* What is the relevance of feminist ideas for understanding women's experiences of disability? * How can the social model of disability be developed theoretically? * What are the key differences between Disability Studies and medical sociology? In answer to these questions, this book explores and develops ideas about disability, engaging with important debates in disability studies about what disability is and how to theorize it. It also examines the interface between disability studies, women's studies and medical sociology, and offers an accessible review of contemporary debates and theoretical approaches. The title Female Forms reflects two things about the book: first, its use of disabled women's experiences, as told by themselves, to bring a number of themes to life, and second, the author's belief in the importance of feminist ideas and debates for disability studies. The social model of disability is the book's bedrock, but the author both challenges and contributes to social modelist thought. She advances a materialist feminist perspective on disability, producing a book which is of multi-disciplinary relevance. Female Forms will be useful to the growing number of students on Disability Studies courses, as well as those interested in women's studies, medical sociology and social policy. It will also appeal to those studying or working in the health and social care professions such as nursing, social work, occupational therapy and physiotherapy.

Performances in hospices and on beaches; cross-cultural myth making in Wales, New Zealand and the US; communal poetry among mental health system survivors: this book, now in paperback, presents a senior practitioner/critic's exploration of arts-based research processes sustained over more than a decade - a subtle engagement with disability culture.

This book offers a much-needed investigation of moral and political issues concerning disability, and explores how the experiences of people with disabilities can lead to reconsideration of prominent positions on normative issues. Thirteen new essays examine such topics as the concept of disability, the conditions of justice, the nature of autonomy, healthcare distribution, and reproductive choices. The contributors are Norman Daniels, Ellen Daniels Zide, Leslie P. Francis, Christie Hartley, Richard Hull, Guy Kahane, F. M. Kamm, Rosalind McDougall, Jeff McMahan, Douglas MacLean, Susannah Rose, Anita Silvers, Julian Savulescu, Lorella Terzi, David Wasserman, and Jonathan Wolff.

Deaf around the World is a compendium of work by scholars and activists on the creation, context, and form of sign languages, and on the social issues and civil rights of Deaf communities. Renowned contributors such as James Woodward, Yerker Andersson, and Paddy Ladd offer new histories and overviews of major topics. Each chapter is followed by a response from a pre-eminent thinker in the field. The volume includes studies of sign languages and Deaf communities in Australia, Brazil, Britain, China, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Myanmar, Nicaragua, South Africa, Southeast Asia, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States.

Using data from more than 40,000 soldiers of the Union army, this book focuses on the experience of African Americans and immigrants with disabilities, investigating their decision to seek government assistance and their resulting treatment. Pension administrators treated these ex-soldiers differently from native-born whites, but the discrimination was far from seamless - biased evaluations of worthiness intensified in response to administrators' workload and nativists' late-nineteenth-century campaigns. This book finds a remarkable interplay of social concepts, historical context, bureaucratic expediency, and individual initiative. Examining how African Americans and immigrants weighed their circumstances in deciding when to request a pension, whether to employ a pension attorney, or if they should seek institutionalization, it contends that these veterans quietly asserted their right to benefits. Shedding new light on the long history of challenges faced by veterans with disabilities, the book underscores the persistence of these challenges in spite of the recent revolution in disability rights.

From the liberation of the electric wheelchair to the ignominy of discrimination and incarceration, there have been both great advances and terrible setbacks for disabled people in Britain over the last fifty years. Hard-hitting and hilarious, personal and poignant, CripTales comprises six fictional monologues portraying some very real experiences. From negotiating friendships and personal assistants, navigating the benefits system, and experiencing sexual fulfilment, they challenge the view that having a disability is a problem or 'not normal'. Normal doesn't exist! CripTales was commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on BBC Four and BBC America in 2020 to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the UK's Disability Discrimination Act, which criminalised discrimination against disabled people in many areas of life. The production had disabled people at its core - as writers, directors and actors of all six monologues. Mat Fraser, the series' Creative Director, said, 'Disabled voices have been shut out of mainstream TV drama for too long and this is a chance to showcase some of the wonderful, inventive, funny, dramatic, sexy and sobering potential available... We called the series CripTales, as the word 'crip' has been taken by the disabled community as a self-empowering title since the late '80s, and these are authentic stories and tales from people who identify as Deaf and Disabled people and who are embedded in disabled community.'

