Disability and Digital Television Cultures offers an important addition to scholarly studies at the intersection of disability and media, examining disability in the context of digital television access, representation and reception. Television, as a central medium of communication, has marginalized people with disability through both representation on screen and the lack of accessibility to this medium. With accessibility options becoming available as television is switched to digital transmissions, audience research into television representations must include a corresponding consideration of access. This book provides a comprehensive and critical study of the way people with disability access and watch digital TV. International case studies and media reports are complimented by findings of a user-focused study into accessibility and representation captured during the Australian digital television switchover in 2013-2014. This book will provide a reliable, independent guide to fundamental shifts in media access while also offering insight from the disability community. It will be essential reading for researchers working on disability and media, as well as television, communications and culture; upper-level undergraduate and postgraduate students in cultural studies; along with general readers with an interest in disability and digital culture.

Affirmative Action and the Law analyses the practical application of affirmative action measures and their efficacy in achieving substantive equality through the lenses of the United Nations human rights machinery and the legal regime and policies implemented in China, India, Central and South America, South Africa and the United Kingdom. The product of a joint research project involving academics from the Brazil, Chile, Mexico, India, Spain and the United Kingdom, the findings identify and reflect on trends emerging from State practice across the world in eradicating structural inequality through special measures for certain designated groups. The book seeks to provide a coherent and systematic approach to the analysis of special measures in the targeted countries. It also comprises two case-studies with in-depth insights on gender diversity on the boards of public listed companies in the UK and the European Union and the access of persons with disabilities to higher education in Brazil. The book will be a valuable resource for students and academics in the field of human rights, law, sociology and politics. It will also provide a source of good practice for states and policy makers in the framing of responses to increased inequality at national and international level; and for civil society actors seeking to explore meaningful interaction with a highly controversial topic in society.

Recent policies and government initiatives in many Western countries have strengthened the expectation that young disabled people have the right to be involved in decisions affecting their futures. Many of the choices that are currently taken out of young disabled people's hands, including those relating to education and future employment, are now being viewed as an opportunity to encourage participation in the decision making process. Sonali Shah uses a comparative study of young disabled students within mainstream and special education to determine the influence these recent policies will have on the realization of their long term goals. Young Disabled People: Aspirations, Choices and Constraints will be essential reading for academics in the fields of education, disability studies and employment policy. It will also be valuable to policy makers and teaching and careers professionals.

Disability sport is a relatively recent phenomenon, yet it is also one that, particularly in the context of social inclusion, is attracting increasing political and academic interest. The purpose of this important new text - the first of its kind - is to introduce the reader to key concepts in disability and disability sport and to examine the complex relationships between modern sport, disability and other aspects of wider society. Drawing upon original data from interviews, surveys and policy documents, the book examines how disability sport has developed and is currently organised, and explores key themes, issues and concepts including: disability theory and policy the emergence and development of disability sport disability sport development in local authorities mainstreaming disability sport disability, physical education and school sport elite disability sport and the Paralympic Games disability sport and the media. Including chapter summaries, seminar questions and lists of key websites and further reading throughout, Sport, Disability and Society provides both an easy to follow introduction and a critical exploration of the key issues surrounding disability sport in the twenty-first century. This book is an invaluable resource for all students, researchers and professionals working in sport studies, disability studies, physical education, sociology and social policy. Nigel Thomas is Head of Sport and Exercise at Staffordshire University, UK, where his research focuses on the history, mainstreaming, and media coverage of disability sport. He previously worked for ten years with young disabled people as a sports development officer in local authorities and national governing bodies. Andy Smith is Lecturer in the Sociology of Sport and Exercise at the University of Chester, UK. He is a co-editor of the International Journal of Sport Policy, and a co-author of Sport Policy and Development: A Sociological Introduction, and An Introduction to Drugs in Sport: Addicted to Winning? Both books are published by Routledge (2009).

How can or does youth sport reconcile what seems to be a fundamental contradiction between understandings of sport and disability? Has youth sport been challenged in anyway? Have alternative views of sport for disabled people been presented? Examining some of the latest research, this book considers the relationship between sport and disability by exploring a range of questions such as these.

Disability and Youth Sport further challenges current thinking and therefore serves to stimulate progressive debate in this area. Drawing on a breadth of literature from sports pedagogy, sociology of sport, disability studies, inclusive education, and adapted physical activity, a socially critical dialogue is developed where the voices of young disabled people are central. Topics covered include:

• researching disability and youth sport

• inclusion policy towards physical education and youth sport

• constructions of disability through youth sport

• the voices of young disabled people

• the historical context of disability sport

With its comprehensive coverage and expert contributors from around the globe, this book is an ideal text for students at all levels with an interest in youth sport, disability studies, or sport policy.

