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"Assistive technology (AT) is a powerful enabler of participation. The World Health Organization’s Global Collaboration on Assistive Technology (GATE) programme is actively working towards access to assistive technology for all. Developed through collaborative work as a part of the Global Research, Innovation and Education on Assistive Technology (GREAT) Summit, this position paper provides a “state of the science” view of AT users, conceptualized as “People” within the set of GATE strategic “P”s. 

Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology 
Volume 13, 2018 - Issue 5: Position Papers from the First Global Research, Innovation, and Education on Assistive Technology (GREAT) Summit

This issue has 7 papers from the GREAT summit

https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2018.1471169

The main aims of this project were to document current knowledge about the intersectionality between sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), communication disability and refugees, to identify any reported good practice, and to begin to understand and describe the challenges to supporting refugee-survivors of SGBV with communication disability, in Rwanda. The project involved 54 participants, including 50 humanitarian and partner organisation staff and four carers of refugees with communication disabilities, from two locations (camp-based and urban refugees).

International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology,  20:1, 44-49,

DOI: 10.1080/17549507.2017.1392608

"Languages are dynamic and change over the years. Changes in sign languages have been usually initiated to accommodate the needs of the local Deaf community. With the increase in smartphone use, sign languages are influenced not only by the local Deaf community, but also by foreign Deaf people on the other side of the screen, regardless of their location. Smartphones influence the sign language itself and the Deaf community by connecting different communities of Deaf people through messages, shared information and experiences, and news delivery. The popularity of this technology among Deaf communities is a social phenomenon emerging from Deaf people themselves. Smartphones may promote the globalization of sign language, shortening distances between Deaf communities around the world"

Disability & Society, Volume 33, 2018 - Issue 2

The journal issue Reproductive Health Matters, vol.25, no.50, May 2017 features disability and sexuality.

Research article titles are:

• Disability is not asexuality: the childbearing experiences and aspirations of women with disability in Zimbabwe
• Exploring misinformation of family planning practices and methods among deaf people in Ghana
• “We do not dare to love”: women with disabilities’ sexual and reproductive health and rights in rural Cambodia
• A qualitative study to explore the barriers and enablers for young people with disabilities to access sexual and reproductive health services in Senegal
• “Freedom to go where I want”: improving access to sexual and reproductive health for women with disabilities in the Philippines
• The sexual and reproductive rights and benefit derived from sexual and reproductive health services of people with physical disabilities in South Africa: beliefs of non-disabled people
• Female genital mutilation as sexual disability: perceptions of women and their spouses in Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria. 

The central aim of this anthology of papers is to consider the place of law in political, social, scientific and biomedical developments relating to disability and other categories of ‘abnormality’. The papers consider how categories of abnormality relate to the privileged and frequently unmarked position of ‘normality’ and how legal interventions in abnormality relate to existing normative designations in the dominant cultural imaginary. This collection of papers has a range of disciplinary approaches

Paper titles:

• Fit or fitting in: deciding against normal when reproducing the future
• Eccentricity: the case for undermining legal categories of disability and normalcy
• Eugenics and the normal body: the role of visual images and intelligence testing in framing the treatment of people with disabilities in the early twentieth century
• The construction of access: the eugenic precedent of the Americans with Disabilities Act
• Disability and torture: exception, epistemology and ‘black sites’
• Mental capacity and states of exception: revisiting disability law with Giorgio Agamben
• Not just language: an analysis of discursive constructions of disability in sentencing remarks
• Policing normalcy: sexual violence against women offenders with disability
• ‘The government is the cause of the disease and we are stuck with the symptoms’: deinstitutionalisation, mental health advocacy and police shootings in 1990s Victoria
• Disruptive, dangerous and disturbing: the ‘challenge’ of behaviour in the construction of normalcy and vulnerability
• Making the abject: problem-solving courts, addiction, mental illness and impairment
• Cripwashing: the abortion debates at the crossroads of gender and disability in the Spanish media
• ‘Figurehead’ hate crime cases: developing a framework for understanding and exposing the ‘problem’ with ‘disability’

Continuum 

Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Vol.31, No.3, pp. 337-340

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2017.1275077

"More than one billion people worldwide are estimated to be living with a disability. A significant proportion of them lives in Sub-Saharan Africa where they are reported to be at increased risk of HIV. However, quantitative evidence on this remains scarce. A systematic review and a meta-analysis of the risk of HIV infection among people with disabilities living in Sub-Saharan Africa were undertaken. We searched all published or unpublished studies and national surveys reporting HIV prevalence among adults with disabilities living in Sub-Saharan Africa between 2000 and 2013. The risk ratio (RR) of HIV infection in people with disabilities versus people without disabilities was estimated through a random-effects meta-analysis. Of the 12,252 references screened, 13 studies were selected. HIV prevalence varied widely across studies from 1.1% to 29%. Pooled RRs of HIV infection in people with disabilities compared to the general population were 1.31 (1.02–1.69) overall; 1.16 (0.71–1.87) among people with mental illness or intellectual disabilities and 1.07 (0.58–1.95) among people with hearing disabilities. This meta-analysis provides evidence that people with disabilities do not have a lower risk of HIV when compared to the general population, and that women with disabilities are especially affected. A clear increasing gradient in the risk of HIV according to gender and disability status was also observed. The important heterogeneity across studies and their varying quality warrant a closer look at the intersection between disability and HIV. Additional studies with more systematic approaches and with higher-quality methodologies are required to further address this knowledge gap"

AIDS Care : Psychological and Socio-medical Aspects of HIV/AIDS, Volume 26, Issue 12

DOI: 10.1080/09540121.2014.936820

There is increasing international interest in the links between malnutrition and disability: both are major global public health problems, both are key human rights concerns, and both are currently prominent within the global health agenda. In this review, interactions between the two fields are explored and it is argued that strengthening links would lead to important mutual benefits and synergies. At numerous points throughout the life-cycle, malnutrition can cause or contribute to an individual's physical, sensory, intellectual or mental health disability. By working more closely together, these problems can be transformed into opportunities: nutrition services and programmes for children and adults can act as entry points to address and, in some cases, avoid or mitigate disability; disability programmes can improve nutrition for the children and adults they serve. For this to happen, however, political commitment and resources are needed, as are better data.



Paediatrics and International Child Health
Volume 34, 2014 - Issue 4: Nutrition and malnutrition in low- and middle-income countries
https://doi.org/10.1179/2046905514Y.0000000156

This paper offers a review of Critical disability studies (CDS), an approach which challenges the predominantly materialist outlook of more conventional approaches to the study of disability. The paper “reviews the ideas behind the development of CDS and analyses and critiques some of its key ideas. Starting with a brief overview of the main theorists and approaches contained within CDS, the paper then moves on to normative issues; namely, to the ethical and political applicability of CDS”
Disability & Society, Volume 29, Issue 4

Natural disasters result in significant numbers of disabling impairments. Paradoxically, however, the traditional health system response to natural disasters largely neglects health-related rehabilitation as a strategic intervention. The objective was to examine the role of health-related rehabilitation in natural disaster relief along three lines of inquiry: (1) epidemiology of injury and disability, (2) impact on health and rehabilitation systems, and (3) the assessment and measurement of disability. A qualitative literature review and secondary data analysis were carried out. 

Global Health Action

http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/gha.v4i0.7191