In an era of scarce social resources the question of the changing social policy constructions and responses to disabled people has become increasingly important. Paradoxically, some disabled people are realising new freedoms and choices never before envisioned, whilst others are prey to major retractions in public services and aggressive attempts to redefine who counts as 'genuinely disabled'. Understanding disability policy locates disability policy into broader social policy and welfare policy writings and goes beyond narrow statutory evaluations of welfare to embrace a range of indicators of disabled people's welfare. The book critically explores the roles of social security, social support, poverty, socio-economic status, community safety, official discourses and spatial change in shaping disabled people's opportunities. It also situates welfare and disability policy in the broader conceptual shifts to the social model of disability and its critics. Finally it explores the possible connection between changing official and academic constructions of disability and their implications for social policy in the 21st century. The book is supported by a companion website, containing additional materials for both students and lecturers using the book, which is available from the link above.

With this illuminating resource, professionals can tap into the best, most current knowledge on helping adults with significant disabilities enjoy active, rewarding, and meaningful daytimes in their communities. Readers will get proven ideas for supporting adults as they find or create employment that fits their goals and desires, pursue their interests and hobbies, participate in postsecondary education, develop social relationships and community connections, explore opportunities for paid self-advocacy and systems change work, and maintain active and healthy lifestyles as they age. Detailed case studies from across the country combine with practical guidelines to show readers how to replicate success stories, and extensive discussion of organizational change helps facilitate the critical shift from facility-based to community-based services.

For almost a decade, journalists and pundits have been asking why we don't see successful examples of political satire from conservatives or of opinion talk radio from liberals. This book turns that question on its head to argue that opinion talk is the political satire of the right and political satire is the opinion programming of the left. They look and feel like two different animals because their audiences are literally, two different animals. In Irony and Outrage, political and media psychologist Dannagal Goldthwaite Young explores the aesthetics, underlying logics, and histories of these two seemingly distinct genres, making the case that they should be thought of as the logical extensions of the psychology of the left and right, respectively. One genre is guided by ambiguity, play, deliberation, and openness, while the other is guided by certainty, vigilance, instinct, and boundaries. While the audiences for Sean Hannity and John Oliver come from opposing political ideologies, both are high in political interest, knowledge, and engagement, and both lack faith in many of our core democratic institutions. Young argues that the roles that these two genres play for their viewers are strikingly similar: galvanizing the opinion of the left or the right, mobilizing citizens around certain causes, and expressing a frustration with traditional news coverage while offering alternative sources of information and meaning. One key way in which they differ, however, concludes Young, is in their capacity to be exploited by special interests and political elites. Drawing on decades of research on political and media psychology and media effects, as well as historical accounts and interviews with comedians and comedy writers, Young unpacks satire's liberal "bias" and juxtaposes it with that of outrage's conservative "bias." She details how traits like tolerance for ambiguity and the motivation to engage with complex ideas shape our preferences for art, music, and literature; and how those same traits correlate with political ideology. In turn, she illustrates how these traits help explain why liberals and conservatives vary in the genres of political information they prefer to create and consume.