Disability is a thorny and muddled concept - especially in the field of disability studies - and social accounts contest with more traditional biologically based approaches in highly politicized debates. Sustained theoretical scrutiny has sometimes been lost amongst the controversy and philosophical issues have often been overlooked in favour of the sociological. Arguing about Disability fills that gap by offering analysis and debate concerning the moral nature of institutions, policy and practice, and their significance for disabled people and society.

This pioneering collection is divided into three sections covering definitions and theories of disability; disabled people in society and applied ethics. Each contributor - drawn from a wide range of academic backgrounds including disability studies, sociology, psychology, education, philosophy, law and health science - uses a philosophical framework to explore a central issue in disability studies. The issues discussed include personhood, disability as a phenomenon, social justice, discrimination and inclusion.

Providing an overview of the intersection of disability studies and philosophical ethics, Arguing about Disability is a truly interdisciplinary undertaking. It will be invaluable for all academics and students with an interest in disability studies or applied ethics, as well as disability activists.

This edited volume includes chapters on disability studies organized around three themes: Theory, Philosophy and Critique. Informed by a range of scholars who may or may not fashion their work beneath the banner of disability studies in explicit terms, it draws connections across a range of identities, knowledges, histories, and struggles that may, on the face of the text seem unrelated. The chapters are cross-categorical and interdisciplinary for purposes of complicating disability studies across international contexts and multiple locations that consider practice-oriented and intersectional approaches for analysis and advocacy. This integrative approach heralds more powerful ways to imagine disability and the conversation on disability.

Hoop Dreams on Wheels is a life-history study of wheelchair athletes associated with a premier collegiate wheelchair basketball program. The book, which grapples with the intersection of biography and history in society, situates the study in broader context with background on the history and sociology of disability and disability sports. It documents the development and evolution of the basketball program and tells the individual life stories of the athletes, highlighting the formative interpersonal and institutional experiences that influenced their agentive actions and that helped them achieve success in wheelchair sports. It also examines divisions within the disability community that reveal both empowering and disempowering aspects of competitive wheelchair athletics, and it explores some of the complexities and dilemmas of disability identity in contemporary society. The book is intended to be read by a general audience as well as by students in college courses on disability, sports, social problems, deviance, medical sociology and anthropology, and introductory sociology. It also will be of interest to scholars in the sociology of disability, sociology of sports, and medical humanities, as well as life-history researchers and professionals in the fields of physical education, therapeutic recreation, and rehabilitative counseling.

As William Roth was taking his first steps, members of his family were caught up in the Nazi Holocaust. At age eight, he began to manifest the symptoms of dystonia, a neurological disease characterized by severe movement disorders. And at age forty-seven, he was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the tonsil, a cancer that would prove as invasive as his genetic disease and as dreadful as his social persecution.Today, at age 65, Roth is more than a survivor. Mobilizing his courage to spearhead the discipline of disability studies, be active in the Disability Rights Movement, influence government policy toward disability, and found the non-profit Center for Computing and Disability, Roth used his own disability to change the life of disabled people in America. This, his memoir, is the story of three intertwined narratives and the miraculous success that one man carved from them.

Comedy and humour have frequently played a key role in disabled people's lives, for better or for worse. Comedy has also played a crucial part in constructing cultural representations of disability and impairments, contributing to the formation and maintenance of cultural attitudes towards disabled people, and potentially shaping disabled people's images of themselves. As a complex and often polysemic form of communication, there is a need for greater understanding of the way we make meanings from comedy. This is the first book which explores the specific role of comedic film genres in representations of disability and impairment. Wilde argues that there is a need to explore different ways to synthesise Critical/Disability Studies with Film Studies approaches, and that a better understanding of genre conventions is necessary if we are to understand the conditions of possibility for new representational forms and challenges to ableism. After a discussion of the possibilities of a 'fusion' between Disability Studies and Film Studies, and a consideration of the relationships of comedy to disability, Wilde undertakes analysis of contemporary films from the romantic comedy, satire, and gross-out genres. Analysis is focused upon the place of disabled and non-disabled people in particular films, considering visual, audio, and narrative dimensions of representation and the ways they might shape the expectations of film audiences. This book is of particular value to those in Film and Media Studies, and Critical/Disability Studies, especially for those who are investigating more inclusive practices in cultural representation.

