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Alternative spaces of failure. Disabled ‘bad boys’ in alternative further education provision

JOHNSTON, Craig
BRADFORD, Simon
2019

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This article draws from an ethnographic study of a group of school-aged disabled white working-class and self-proclaimed ‘bad boys’ in one Alternative Provision (AP) in an English further education college. These young disabled students’ disabilities contribute to the formation of their revalorised – yet stigmatised – identities. Stigma also facilitates the governance of their educational careers. The article considers how this group understands its precarious existence in and beyond AP and how these young men resist the conditions of their devaluation. Despite multiple, stigmatising experiences, the article shows how they appropriate space and (social) capital, often in tension with other students and college staff. The article suggests that there are questions about AP as an appropriate means to confer value upon young disabled students.

  • White, disabled, working-class male students are increasingly placed into Alternative Provisions intended for young people who would otherwise not receive suitable education for various reasons. The experiences of such students have received limited research attention.
  • This article is based on research conducted with young people who attend a provision located within an English further education college. The research found that these young people experience a lack of support, low trust and disregard from peers and some professionals at a crucial time in their educational careers.
  • It is important to understand disability in relation to other social differences – social class and gender, for example – as the combined impact of these in educational settings may undermine future career prospects and life chances.
  • The article emphasises the importance of education practices that develop reciprocity, trust and cooperation in improving the often oppressive circumstances young disabled people face in post-school settings.

Local economic and inclusive development; a toolkit for replication

Humanity & Inclusion
CAMID
The Employers' Federation of Ceylon
2019

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This replication guidebook is a tool that aims to highlight the link between social exclusion and poverty and is based on the premise that a country cannot achieve its development targets, if a section of its people is left behind.

 

This guidebook aims to show practitioners practical ways of working on economic development that inclusive of socially excluded groups such as women, people with disabilities, people living in poverty, etc. It provides corresponding concepts, explains the steps and suggests tools that may help practitioners use and adapt to their context. The context of this book are based on field level experience of the project team of the Inclusive Economic Development project.

India inclusion summit 2018

March 2019

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India Inclusion Summit is a community driven initiative that aspires to build an Inclusive India by 2030. It is an annual event that began in 2012 to create awareness about disabilities and the need for Inclusion. The event brings together thought leaders and unsung heroes from the field of disability and inclusion to deliberate, discuss and drive change in our society.

 

Videos of some of the presentations are available including:

My Journey and ‘Deaf gain’ing an accessible India:  Vaibhav Kothari (18 mins), signed

You’re not just special. You’re Special Edition:  SwarnaLatha (11 mins)

Don’t let disability come in the way of things you love: Zoyeb Zia (10 mins), signed

The Adventure of Autism and quest to serve each other: Rupert Isaacson (20 mins), signed

Making a billion people read despite their disabilities: Brij Kothari (21 mins), signed

The ability needed to be whoever you want to be: Devika Malik (13 mins), signed

Everyone has something to give: Suchitra Shenoy (11 mins), signed

From being inclusive to doing acts of inclusion: Yetnebersh Niguissie (12 mins), signed

Finding your missing piece: Jerry White (18 mins), signed

Listening to the voice within that opens infinite possibilities: Rajni Bakshi (15 mins), signed

Being a mother is the most satisfying role: Suhasini Maniratnam (21 mins) signed

 

 

Informe regional America Latina Bajo El enfoque de la convencion sobre los derechos de las personas con discapicidad

March 2019

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Este primer informe regional de la situación de las personas con discapacidad en América Latina ha sido elaborado por RIADIS con la finalidad de realizar un primer acercamiento al estado de la implementación de los ODS bajo el enfoque de la CDPD y la reformulación del Programa de Acción del Decenio de la Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA). En este sentido, el informe pretende identificar los avances y buenas prácticas que se encuentran realizando los gobiernos de la región en materia de la aplicación de la CDPD a través de la implementación de los ODS en la región, así como establecer las oportunidades y los desafíos que se presentan para que las organizaciones de personas con discapacidad puedan seguir conquistando nuevos espacios y haciendo efectivo el ejercicio pleno de sus derechos. El presente informe se enfoca en diez principales áreas temáticas, identificadas como prioritarias por las personas con discapacidad de la región, quienes aportaron al abordaje de las mismas, tanto a través de las respuestas que se recopilaron de la encuesta inicial, como a través de las contribuciones grupales e individuales obtenidas en el taller de revisión del borrador del informe regional.