A political biography that reveals new sides to Helen Keller Several decades after her death in 1968, Helen Keller remains one of the most widely recognized women of the twentieth century. But the fascinating story of her vivid political life-particularly her interest in radicalism and anti-capitalist activism-has been largely overwhelmed by the sentimentalized story of her as a young deaf-blind girl. Keller had many lives indeed. Best known for her advocacy on behalf of the blind, she was also a member of the socialist party, an advocate of women's suffrage, a defender of the radical International Workers of the World, and a supporter of birth control-and she served as one of the nation's most effective but unofficial international ambassadors. In spite of all her political work, though, Keller rarely explored the political dimensions of disability, adopting beliefs that were often seen as conservative, patronizing, and occasionally repugnant. Under the wing of Alexander Graham Bell, a controversial figure in the deaf community who promoted lip-reading over sign language, Keller became a proponent of oralism, thereby alienating herself from others in the deaf community who believed that a rich deaf culture was possible through sign language. But only by distancing herself from the deaf community was she able to maintain a public image as a one-of-a-kind miracle. Using analytic tools and new sources, Kim E. Nielsen's political biography of Helen Keller has many lives, teasing out the motivations for and implications of her political and personal revolutions to reveal a more complex and intriguing woman than the Helen Keller we thought we knew.

Drawing on rehabilitation publications, novels by both famous and obscure American writers, and even the prosthetic masks of a classically trained sculptor, Great War Prostheses in American Literature and Culture addresses the ways in which prosthetic devices were designed, promoted, and depicted in America in the years during and after the First World War. The war's mechanized weaponry ushered in an entirely new relationship between organic bodies and the technology that could both cause, and attempt to remedy, hideous injuries. Such a relationship was also evident in the realm of prosthetic development, which by the second decade of the twentieth century promoted the belief that a prosthesis should be a spiritual extension of the person who possessed it. This spiritualized vision of prostheses proved particularly resonant in American postwar culture. Relying on some of the most recent developments in literary and disability studies, the book's six chapters explain how a prosthesis's spiritual promise was largely dependent on its ability to nullify an injury and help an amputee renew or even improve upon his prewar life. But if it proved too cumbersome, obtrusive, or painful, the device had the long-lasting power to efface or distort his 'spirit' or personality.

Including people with disabilities fully into Canadian society, with the rights enjoyed by non-disabled people, requires a fundamental social transformation, not simply "fixing" some bodies. It requires deep changes in the attitudes, cultural images and policies that make people with disabilities invisible, set them aside, undermine or reject their contributions and value, and justifies their neglect, abuse and death. This shift involves the simple recognition and honouring of the dignity, autonomy and rights of all people, including those who experience disabilities. In the second edition of About Canada: Disability Rights, Deborah Stienstra explores the historical and current experiences of people with disabilities in Canada, as well as the policy and advocacy responses to these experiences. Stienstra demonstrates that disability rights enable people with disabilities to make decisions about their lives and future, claim rights on their own behalf, and participate actively in all areas of Canadian society. Disability rights can and does increase access to and inclusion in critical areas like education, employment, transportation, telecommunications and health care. Additionally, Stienstra identifies new approaches and practices, such as universal design, disability supports and income supports, that can transform Canadian society to be more inclusive and accommodating for everyone.

Societal research has shown that there is a direct correlation between income disparities and health disparities. In other words: the poorer the population, the less healthy the population becomes. Over the last thirty years, there has been an increasing gap between the wealthy and poor in many industrialized societies. As a result, there has also been an increasing decline in the quality of health for these social orders. The Social Work and Health Inequalities Network (SWHIN) was created to combat the causes and consequences of socially unjust health disparities on an international basis. This is accomplished through a sustaining global network of professionals: researches, educators, practitioners, policy makers and others work together to promote research and action around the world. The SWHIN aims to exchange information and resources (e.g. research evidence, policy statements, and emerging theories and practice models) to collaborate on the development and exchange of solutions for these health issues. The hope is to teach about these problems at all curricular levels and influence policy making wherever possible. This book brings together a combination of fifteen studies and policy reviews to fully understand the role that social work plays in assisting others, especially in fields where human health is concerned.

