Inclusive Education in the global South? A Colombian perspective: ‘When you look towards the past, you see children with disabilities, and if you look towards the future, what you see is diverse learners
Services for people with Communication Disabilities in Uganda: supporting a new Speech and Language Therapy profession
Frida Kahlo and Pendular Disability Identity: A Textual Examination of El Diario de Frida Kahlo
Health Information-Seeking Behaviour of Visually Impaired Persons in Ibadan Metropolis, Nigeria
Online Collective Identities for Autism: The Perspective of Brazilian Parents
Transnationalizing Disability Policy in Embedded Cultural-Cognitive Worldviews: the Case of Sub-Saharan Africa
The importance of online communities for parents of people with disabilities has been discussed by many scholars in the fields of Digital and Disability Studies, showing, for instance, the importance of social support and the formation of social ties. In order to contribute to this scholarship, this paper explores how collective identity models are built and circulated by parents of autistic people in one of the biggest Brazilian online communities about the subject, ‘Sou autista… conheça o meu mundo’ (I am autistic…get to know my world). The results were obtained through a digital ethnography, based on participant observation and an exchange of information with the members of the community studied. Based on the data collected, the study concludes that the collective identity models that circulate in this community can be grouped into legitimising, resistant, and project identities, as postulated by Castells (2010). The different views reflect how parents see autism and represent the ways it is treated in Brazilian society.
Disability and the Global South, 2018 Vol.5, No. 1
This paper explores the views of 10 participants on how the Kuwaiti media represents disabled people. Participants expressed their views through focus groups and interviews. The findings show that, generally, disabled people in Kuwait are shown in a negative light in the media. The media depicts disabled people as ‘pitiable’, ‘violent’, ‘sinister’, ‘tragic’, and as a ‘tool of ridicule’. The findings, however, witness some positive examples of media representation regarding how some TV shows portray deaf people in a positive light. On the other hand, the study suggests that learning disabled people are the most negatively depicted group in Kuwaiti society. There are also indications of implicit endorsement or internalisation by the participants of views of disabled people as ‘extraordinary’ despite the presence of their impairments. The study concludes that it is more important that the media shows the everyday lives of disabled people before showing their abilities and achievements.
Disability and the Global South, 2018, Vol.5, No. 1
