Celebrating One and All

This book takes a comprehensive approach to accessibility, covering transport and communication, knowledge and education, law and organisation. Topics within a wide cross-disciplinary field are covered, including disability studies, social work, sociology, ethnology, social anthropology, and history. The main example is Sweden, with its implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities within the context of the Nordic welfare state. By identifying and discussing persistent social and cultural conditions as well as recurring situations and interactions that nurture resistance to advancing accessibility, despite various strong laws promoting it, the book's conclusions are widely transferable.

This book explores the tensions between aesthetics, gender and disability in contemporary digital media installations and performance art. Notions of agency and subjectivity are connected to four contemporary political issues (artificial intelligence; migration and political violence; contemporary medical technologies and practices; the Anthropocene) and analyzed against a Western legacy of utopian and dystopian ideas and desires that have shaped, and continue to shape, what it means to be human.

One of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her personal story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and just be human. A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn't built for all of us and of one woman's activism--from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington--Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann's lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society. Paralyzed from polio at eighteen months, Judy's struggle for equality began early in life. From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a "fire hazard" to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her a teacher's license because of her paralysis, Judy's actions set a precedent that fundamentally improved rights for disabled people. As a young woman, Judy rolled her wheelchair through the doors of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in San Francisco as a leader of the Section 504 Sit-In, the longest takeover of a governmental building in US history. Working with a community of over 150 disabled activists and allies, Judy successfully pressured the Carter administration to implement protections for disabled peoples' rights, sparking a national movement and leading to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Candid, intimate, and irreverent, Judy Heumann's memoir about resistance to exclusion invites readers to imagine and make real a world in which we all belong.

A disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative--a surprisingly cutting, yet heartfelt drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what makes us human. The future of storytelling is here. Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister's lavish Caribbean wedding, she's unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It's a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization.

This ground-breaking volume considers what it means to make claims of disability membership in view of the robust Disability Rights movement, the rich areas of academic inquiry into disability, increased philosophical attention to the nature and significance of disability, a vibrant disability culture and disability arts movement, and advances in biomedical science and technology. By focusing on the statement, "We are all disabled", the book explores many questions: What are the philosophical, political, and practical implications of making this claim? What conceptions of disability underlie it? When, if ever, is this claim justified, and when or why might it be problematic or harmful? What are the implications of claiming "we are all disabled" amidst this global COVID-19 pandemic?

This volume analyzes representations of disability in art from antiquity to the twenty-first century, incorporating disability studies scholarship and art historical research and methodology. This book brings these two strands together to provide a comprehensive overview of the intersections between these two disciplines. Divided into four parts: Ancient History through the 17th Century: Gods, Dwarfs, and Warriors 17th-Century Spain to the American Civil War: Misfits, Wounded Bodies, and Medical Specimens Modernism, Metaphor and Corporeality Contemporary Art: Crips, Care, and Portraiture and comprised of 16 chapters focusing on Greek sculpture, ancient Chinese art, Early Italian Renaissance art, the Spanish Golden Age, nineteenth century art in France (Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec) and the US, and contemporary works, it contextualizes understandings of disability historically, as well as in terms of medicine, literature, and visual culture. This book is required reading for scholars and students of disability studies, art history, sociology, medical humanities and media arts.

One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent--but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture.Activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.

This cutting-edge volume explores how technological tools can be designed, engineered and implemented to assess and support individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders from diagnosis through to rehabilitation. The volume focuses on technological tools as equalizers in Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) at every stage, the importance of demand-specific design, and how we can best engineer and deploy both invasive and non-invasive individual-centered approaches that support and connect individuals. Considering the perspectives of patients, clinicians and technologists,

Disabled people constitute the world's largest minority, yet remain conspicuously under-represented in best practices and current theories of organizing. This book offers a global map, and manifesto, by showcasing how people with disabilities entrepreneur.

