While grounded in careful research, the connections Taylor makes and the questions she suggests are deeply imaginative and generative. In what ways, she seems to ask, is our environment “disabled” in its era of the Anthropocene — and what might be gained by understanding it this way?
Cet article examine les effets de la culture élitiste française dans le contexte réunionnais, en prenant en compte les expériences personnelles de l’auteur en tant que personne en situation de handicap originaire de La Réunion. À travers le récit de son parcours scolaire et académique, il analyse les héritages coloniaux qui influencent encore les subjectivités des populations subalternes réunionnaises. En adoptant une perspective sociohistorique, l'article met en lumière comment le modèle méritocratique français, perçu comme un idéal universel et républicain, impose aux individus issus des classes populaires réunionnaises l'incorporation de normes capacitistes et racistes pour démontrer leur valeur, souvent au détriment de leur santé.
Les perspectives autochtones concernant le handicap sont sous-représentées dans la littérature scientifique. Cet article présente les perspectives traditionnelles et les expériences contemporaines concernant le handicap à travers des témoignages de personnes venant des terres de la nation Nisga’a. Influencée par la théorie autochtone, cette étude de cas est basée sur des entretiens semi-structurés avec six leaders de la communauté autochtone, dont Simgigat (chef·fes héréditaires) et Sigidim Haanaḵ’ (matriarches). Quatre thèmes ont émergé de ces discussions : (1) les lois et protocoles culturels autochtones édictent des principes d’équité et d’inclusion; (2) la langue, le lien familial élargi et la culture éclairent les perspectives autochtones concernant le handicap; (3) le don du handicap est célébré par le biais de récits; et (4) la colonisation a eu un impact négatif sur le handicap au sein des peuples autochtones. De plus, cette étude démontre le besoin d’approfondir les recherches sur la politique contemporaine et historique en matière de handicap dans la Loi sur les Indiens ainsi que sur les handicaps dans le contexte des pensionnats pour Autochtones. La présente étude examine l’imposition des identités occidentales du handicap, construites de manière coloniale, tout en démontrant que les connaissances, les traditions et les pratiques autochtones sont essentielles à la décolonisation des conceptions du handicap au Canada et dans le monde.
Learning Disability and Everyday Life offers an account of Alex Cockain’s life with his brother Paul.
This article engages with disability justice principles (Sins Invalid, 2015, 2016) as a framework for reconceptualizing school-based comprehensive sexuality education. Through the perspectives of disabled childhood studies and disability studies in education, this article advocates for inclusive and affirming practices and tenets that can guide professional pedagogies and curricular development within and beyond Ontario K-12 schools to cultivate school climates that honour and affirm the identities, experiences, and genders and sexualities of disabled learners. This article provides specific practice-based recommendations through the frame of disability justice principles for professionals and educators in schools.
The literature on intimate partner violence (IPV) identifies women with disabilities as being at a higher risk for experiencing abuse than non-disabled women. The current systematic review used both a critical disability lens and the social ecological model to classify the various barriers and obstacles that exist for disabled women attempting to navigate abusive relationships. Fourteen articles were selected for the analysis based on a set of criteria. The obstacles that are present for disabled victims on the individual, relationship, community, and societal levels are identified and discussed. The components that make up a woman’s abuse experience do not occur in a vacuum and are shown to interact both within and across levels of the model, making existing barriers more difficult to navigate. Identifying obstacles and barriers for disabled women will create more accessible violence prevention and intervention.
“So, this is cancer,” our narrator says to herself. “The Big C. In me” (Watt 30). In Rearranged: An Opera Singer’s Facial Cancer and Life Transposed, author Kathleen Watt offers her readers an exclusive backstage pass to a very particular kind of performance.
This article explores the impact of mobile technology, particularly speech-to-text tools, on enhancing social inclusion and communication for people with intellectual disability. Through a participatory research approach - the authors, an academic and a self-advocate with an intellectual disability - collaborate to share personal narratives and insights on the role of technology in fostering independence, social connections, and self-advocacy.
