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Background: South African scholarship on intellectual disability has produced a sizeable body of research, yet there are numerous areas where there is a paucity of research. One area in which there is a conspicuous paucity of research is historical studies of people with intellectual disability (PWID). The existing works devoted to the history of PWID in South Africa are primarily focused on the legal provisions and institutions for the protection and care of PWID. Missing from these works are the life stories and experiences of PWID.

Objectives: The article offers a study devoted to the life stories and experiences of the children with intellectual disability (CWID) who were admitted to the Institute for Imbecile Children from 1895 to 1913. The institute opened in April 1895 in Makhanda (formerly known as Grahamstown), South Africa. The institute was the first of its kind in the Cape Colony for CWID.

Method: The study presents a qualitative investigation of the life stories and experiences of the children that were recorded in the institute’s casebook. The entire set of 101 cases contained in the casebook was analysed by adopting a Gadamerian approach to hermeneutics.

Results: The examination of the institute’s casebook identified several broad themes relating to the children’s admittance, daily life at the institute and their routes out of the institute. The study also extols the individuality of each child’s life story to provide an awareness and richer appreciation of the humanness and personhood of the children.

Conclusion: The article contributes a positive narrative to the identity and the history of South African children with intellectual disability living in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

African Journal of Disability, Vol 9, 2020 

This literature review outlines factors contributing to disability stigma in low- and middle-income countries. Overviews of disability stigma in the six Disability Inclusive Development (DID) programme countries – Bangladesh, Jordan, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, and Tanzania – are presented next. The review then looks at the literature on interventions to reduce disability stigma. Interventions aimed at addressing disability stigma in developing countries have been aimed at the intrapersonal and familial level; the interpersonal level; and the structural level.

This article posits a number of provocations for scholars and researchers engaged with Critical Disability Studies. We summarise some of the analytical twists and turns occurring over the last few years that create a number of questions and concerns. We begin by introducing Critical Disability Studies; describing it as an interdisciplinary field of scholarship building on foundational disability studies theories. Critical Disability Studies scholarship is being produced at an exponential rate and we assert that we need to take pause for thought. We lay out five provocations to encourage reflection and debate: what is the purpose of Critical Disability Studies; how inclusive is Critical Disability Studies; is disability the object or subject of studies; what matters or gets said about disability; and how can we attend to disability and ability? We conclude by making a case for a reflexive and politicised Critical Disability Studies.

Presented by actress and comedian Sally Phillips, A World Without Down’s Syndrome has brought important ethical debates regarding prenatal screening into the public domain. By talking to people with Down’s syndrome, family members, and professionals, Sally has presented a nuanced and thorough examination of the type of world we are living in. Following the documentary, Twitter users have continued to engage with debates and have created a resilient platform for challenging public attitudes. This paper explores the ways in which Twitter hashtags have provided a space for such important and long overdue conversations. While it would not be possible to provide a full overview of the topical conversations that the two hashtags have provoked, I aim to focus on some of the most prominent topics. The following, then, will explore the potential of alternative narratives that resist, and disrupt, normative notions of the human using the hashtags #worldwithoutdowns and #justaboutcoping.

Purpose: Measurements play a vital role in providing devices that meet the individual needs of users. There is increasing evidence of devices being abandoned. The reasons for this are complex but one key factor that plays a role in non-use of equipment is the lack of fit between the device, environment and person. In addition, the abandonment of devices can be seen as a waste of public money. The aim of this paper is to examine the type, the readability, and the content of existing guidance in relation to measuring home furniture.

Method: An online national survey involving health and social care trusts in the UK. We conducted a synthesis of leaflets associated with measurement of furniture to identify existing guidance. The content and readability of this guidance was then evaluated.

Results: From the 325 responses received, 64 therapists reported using guidance. From the 13 leaflets that were analysed, 8 leaflets were found to meet Level 3 Adult Literacy Standards (age 9–11). There were differences in the way in which the measurement of furniture items occurred within the leaflets with no measurement guidance reported for baths.

Conclusion: There is a need to standardize guidance to ensure that measurements are reliable.

Normativity is a concept that is often misapplied in disability studies, especially in ‘postconventional’ accounts, where the concept is conflated with ‘normal’, ‘normate’, or ‘standard’. This article addresses this confusion, explores the meaning and use of ‘normativity’, and presents some analytic tools to discuss normative issues of right and wrong. The article finishes by discussing examples where conceptual confusions result in confused normative judgments focusing in particular on agency, responsibility and moral status. The article argues that disability research should carefully consider the use of theories and empirical knowledge in the light of their ethical implications as well as the lived experiences of disability.

Even in the digital age, access to literature and other information for people with print impairments remains extremely poor, especially in the developing world. Reading access holds cascading implications for education, economic empowerment, social participation and self-worth. In June 2013 member states of WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization)concluded a landmark treaty to reduce copyright impediments to the dissemination of literature to print impaired people. Its effectiveness is not yet clear. Meanwhile, critics hold that disability studies’ analyses have too often lacked insight into the personal and psychological ramifications of exclusion. This article provides an account of the ‘book famine’ from the perspective of a print impaired South African disability researcher, arguing that thorough investigation of the impressions of exclusion is necessary for change. The account highlights the personal, even malignant psychological reverberations of deprivations such as the ‘bookfamine’, which may carry traumatic effects which cement the status quo.

Background: Disability research in the global South has not received significant critical consideration as to how it can be used to challenge the oppression and marginalisation of people with disabilities in low-income and middle-income countries. The Southern Africa Federation of the Disabled (SAFOD) embarked on a programme to use research to influence policy and practice relating to people with disabilities in Southern Africa, and commissioned an audit on research expertise in the region. In this article, a research audit is reported on and situated in a framework of mancipatory research.

Objectives: This article sets out to describe a preliminary audit of disability research in the southern African region and to draw conclusions about the current state of disability research in the region and make recommendations.

Method: The research method entailed working with disability researchers in the ten SAFOD member countries and utilising African disability networks hosted on electronic media. Disability researchers working in the region completed 87 questionnaires, which were reviewed through a thematic analysis.

Results: The discussion of results provides a consideration of definitions of disability; the understanding of disability rights, research topics and methodologies; the participation of people with disabilities in research; and the challenges and opportunities for using research to inform disability activism.

Conclusion: The conclusion highlights critical issues for future research in the region, and considers how a disability researcher database can be used as a tool for disability organisations to prioritise research that serves a disability rights agenda.

In Disability Studies the evolution of conceptual models is often portrayed as linear, with a nineteenth-century charity model shifting to the medical model that dominated disability discourse in the twentieth century. This is then assumed to be largely unchallenged until the 1970s, when an emergent Disability Rights Movement re-framed issues into the social model, from which evolved a rights-based model. This paper documents two early efforts to address disability issues submitted to the League of Nations: the Crippled Child’s Bill of Rights in 1931 and a ‘Memorial’ requesting the establishment of an International Bureau of Information on Crippled Children in 1929. Neither submission achieved its stated goals, yet both reflect early attempts to place disability within wider social contexts.