead many Americans to believe government is not working as it should. Robert A. Katzmann examines the workings of the legislative, administrative, and judicial processes, both separately and in interaction, as he relates the erratic path of transportation policy for the disabled over two decades. An estimated 13.4 million people in this country have difficulty using public transportation, but the federal response to their problems of mobility is of fairly recent vintage, beginning with legislation in the early 1970s. Since then, there have been many twists and turns in policy, involving a wide array of governmental institutions. These constant shifts have confused state and local governments, the transit industry, and the disabled community. Assessing why policy was so erratic, Katzmann concludes that in part the confusion resulted from the inability to choose between conflicting approaches to the problem--one oriented toward the rights of equal access for the disabled, and the other favoring effective mobility by any practical means. In addition, the conflict between these two policy approaches was compounded by increasing fragmentation within and among national institutions.

Establishing a critical and interdisciplinary dialogue, this text engages with the typically disparate fields of social gerontology and disability studies. It investigates the subjective experiences of two groups rarely considered together in research - people ageing with long-standing disability and people first experiencing disability with ageing. This book challenges assumptions about impairment in later life and the residual nature of the 'fourth age'. It proposes that the experience of 'disability' in older age reaches beyond the bodily context and can involve not only a challenge to a sense of value and meaning in life, but also ongoing efforts in response.

Over the past 15 years, geography has made many significant contributions to our understanding of disabled people's identities, lives, and place in society and space. 'Towards Enabling Geographies' brings together leading scholars to showcase the 'second wave' of geographical studies concerned with disability and embodied differences. This area has broadened and challenged conventional boundaries of 'disability', expanding the kinds of embodied differences considered, while continuing to grapple with important challenges such as policy relevance and the use of more inclusionary research approaches. This book demonstrates the value of a spatial conceptualization of disability and disablement to a broader social science audience, whilst examining how this conceptualization can be further developed and refined.

Religion and Disability presents three keynote addresses from the national symposium, "Ministry Perspectives on Disability." In the opening essay, noted scripture scholar Donald Senior identifies certain themes often associated with scripture-such as the distinction between clean and unclean, and the notion that sin and guilt somehow cause sickness and disability-that contribute to non-welcoming attitudes to the disabled. In the second essay, John Macquarrie draws upon both theological reasoning and personal experience in reflecting upon the dignity of all persons and how this principle applies especially to our dealings with the disabled. Finally, Stanley Hauerwas invokes the ideals of the Church in calling for a response of love toward persons with mental handicaps. He helps us imagine a church community enriched by members who are disabled.

Winner of the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing Award 2021 In 2016, a United Nations report found the UK government culpable for 'grave and systematic violations' of disabled people's rights. Since then, driven by the Tory government's obsessive drive to slash public spending whilst scapegoating the most disadvantaged in society, the situation for disabled people in Britain has continued to deteriorate. Punitive welfare regimes, the removal of essential support and services, and an ideological regime that seeks to deny disability has resulted in a situation described by the UN as a 'human catastrophe'. In this searing account, Ellen Clifford - an activist who has been at the heart of resistance against the war on disabled people - reveals precisely how and why this state of affairs has come about. From spineless political opposition to self-interested disability charities, rightwing ideological myopia to the media demonization of benefits claimants, a shocking picture emerges of how the government of the fifth-richest country in the world has been able to marginalize disabled people with near-impunity. Even so, and despite austerity biting ever deeper, the fightback has begun, with a vibrant movement of disabled activists and their supporters determined to hold the government to account - the slogan 'Nothing About Us Without Us' has never been so apt. As this book so powerfully demonstrates, if Britain is to stand any chance of being a just and equitable society, their battle is one we should all be fighting.

Sarah Merriman is just like any other urbane young woman in her twenties... She has a job in a Central London hotel, a boyfriend, commutes to work on the Tube, eats out, goes to films and theatre... This is all the more remarkable (though not to her) because Sarah was born with Down's Syndrome. Her parents having no prior inkling, it came as a huge shock to them that they now had a daughter with a disability. In 1999 her father Andy wrote a frank and moving book, A Minor Adjustment, about the challenge of her early years. The national publicity it gained saw it become a treasured resource for other families on a similar journey. Now he follows up with the inspirational story of how his daughter, whose favourite expression is `I love my life', has grown up, featured on Michel Roux's compelling Kitchen Impossible series, and is making a life of her own at a time when pre-natal testing is threatening the very existence of people with Down's syndrome. Sarah has contributed throughout.

Over the past 30 years, attitudes toward people with disabilities have changed dramatically, moving from deinstitutionalization in the 1960s to the Disability Rights Movement of the 1970s and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The results of this shift have been to move more and more people with disabilities into mainstream activities in their communities. Social workers and other health and mental health professionals are now encountering people with a wide range of disabilities at various stages of their lives. It is important to be prepared. Understanding Disability details expected developmental stages for those without disabilities as well as the impact of disability at each of these periods. This is a much needed reference for working with a person with a disability, or with a family member or other interested party. Beginning with infancy and the diagnosis of congenital or early onset disabilities, the book identifies traditional developmental life stages and then provides specific information for four different disabilities: Down syndrome, visual impairment, cerebral palsy, and spina bifida. In addition, spinal cord injury is added at the young adult stage of some adapted expectations. In keeping with a social work emphasis on strengths, the book is based on a social, rather than medical, model of disability. The information in this book allows the social worker to create treatment plans, coordinate with other professionals, and competently assist the person with the disability and his/her family. Filling the void in literature on disabilities since the Disabilities Act of 1990, Understanding Disability will be a most valuable resource for social workers, counselors, and nurses.

What prenatal tests and down syndrome reveal about our reproductive choices When Alison Piepmeier-scholar of feminism and disability studies, and mother of Maybelle, an eight-year-old girl with Down syndrome-died of cancer in August 2016, she left behind an important unfinished manuscript about motherhood, prenatal testing, and disability. In Unexpected, George Estreich and Rachel Adams pick up where she left off, honoring the important research of their friend and colleague, as well as adding new perspectives to her work. Based on interviews with parents of children with Down syndrome, as well as women who terminated their pregnancies because their fetus was identified as having the condition, Unexpected paints an intimate, nuanced picture of reproductive choice in today's world. Piepmeier takes us inside her own daughter's life, showing how Down syndrome is misunderstood, stigmatized, and condemned, particularly in the context of prenatal testing. At a time when medical technology is rapidly advancing, Unexpected provides a much-needed perspective on our complex, and frequently troubling, understanding of Down syndrome.