This book traces the development of paid work for visually impaired people in the UK from the 18th century to the present day. It gives a voice to visually impaired people to talk about their working lives and documents the history of employment from their experience, an approach which is severely lacking in the current literature about visual impairment and employment. By analysing fifty in-depth face-to-face interviews with visually impaired people talking about their working lives (featuring those who have worked in traditional jobs such as telephony, physiotherapy and piano tuning, to those who have pursued more unusual occupations and professions), and grouping them according to occupation and framed by documentary, historical research, these stories can be situated in their broader political, economic, ideological and cultural contexts. The themes that emerge will help to inform present day policy and practice within a context of high unemployment amongst visually impaired people of working age. It is part of a growing literature which gives voice to disabled people about their own lives and which adds to the growing academic discipline of disability studies and the empowerment of disabled people.

Without access to a public social welfare system in parts of China, some families face invidious decisions about the lives of their children with disabilities. In other places, children with disabilities can now expect to participate in their families and communities with the same aspirations as other children. Understanding how Chinese policy has changed in the places that have addressed these stark situations is vital for the rights of the children and their families who still struggle to find the support they need. This book examines family experiences of child disability policy in China, and is the first to compile research on this area. It applies a child disability rights framework in four domains - care and protection, economic security, development and participation - to investigate families' experiences of the effectiveness of support to fulfil their children's rights. Questioning how families experience the interrelationships between these rights, it also considers what the further implications of the policy are. It includes vivid case studies of families' experiences, and combines these with national data to draw out the likely future policy directions to which the Chinese government has said it is committed. Bringing together a wealth of statistical and qualitative data on children with disabilities, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese social welfare, social policy, society and children's studies, as well as policy-makers and NGOs alike.

The purpose of this book is to challenge people (service providers, people with a hearing disability and those who advocate for them) to reconsider the way western society thinks about hearing disability and the way it seeks to 'include them'. It highlights the concern that the design of hearing services is so historically marinated in ableist culture that service users often do not realise they may be participating in their own oppression within a phono-centric society. With stigma and marginalisation being the two most critical issues impacting on people with hearing disability, Hogan and Phillips document both the collective and personal impacts of such marginality. In so doing, the book brings forward an argument for a paradigm shift in hearing services. Drawing upon the latest research and policy work, the book opens up a conceptual framework for a new approach to hearing services and looks at the kinds of personal and systemic changes a paradigm shift would entail.

Over recent decades an increasing amount of attention has been paid to identifying and meeting the individual support needs of mental health service users and people with physical impairments in the UK. Evidence of this can be seen within the literature that considers mental health and physical impairment from a wide range of perspectives, as well as the increased range of service provision for individuals within both categories. However, the support needs of individuals who fall into both categories have largely been overlooked by social care and health service providers, practitioners, and organisations for whom the main focus is either mental health or physical impairment. The lack of attention that has been given in theory and in practice to the mental health support needs of disabled women who experience mental distress has resulted in an insufficient knowledge base of how to support disabled women who may require some form of mental health support. For this group of women this has meant that their needs have arguably continued to be neglected and subsequently left unmet. Writing from her position as both a social worker and a service user, Julia Smith has written an innovative and important text which both discusses a neglected area of personal experience and makes an original contribution to knowledge with regard to both policy and practice.

Published in 1999. Contemporary organizations are faced with increasingly rapid and dramatic change within their political, cultural and technological environments. Institutions in Turbulent Environments critically examines the way organizations respond to these changes,with a particular focus upon the institutional disability sector. The book examines available theory concerning organizational contingency, adaptation and population ecology. It utilizes a framework developed from this theory to examine the ways in which a major institution for the intellectually disabled responded to the turbulence within its environment. It uses this data to re-examine theory and to propose changes to the way organization/environment relationships are understood.

First published in 1999, this volume explores how the principle of normalisation informs British learning disability services by instructing them to help service users acquire behaviours and characteristics which are as 'culturally normative as possible'. While many studies have attempted to assess the efficacy of this approach, their measurement criteria are usually based on levels of competence and participation - values themselves derived from the principle of normalisation. The case study in this volume compares services in London to services in Milan, Northern Italy,where the concept of deinstitutionalisation has been interpreted differently. Recommendations are made for increasing good practice in certain aspects of British provision. A key suggestion is that consistent, legislated training for support staff in British learning disability services might contribute towards ameliorating current difficulties described by much of the contemporary research.

Inclusive design not only ensures that products, services, interfaces and environments are easier to use for those with special needs or limitations, but in doing so also makes them better for everyone. Design for Inclusivity, written by a team that has pioneered inclusive design practice internationally, reviews the recent social trends and pressures that have pushed this subject to the fore, and assesses design responses to date in an international context. The authors make the business case for inclusive design and explain the formalisation of the approach in standards and legislation. The text includes case studies which describe transport, product development, IT and service projects, as well as industry-university collaborative projects, and highlights lessons that have been learned. This is very much a practical book. It offers tools, techniques, guidelines and signposts for the reader to key resources, as well as including advice on research methods, and working with users and industry partners.