 

Las diez áreas temáticas que se abordan en el presente informe son las siguientes: 1. Educación inclusiva 2. Mujeres con discapacidad 3. Personas indígenas con discapacidad 4. Inclusión laboral de las personas con discapacidad 5. Reducción de riesgos de desastres y acción humanitaria 6. Accesibilidad 7. Acceso a la justicia 8. Derecho a vivir de forma independiente y ser incluido en la comunidad 9. Recopilación de datos 10. Participación de las personas con discapacidad

Provocations for Critical Disability Studies

GOODLEY, Dan
LAWTHOM, Rebecca
LIDDIARD, Kirsty
RUNSWICK-COLE, Katherine
2019

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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.

Parental satisfaction with inclusion in physical education

WILHELMSEN, Terese
SØRENSEN, M. S
SEIPPEL, Ø
BLOCK, M. E
2019

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Knowledge is scarce on parental satisfaction with the inclusion of children with disabilities in physical education (PE). This study explored how parents’ satisfaction with inclusion in PE was associated with parental and child interpersonal and intrapersonal characteristics. Seventy-two parents of children with disabilities participated in the survey-based study. The results of the ordinary least square regression (OLS) and quantile regression (QR) indicated that the parents’ satisfaction with social inclusion in PE was associated with their attitudes towards inclusion in PE, perceived PE-related information sharing, and the type of disability and degree of physical inclusion. Parents’ satisfaction with pedagogical inclusion of children in PE was associated with their attitudes towards inclusion in PE, PE-related information sharing, and the children’s degrees of disability and physical inclusion. Furthermore, the QR estimates indicated that the explanatory strength of parental attitudes towards inclusion in PE varied with the degree of parental satisfaction with social and pedagogical inclusion of their children in PE. Practical and methodological implications of the findings are discussed.

Leaving no-one behind: Building inclusive social protection systems for persons with disabilities

KIDD, Stephen
et al
February 2019

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How to make social protection systems and schemes more inclusive of persons with disabilities is examined. Social protection can play a key role in empowering persons with disabilities by addressing the additional costs they face, yet the majority of persons with disabilities are currently excluded from schemes.

The report identifies a wide range of barriers persons with disabilities experience in accessing social protection to be overcome. It calls for better data on disability, disability-specific and old age pension schemes and expanded coverage; adapting communications about social protection schemes; and improving disability assessment mechanisms. The research underpinning the report comprised involved a review of the literature, an analysis of household survey datasets, and consultations with key stakeholders and persons with disabilities in seven low- and middle-income countries: Brazil, India, Kenya, Mauritius, Rwanda, South Africa and Zambia.

Topics covered include:

  • Types of social protection schemes for persons with disabilities
  • Levels of investment in social protection for persons with disabilities
  • Coverage of persons with disabilities by social protection
  • Impacts of social protection on persons with disabilities
  • Barriers to accessing social protection and measures to address them
  • Links between social protection schemes and other public services

Disability and global health: Special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

KUPER, Hannah
POLAK, Sarah
Eds
2019

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Papers included in this special issue are:

 

WHO consolidated guideline on self-care interventions for health: sexual and reproductive health and rights

WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION (WHO)
2019

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SELF-CARE is the ability of individuals, families and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and to cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a health-care provider. 