Shared Musical Lives makes the case for the epistemological and ethical significance of musical experience. Music can be a source of self-knowledge and self-expression, and hence reveal important dimensions of the self to others. This knowledge-of both self and of others-has a moral force as well. Shared musical experience can transform and establish new modes of being with others, cultivate virtues, and expand the moral imagination. The term sonification (which means translating data into non-verbal audible tones) provides an organizing principle for the arguments in the book. Transposing the concept into a philosophical key, this book explores two forms of sonification: first, the process by which musical experience reveals dimensions of the self and relationships with others; and second, philosophical sonification, or the critical examination of philosophical concepts, arguments, and theories in view of what musical experience reveals. These two kinds of sonification are discussed specifically in the context of disability. In this book, author Licia Carlson brings the musical lives of people with cognitive and intellectual disabilities into the foreground in order to challenge and broaden existing conceptions of disability and music and provide new ways of thinking about the philosophies of music and disability.

The digitalization of society is spreading around the world and technology has become part of many people's daily lives. It acts as a means of communication, work, education and leisure. For populations with special needs (people with some kind of disability or disorder) technology can play an essential role in their rehabilitation and treatment. It also empowers the individuals themselves. The aim of this multi-disciplinary research for decades has been to explore, develop and evaluate innovative technology to aid people with disabilities through virtual reality and associated machinery. The field engages researchers from health sectors, areas of engineering and schools of education to collaborate in order to take on a holistic approach to meet these challenges.

I was written off is an insight into the lives of six talented women: their dreams and aspirations, achievements and constant struggles and the challenges they faced in Pakistan. Through their real-life stories, author Dr Talat Azad presents a snapshot of how these inspirational women, against all odds, overcame their disabilities and today are an example of the resourcefulness of the human spirit and what can be achieved with resolve and determination. "I am passionate that these real-life stories be heard", says Dr Talat, "for they turn the spotlight on to the rights of the disabled within Pakistan and the world." "These women are an example to anyone, telling them that despite their circumstances, not to give up but to take hope and push through."

The main focus of the book is on facilities for families in rural and peri-urban areas of low- and middle-income countries, but many of the approaches and solutions may also be applied in institutional settings, such as schools and hospitals and in emergency situations.

In The Terrible We Cameron Awkward-Rich thinks with the bad feelings and mad habits of thought that persist in both transphobic discourse and trans cultural production. Observing that trans studies was founded on a split from and disavowal of madness, illness, and disability, Awkward-Rich argues for and models a trans criticism that works against this disavowal. By tracing the coproduction of the categories of disabled and transgender in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century and analyzing transmasculine literature and theory by Eli Clare, Elliott DeLine, Dylan Scholinski, and others, Awkward-Rich suggests that thinking with maladjustment might provide new perspectives on the impasses arising from the conflicted relationships among trans, feminist, and queer. In so doing, he demonstrates that rather than only impeding or confining trans life, thought, and creativity, forms of maladjustment have also been and will continue to be central to their development. Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient

Over the past decade, several studies have shed light on how the Ambient Assistive Technology (AAT) may increase the life expectancy of older adults experiencing cognitive decline who continue to live in their own homes, as well as improve their autonomy and independence, facilitate their daily activities, and monitor their health status. These technologies can also assist in facilitating social inclusion, helping families, and supporting healthcare organisations. This book discusses AAT for people with dementia. It also discusses other assistive technologies which include robotics; web accessibility; hands free assistive technology; brain-computer interfaces; and it examines assistive technology integration in pre-service educators.

Students with disabilities face several longstanding challenges accessing services that may assist them as they transition from high school into post-secondary education or the workforce services, such as tutoring, vocational training, and assistive technology. Eligible students with disabilities are entitled to transition planning services during high school, but after leaving high school, to receive services that facilitate their transition they must apply as adults and establish eligibility for programs administered by multiple federal agencies. This book focuses on ways to better the federal co-ordination, its ability to lessen challenges students with disabilities face in the transition from high school.