This paper is a study of the Canadian Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program initiated in 2016 and undergoing expansion ever since. It tries to understand how it is that the Canadian government frames assisted dying as a viable and beneficial practice to both individuals and the public purse, while also exploring the rationale for its decision-making. The study begins by examining MAiD and its projected expansion (expected for March 2027) to cover a larger group of applicants than those initially qualifying when it was started. I argue that the program is first and foremost rooted in eugenics and economics as priorities in Canada at the government/administrative and society levels. Together with eugenics, I question economic forms of logic that shape how governments enact and support policies, specifically during periods of financial recession. In my overall analysis, I caution about the serious implications that legalized assistance in dying could have not only on the individuals directly affected and their immediate families and friends, but also on the larger society.
Commentary: Covid-19 Proved That Universities Could Make Post-Secondary Education More Accessible, They Are Just Choosing Not To
As a student, I admire Sami Schalk’s clarity and hopes around those from whom she wrote this book. Black Disability Politics is not written for or about me, a white crip queer student. Schalk scribes this excellent historical, contextual, and future-oriented book for black disabled readers, inviting them to settle in, hoping to move together slightly closer to collective liberation (3).
This paper examines the historical eugenic influences that shape the values and operations of Canadian post-secondary institutions. Furthermore, I explore how the university’s physical structure itself is designed to bar disabled people from full participation, acting as a mirror opposite of an asylum. The modern-day university upholds these practices through limitations to accommodations and accessibility, influenced by deeply-rooted eugenic ideals. Additionally, this paper explores the gaps and lack of accommodation within the university structure. Currently, accommodation must be earned rather than given as a right, which creates not only gaps in quality but also places the burden on the disabled individual. The university continues to be an inaccessible environment that bars disabled people from full participation because of its eugenic histories, but also through the ongoing influence of neoliberalism. Neoliberal values award students based on perceived merit without consideration of external factors. These disabled and otherwise marginalized students who need additional resources to complete their post-secondary education are perceived as less “meritorious” despite facing greater barriers than students deemed more meritorious and “valuable” to the university. I conclude that universities are unlikely to provide accommodations or resources unless they create more value for the university.
Higher education has often been framed as a necessary step for personal development, because a university education is seen as a gateway to a prosperous future. Yet, systemic ableism and exclusionary practices deeply affect the educational experiences and learning outcomes for students who are members of historically marginalized communities. For neurodivergent undergraduate students who speak English as an additional language (EAL), these barriers are compounded by institutional policies and practices that reinforce normative assumptions about ability and success. Teacher-centered approaches in higher education frequently exclude students whose non-normative ways of knowing, learning, and communicating differ from the “norm.” This study explores the undergraduate experiences of Adela and Imani (pseudonyms), two neurodivergent EAL students. Their perspectives are drawn from five semi-structured narrative interviews. Together, their narratives illustrate systemic inequalities present in higher education, while also highlighting how intersecting structures of ableism, linguicism, and racism shape their academic trajectories. By situating their educational experiences within the broader North American post-secondary landscape, this research highlights how instructional policies and practices perpetuate marginalization and exclusion. It calls on educators and institutions to dismantle the systemic barriers that disproportionately affect neurodivergent EAL students and to foster more equitable learning environments.
This mixed-methods study explored the experiences of disabled students at a small postsecondary institution in Canada, using data collected through surveys and focus groups. The research project sought to examine attitudinal and educational barriers and the impact these barriers have on students’ experiences. Informed by critical disability studies concepts of (in)visibility, crip time, and intersectionality, the study found that accessibility is complex and shaped by diverse needs, stigma, and systemic obstacles such as inconsistent instructor engagement and inflexible online learning platforms. The study underscores the need for holistic and responsive approaches to truly inclusive education.
This edited collection began as a conversation between the editors and members of the Canadian Sociological Association’s Sociology of Disability Research Cluster. The discussion centered on how there is a wealth of work on the experiences of being disabled in academia from the perspective of faculty (such as excellent works by Margaret Price and Jay Dolmage), but there are far fewer accounts of what higher education is like for undergraduate students.