This book describes an inquiry into the upbringing of young cerebral palsied children. Following the precedent set by John and Elizabeth Newson in their studies of normal children at home; Sheila Hewett visited the mothers of 180 spastic children and obtained their personal accounts of their experiences.

There is considerable literature on handicapped children in which the adverse effects of their presence in the family are emphasized. This study is the first to present, not evidence provided by professional people, but that of a large number of mothers of all social classes who have children with all degrees of handicap. They tell in their own words how they meet the problems and anxieties of everyday life and how they strive to maintain the norms of family living in spite of their very real difficulties. A measure of their success is provided by a number of comparisons with the families of normal children.

Hewett's nursing experience combined with a social science training and personal experience of parenthood contributed a useful background for this research. Resulting as it does from close collaboration with the Newsons, her work provides an important extension of the main work of the Child Development Research Unit in Nottingham. It will help all those who work with handicapped children to achieve a better understanding of the families to whom they offer their specialist knowledge. To the general public it offers an opportunity to gain insights into a situation, which calls for their support and acceptance but not their pity. For the parents of handicapped children themselves it provides a much-needed opportunity to make their views known and to see that they are not alone in the difficulties, which they face with such stoicism and resourcefulness.

This book's last aim has been achieved by using the now extensive information about the upbringing of normal children obtained from Nottingham mothers in the United Kingdom, by John and Elizabeth Newson.

This fully updated third edition contains practical and useful advice that will be invaluable for students with dyslexia, their parents and all of those involved in teaching and supporting them in their studies. Including the latest research into dyslexia, changes in legislation and information technology and the real-life experiences of six former Bangor students this book will:

- guide students through the process of applying for university, suggesting strategies for general organisation and for particular aspects of study

- outline how to get the best personally and academically from higher education

- give practical advice on setting up and using support facilities (both human and technological)

- be an accessible text for mainstream lecturers and tutors who need to be aware of the implications of the Disability Discrimination Act.

New chapters include 'Dyslexia plus', giving information on dyspraxia, attention disorders, Asperger's syndrome, and the more controversial 'dyscalculia'. 'Out of College and into Work' gives advice for students on the challenges they face after graduation.

This fully updated third edition contains practical and useful advice that will be invaluable for students with dyslexia, their parents and all of those involved in teaching and supporting them in their studies. Including the latest research into dyslexia, changes in legislation and information technology and the real-life experiences of six former Bangor students this book will: * guide students through the process of applying for university, suggesting strategies for general organisation and for particular aspects of study * outline how to get the best personally and academically from higher education * give practical advice on setting up and using support facilities (both human and technological) * be an accessible text for mainstream lecturers and tutors who need to be aware of the implications of the Disability Discrimination Act. New chapters include 'Dyslexia plus', giving information on dyspraxia, attention disorders, Asperger's syndrome, and the more controversial 'dyscalculia'. 'Out of College and into Work' gives advice for students on the challenges they face after graduation.

Bridging the chasm between the disabled and a just and fair society takes skill, dedication, and a deep understanding of the issues. Disability and Social Work Education: Practice and Policy Issues presents leading social work experts providing insightful, effective strategies to address the current gaps in the system between social work and those individuals with disabilities. Diverse perspectives on all levels of social work practice are integrated with the basic tenets of social justice, accessibility to services, and human rights. Specific challenges and issues are addressed in work with disabled populations. Disability and Social Work Education: Practice and Policy Issues examines the social construction of disability that connotes inferiority and highlights practical strategies for change. This creative resource gives social work educators, students, and practitioners the opportunity to embrace diverse and creative ways for integrating a generalist social work model in their work with various size systems that are related to disability. Chapters include extensive references, appendixes, tables, and figures to clearly illustrate topics. Topics in Disability and Social Work Education: Practice and Policy Issues include: model curriculum on disabilities that incorporates diverse perspectives of social work practice with individuals who have physical, cognitive, and psychiatric disabilities protecting the legal rights of children and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) empowering disabled individuals for civil rights to have access to community living the academic process of helping students who are disabled achieve their academic goals components of the Americans with Disabilities Act-and key decisions made by the Supreme Court strategies of intervention for macro change historical overview of family policy and practice as it relates to children and adolescents who are disabled the biopsychosocial framework as an assessment tool to develop interventions the use of the therapeutic relationship and psychodynamic and ecological approaches to social work practices helping clients with disabilities develop adaptive religious and spiritual beliefs disability protests and movements and their implications on social work practice the Capacity Approach and the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health as social work tools basic guidelines for undertaking research about and with people who have disabilities Disability and Social Work Education: Practice and Policy Issues is a valuable, unique resource for social work educators, students, and practitioners.