The purpose of this guidance is to develop a peoplecentred, evidence-based normative guideline that will support individuals, communities and countries with quality health services and self-care interventions, based on PHC (Primary Health Care) strategies, comprehensive essential service packages and people-centredness. The specific objectives of this guideline are to provide:

• evidence-based recommendations on key public health self-care interventions, including for advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), with a focus on vulnerable populations and settings with limited capacity and resources in the health system

• good practice statements on key programmatic, operational and service-delivery issues that need to be addressed to promote and increase safe and equitable access, uptake and use of self-care interventions, including for advancing SRHR.

Summary of Iraq national report on Sustainable Development Goals & the CRPD

AL-EZZAWI, Hashem Khalil
ALKhafaji, Mowafaq
2019

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This report was prepared by a team composed of disabilities experts, academics, representatives of disabilities organizations and other concerned organizations, and volunteers with disabilities. A common methodology was developed with friendly organizations and associations operating in the Kurdistan Region, in accordance with the UN Convention and sustainable development goals, as follows

 

1- Forming a steering committee consist of the Iraqi gathering of Iraqi Disabled Organizations (IGDO) and other relevant organizations

2- Reviewing national legislations, laws, regulations and strategies related directly and indirectly to the rights of persons with disabilities and their compatibility with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

3- Making sure that the report addresses all types of disabilities and covers all services, activities and areas without exception.

4- Making all the required efforts to insure that monitoring process includes positive and negative records concerning rights realization and sustainability.

5- Conducting a field survey of all activities of organizations of persons with disabilities.

6- Identifying gaps related to the rights of persons with disabilities.

7- Organizing a number of focus groups for different types of disabilities.

8- Providing the database of (IGDO) with data and information on persons with disabilities.

9- Conducting field visits to institutions and centers working in the area of disabilities.

10 - Making Interviews with experts, activists, representatives of governmental and international institutions and civil society organizations working in the field of disabilities in Iraq.

 

Research was carried out into progress in relation to eight of the SDGs (1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 16 and 17)

The inclusion of persons with disabilities in EU-funded humanitarian aid operations.DG ECHO Operational Guidance

EUROPEAN COMMISSION
January 2019

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This guidance has been developed as a tool to reach the goal that all EU-funded humanitarian partners be required to take the needs of persons with disabilities into account in their projects.


It concentrates on mainstreaming the needs of persons with disabilities across all types of humanitarian interventions, hence not dealing with targeted actions specifically. As such, this guidance is a complementary tool to existing Thematic Policies, in particular to Thematic Policy n°8 on Humanitarian Protection

 

The guidance consists of three main parts. Part II presents disability mainstreaming in programming in detail and provides a series of concrete examples and illustrations. It also provides tools to collect data and measure disability inclusion. Part III of the guidance is a short document that that can be easily used in the field for either programming or monitoring.

Epilepsy: a public health imperative

WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION (WHO)
2019

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This report is the first global report on epilepsy summarising the available evidence on the burden of epilepsy and the public health response required at global, regional and national levels.

This report is a call for sustained and coordinated action to ensure that every person with epilepsy has access to the care and treatment they need, and the opportunity to live free from stigma and discrimination in all parts of the world. It is time to highlight epilepsy as a public health imperative, to strongly encourage investment in reducing its burden, and to advocate for actions to address gaps in epilepsy knowledge, care and research.

Reimagining personal and collective experiences of disability in Africa

HOWELL, Colleen
LORENZO, Theresa
SOMPETA-GCAZA, Siphokazi
2019

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This paper explores understandings of disability in Africa through the personal and collective experiences of a group of postgraduate students at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. The students, as disabled people themselves or practitioners working in the field across Africa, were required to capture their understanding of disability on the continent in a poster, set as a summative assessment task. What emerges from the students’ posters provides valuable insights into the complex social, political and economic factors that influence and shape the experience of disability in Africa. The paper argues that these insights are especially important to existing conceptual thinking around disability and its importance to discussions on Africa and its development. It suggests that grappling more carefully with the experience of disability in Africa brings much needed voices from Africa and the global South into the field of Disability Studies and deepens these debates in valuable and necessary ways.