Through the forced implementation of rigid colonial expectations, colonizers have generated the conditions for disability to become part of the oppressive apparatuses that operate to control Indigenous peoples. For Cree author Yvonne Johnson who was born with a cleft palate, her life writing is a journey in and out of disability. Although scholars have drawn attention to Johnson breaking her silence through her narration of her life story, their examinations have primarily addressed concerns around the “disabling” of Johnson’s voice through the co-authorship of the text—specifically, the active role that white co-author Rudy Wiebe takes in the construction of her autobiography. This paper focuses on Johnson’s own perception of her disability as she moves from a colonial framework of disability to a Cree worldview. I argue that Johnson’s achronological rendering of her healing narrative in her co-authored autobiography with Wiebe, Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman, transcends Western modes of time imposed upon her, disrupting mythic narratives of linear progress that have emerged through settler ideologies. While crip theorizations of temporality have emboldened Critical Disability Studies scholarship, this article mobilizes Indigenous voices to present an alternative theorization of time—spiraling time—that offers the potential to overwrite the pathological colonial narrative of disability to reorient focus toward community-based interventions.
What do people with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) think about neurodiversity? How does it affect what they do? While a burgeoning body of scholarship has examined the concept of neurodiversity, this work has often restricted its focus to autism, or addressed more general ideas about neurodivergence. Little existing research explores what neurodiversity means to people with ADHD. This paper presents a subset of findings from a multimethod project on how people use the language and concept of neurodiversity. We examined 11 interviews with diverse participants living in Southern Ontario who all identified as having ADHD, which we analyzed using an institutional ethnographic approach. Participants shared a diverse range of ideas, feelings, relationships, and experiences with neurodiversity. For some, neurodiversity was an integral aspect of their identity or provided useful language to advocate and educate, while others expressed uncertainty or discomfort with adopting this identity. Diagnosis was highlighted as a particularly complex issue without clear agreement. We found that people understood neurodiversity through their experiences of community, especially within online and activist circles. Those who did feel connected with neurodiversity described it as an empowering lens with which to organize their lives. People with ADHD have important insights to share about neurodiversity that can inform needed changes across social domains such as education, employment, identity, and activism. We consider the implications of these findings for future research and practice.
In the prologue to this book, Whatcott explains that during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, her existing involvement in prison solidarity work began to incorporate the issue of immigration detention which they connect to eugenics. In this book, Whatcott argues that connecting eugenics to carcel systems produces a new, relevant angle about eugenics as an ideology.
Amanda Hess, who writes about pop culture and the internet for the New York Times, begins Second life: Having a child in the digital age with the statement, “this is an account of a relationship with technology” (p. 1). Yet Hess signals early on that the text will dig much deeper than a description of how she engages with tech’s latest offerings. Indeed, she reflects on how technology has become embedded in our most intimate personal spaces--in this case, people’s menstrual, prenatal, and postnatal lives—and ultimately offers insight into the ways in which technology contributes to transhistorical anxieties about disability and the cultural preoccupation with identifying and eliminating it.
When young people acquire a higher education entrance qualification and transition to university, they experience a biographical turning point. This holds even more for people with disabilities. On campus, students must navigate barriers and discrimination. Many European universities have started to improve campuses, curricula, and social activities and have developed diversity agendas that focus on gender, age, and migration. However, they have rarely reached out to persons with disabilities. To examine how students experience barriers while entering their undergraduate programs, this paper focuses on the experiences of students with disabilities in German and Austrian university undergraduate programmes. We combine the analysis of institutional offers with life stories. Four life narratives of undergraduates in diverse majors at different German-speaking universities give insights into how students with disabilities manage the transition into academic training and undergo subject formation. How they contact fellow students and negotiate with academic staff and administrative bodies depends on their individual circumstances. The analysis shows that high school experiences, family support, knowledge and acceptance of disability compensation, and their willingness to disclose are central. The binding of support to medical reasons is primarily responsible for the challenges students encountered in their studies. The students must develop their sense of belonging and self-identify as disabled. Inclusion-sensitive programmes and measures thus reduce barriers. Accordingly, social factors come to the fore when removing barriers in academic training.