The 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) is the first human rights treaty to explicitly acknowledge the right to education for persons with disabilities. In order to realize this right, the convention's Article 24 mandates state parties to ensure inclusive education systems that overcome outright exclusion as well as segregation in special education settings. Despite this major global policy change to tackle the discriminations persons with disabilities face in education, this has yet to take effect in most school systems worldwide. Focusing on the factors undermining the realization of disability rights in education, Julia Biermann probes current meanings of inclusive education in two contrasting yet equally challenged state parties to the UN CRPD: Nigeria, whose school system overtly excludes disabled children, and Germany, where this group primarily learns in special schools. In both countries, policy actors aim to realize the right to inclusive education by segregating students with disabilities into special education settings. In Nigeria, this demand arises from the glaring lack of such a system. In Germany, conversely, from its extraordinary long-term institutionalization. This act of diverting from the principles embodied in Article 24 is based on the steadfast and shared belief that school systems, which place students into special education, have an innate advantage in realizing the right to education for persons with disabilities. Accordingly, inclusion emerges to be an evolutionary and linear process of educational expansion that depends on institutionalized special education, not a right of persons with disabilities to be realized in local schools on an equal basis with others. This book proposes a refined human rights model of disability in education that shifts the analytical focus toward the global politics of formal mass schooling as a space where discrimination is sustained.

This path-breaking international handbook of disability studies signals the emergence of a vital new area of scholarship, social policy and activism. Drawing on the insights of disability scholars around the world and the creative advice of an international editorial board, the book engages the reader in the critical issues and debates framing disability studies and places them in an historical and cultural context. Five years in the making, this one volume summarizes the ongoing discourse ranging across continents and traditional academic disciplines. To provide insight and perspective, the volume is divided into three sections: The shaping of disability studies as a field; experiencing disability; and, disability in context. Each section, written by world class figures, consists of original chapters designed to map the field and explore the key conceptual, theoretical, methodological, practice and policy issues that constitute the field. Each chapter provides a critical review of an area, positions and literature and an agenda for future research and practice. The handbook answers the need expressed by the disability community for a thought provoking, interdisciplinary, international examination of the vibrant field of disability studies. The book will be of interest to disabled people, scholars, policy makers and activists alike. The book aims to define the existing field, stimulate future debate, encourage respectful discourse between different interest groups and move the field a step forward.

"Reading Victorian Deafness "is the first book to address the crucial role that deaf people, and their unique language of signs, played in Victorian culture. Drawing on a range of works, from fiction by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, to poetry by deaf poets and life writing by deaf memoirists Harriet Martineau and John Kitto, to scientific treatises by Alexander Graham Bell and Francis Galton, "Reading Victorian Deafness" argues that deaf people's language use was a public, influential, and contentious issue in Victorian Britain.
The Victorians understood signed languages in multiple, and often contradictory, ways: they were objects of fascination and revulsion, were of scientific import and literary interest, and were considered both a unique mode of human communication and a vestige of a bestial heritage. Over the course of the nineteenth century, deaf people were increasingly stripped of their linguistic and cultural rights by a widespread pedagogical and cultural movement known as "oralism," comprising mainly hearing educators, physicians, and parents.
Engaging with a group of human beings who used signs instead of speech challenged the Victorian understanding of humans as "the speaking animal" and the widespread understanding of "language" as a product of the voice. It is here that "Reading Victorian Deafness "offers substantial contributions to the fields of Victorian studies and disability studies. This book expands current scholarly conversations around orality, textuality, and sound while demonstrating how understandings of disability contributed to Victorian constructions of normalcy. "Reading Victorian Deafness" argues that deaf people were used as material test subjects for the Victorian process of understanding human language and, by extension, the definition of the human.

This important text draws together a wealth of experience to present theoretical and practical insights into the way society intervenes in the lives of disabled people, and considers how resources could be used in ways that are more helpful and supportive. Stressing the social contexts within which disabilities become apparent, the contributors highlight two key points: disabled people have practical difficulties only in the area of life affected by their disability and in other respects are no different from anyone else; and they are handicapped not by the parameters of their disability but by the demands and attitudes of society. The contributors consider the position of people with specific types of disability, explore both sides of the `care' and `counselling' equation, and discuss training, legislation and aspects of management and attitudes among professionals. Beyond Disability has been developed as a Course Reader for the Open University course The Disabling Society (K255).