 

Disability and the Global South, 2019, Vol.6, No. 2

Participation, agency and disability in Brazil: transforming psychological practices into public policy from a human rights perspective

GESSER, Marivete
BLOCK, Pamela
NUERNBERG, Adriano Henrique
2019

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Participation is a little discussed or researched concept in the social sciences, despite its importance in understanding activism. This article presents some theoretical and methodological considerations for promoting social participation and agency for disabled people through the work of psychologists associated with Brazilian public policies. This article takes the form of a discursive study, based on the dialogue between: a) Brazilian legislation on disability; b) Bader Sawaia’s Ethical-Political Psychology; and c) Disability Studies. Based on the assumption that psychological practices should promote participation and agency for disabled people, we present the elements that hinder or control participation. We then present theoretical methodological contributions to build practices that promote participation and agency, highlighting: a) critiques of moral and biomedical models of disability; b) understandings of disability from intersectional perspectives that incorporate it as a category of analysis; c) including disabled people in the construction of research and professional practices disabled people and d) the rupture with ableism, which blocks the participation of disabled people. Participation has shown to be a multidimensional concept that covers a spectrum of aspects – from the practice of activism to the constitution of subjectivity in disabled people.

 

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 2

Disability, Decoloniality, and Other-than-Humanist Ethics in Anzaldúan Thought

BOST, Suzanne
2019

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Gloria Anzaldúa’s writing has been read as decolonial based on her resistance to dominant national, racial, and cultural formations. This essay turns to unpublished documents from the Gloria Anzaldúa archive that are decolonial at a more fundamental level. In autobiographical writings about her own experiences with disability, as well as doodles and figure drawings, the alternate forms of human life that Anzaldúa depicts defy the logics of identification and differentiation that underlie colonial hierarchies. Refusing to fix bodies with labels, Anzaldúa accepted mystical encounters and inter-species minglings without judgment. She experienced her own disabling conditions (including a severe hormone imbalance and Type 1 diabetes) in the epistemological fold between medical diagnoses (which enforce the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being) and trans-corporeal perceptions that defy empirical analysis. I analyze the ways in which these more capacious ways of being resonate with recent developments in posthumanist theory and disability ethics.

 

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 1

Globalized Food and Pharma: The South Bites Back in Lina Meruane’s Fruta podrida

JÖRGENSEN, Beth E
2019

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One common denominator of the novels and short stories by Lina Meruane (Chile, b. 1970) is the unconventional representation of illness and disability, and a critique of the connections between illness or disability, medicine and globalization. In this paper, I examine her novel Fruta podrida (2007) (rotten fruit) and the challenge it poses to the globalization of food production and pharmacological research as they affect people living in the Global South. This critique is realized obliquely and disturbingly from three distinct subject positions: a Chilean chemist who works for a fruit company in Chile; her half-sister who has diabetes; and a nurse in a New York City hospital. The linguistic and structural complexity of the narrative discourse demands an engagement with the text that places a further demand on its readers to engage with the inequalities and abuses created under globalization.

 

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 1

Precarious Bodies, Precarious Lives: Framing Disability in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Cinema

GARRETT, Victoria
2019

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Alejandro González Iñárritu is a salient example of contemporary Latin American directors who portray sick or disabled bodies as a visual and affective shorthand for different forms of violence. This article explores the relationship between his signature intersecting plots that join seemingly disconnected social spheres in a shared precariousness and his portrayal of illness, injury, and disability to suggest the violence and inequality that underpin these connections. I argue that González Iñárritu’s films frequently represent injured and disabled bodies to expose invisible connections that make social injustice possible as evidence of his using film as a political or ethical intervention that might erode the way contemporary global capitalism reproduces coloniality in everyday life. At the same time, his films illustrate the pitfalls of utilizing disabled bodies to realize this critique, thus shedding light on the ethical dimensions of this tendency to link disability with a critique of violence.

 

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 1

Literary Fiction Under Coloniality and the Relief of Meditation in Guadalupe Nettel’s Desupés del invierno, Carla Faesler’s Formol and Laía Jufresa’s ‘La pierna era nuestro altar’

HIND, Emily
2019

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The present article fosters a dialogue among multiple currents of literary research. Disability scholars such as Garland-Thomson, Davis, and Mitchell and Snyder, have famously explored the literary conventions of normativity. Their queries on normates and statistical averages, form a parallel line of thought with Moretti’s (2007) ‘distant reading’ of the novel. These two distinct pathways- distant reading and disability- lead to the same questioning of the accepted aesthetics of rationality, which of course interests scholars of Anthropocene. An environmental thinker of the stature of Ghosh (2016) has already taken up Moretti’s observations, and the present article places that engagement into a still richer context, with decolonial thinkers such as Grech, Maldonado-Torres, and Mignolo. This broad juxtaposition of thinkers, indicates that disability thought already prepares the environmentally conscious imagination to reach for alternatives to ableist and colonial readings. The principles of this wideranging theoretical dialogue are then put to the test with examples drawn from three Mexican writers’ fiction. The novels Formol (2014) by Carla Faesler (b. 1967) and Despúes del invierno (2014) by Guadalupe Nettel (b. 1973), along with the short story ‘La pierna era nuestro altar’ from El esquinista (2014) by Laia Jufresa (1983), review colonial habits using the aesthetic of realism and end up in familiar disenchantment that forestalls the possibility of an alternative. Nevertheless, these texts manage to interrupt their conventional fictions in the realist mode for moments of mindfulness. These pauses from accepted reasoning suggest an alternative style of cogitation, against the assumptions of the ‘normate,’ that may support Felski’s and Latour’s calls for a turn away from disenchantment. The article concludes that literary fiction might begin to listen to its own science and contemplate environmental disaster through a more mindful mode of poetic thought, a perceptive thinking that does not automatically accept the conventions established for the rational as the only ‘realistic’ aesthetic. The breaks or ‘breathers’ from the conventions of rationality included in these three contemporary fictions point the way toward a permissible mode of wellbeing in accordance with decolonial goals. Even if such mindful writing does not ultimately take hold in literary fiction, it may still aid critics in reassessing the tendency of the normate to cast itself as a superior kind of victim.

 

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 1

The ‘compliant’, the ‘pacified’ and the ‘rebel’: experiences with Swiss disability insurance

PIECEK, Monika
TABIN, Jean-Pierre
PERRIN, Céline
PROBST, Isabelle
2019

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Switzerland’s social policies in the field of disability have been significantly reshaped over the last two decades by reducing the number of allowances awarded and by increasing the recourse to vocational rehabilitation measures. What stances do individuals who experience the implementation of these policies adopt? What kind of tests are they subjected to? How can we explain the posture they adopt – be it ‘compliant’, ‘pacified’ or ‘rebellious’ – when facing the (re)assignations of their identity and professional status? Drawing on interviews conducted with individuals who have recently been involved in programmes set up by Swiss disability insurance, we highlight their uncertainties and concerns relating to their place in society, as well as their reactions to disability insurance’s interventions.

Realisation of sustainable development goals by, for and with persons with disabilities: UN flagship report on disability and development 2018

UNITED NATIONS DEPARTMENT FOR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS (UNDESA)
December 2018

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This report represents the first UN systemwide effort to examine disability and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the global level. The report reviews data, policies and programmes and identifies good practices; and uses the evidence it reviewed to outline recommended actions to promote the realization of the SDGs for persons with disabilities. Over 200 experts from UN agencies and International Financial Institutions, Member States and civil society, including research institutions and organizations of persons with disabilities, contributed to this report. The report covers new areas for which no global research was previously available, for example, the role of access to energy to enable persons with disabilities to use assistive technology. It also contains the first global compilation and analysis of internationally comparable data using the Washington Group on Disability Statistics short set of questions. Reviews of legislation from 193 UN Member States were conducted and analysed for this report to highlight good practices and to assess the current status of discriminatory laws on voting, election for office, right to marry and others

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