Uses of disability in literature are often problematic and harmful to disabled people. This is also true, of course, in children's and young adult literature, but interestingly, when disability is paired and confused with adolescence in narratives, compelling, complex arcs often arise. In From Wallflowers to Bulletproof Families: The Power of Disability in Young Adult Narratives, author Abbye E. Meyer examines different ways authors use and portray disability in literature. She demonstrates how narratives about and for young adults differ from the norm. With a distinctive young adult voice based in disability, these narratives allow for readings that conflate and complicate both adolescence and disability. Throughout, Meyer examines common representations of disability and more importantly, the ways that young adult narratives expose these tropes and explicitly challenge harmful messages they might otherwise reinforce. She illustrates how two-dimensional characters allow literary metaphors to work, while forcing texts to ignore reality and reinforce the assumption that disability is a problem to be fixed. She sifts the freak characters, often marked as disabled, and she reclaims the derided genre of problem novels arguing they empower disabled characters and introduce the goals of disability-rights movements. The analysis offered expands to include narratives in other media: nonfiction essays and memoirs, songs, television series, films, and digital narratives. These contemporary works, affected by digital media, combine elements of literary criticism, narrative expression, disability theory, and political activism to create and represent the solidarity of family-like communities.

Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka spends her days in her room in a care home outside Tokyo, relying on an electric wheelchair to get around and a ventilator to breathe. But if Shaka's physical life is limited, her quick, mischievous mind has no boundaries: She takes e-learning courses on her iPad, publishes explicit fantasies on websites, and anonymously troll-tweets to see if anyone is paying attention. One day, she tweets into the void an offer of an enormous sum of money for a sperm donor. To Shaka's surprise, her new nurse accepts the dare, unleashing a series of events that will forever change Shaka's sense of herself as a woman in the world.

This book provides a comprehensive approach to the perspectives, lived experiences, and socio-cultural beliefs of Indigenous scholars regarding disabilities through a distinctions-based approach. Indigenous people demonstrate considerable knowledge in a multitude of compacities in spite of legal, monetary, social, economic, health, and political inequalities that they experience within from administrative authorities whether health, education or governments. By include various knowledge systems related to: social-cultural, traditional governance, spirituality, educational, and self-representation within a communal understanding, the knowledge brought forth will be a combination of information from within/communal and outwards/infusion by Indigenous teachers, scholars, academics, and professionals who aim to combat the negative effects of disability labels and policies that have regulated Indigenous peoples.

A qualitative study with 20 theatremakers from around the UK, it was commissioned by Extant Theatre - the UK's leading company of blind and visually impaired people, and combines feedback from disabled audiences with advice from the creative teams who have experimented with integrating access.It discusses the challenges and opportunities of working with disabled actors and building in audience access even before rehearsals begin. It offers strategies, case studies and a step-by-step guide to help creative people integrate access into their live performance for the benefit of all.

Many people think that profound disability presents us with a real problem, often because it seems difficult to connect with someone who does not seem to think or act like us. Positioning profound disability in this way immediately sets up a 'them' and 'us', where the person with profound disability becomes the problematic 'other'. Attempts to bridge the 'them' and 'us' risk reducing everyone to the same where disability is not taken seriously. In contrast to a 'them' and 'us', and negative connotations of the other found in the existentialist philosophies of writers like Sartre and Beauvoir, Pia Matthews argues for a return to a positive view of the other. One positive approach to the other, based on an ethics of relationship as championed by Levinas, seems to mitigate the other-ness of profound disability. However, this still makes the person with profound disability dependent on the ethical concern of the more powerful other. Instead, this book argues for return to a personalist philosophy of being offered by Mounier, Marcel, and Wojtyła, and deepened by participation, belonging, and the possibility of contributing to the good of all. This deepened philosophy of being gives a more solid foundation for people who are especially at the mercy of others. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, philosophy and anthropology.

Disability impacts everyone in some way. Approximately 10-20% of the world's population live with disability, and the associated issues affect not just these individuals but their friends, family and colleagues. When looking at it this way, it is strange that disability continues to be thought of as an anomaly - either as a medical problem located in a damaged body or something that exists exclusively outside the body, in a society that takes little account of non-normative bodies. Critical disability studies both questions these existing notions of disability and interrogates how they have become a part of the academic attitude towards the field. as the first comprehensive handbook on critical disability studies, this volume provides an authoritative overview of the subject.

Imagine a powerful listening experience that you want to share with others. You could describe it to someone with words, or you may choose a flashier alternative. You could, for example, costume yourself and take to the stage in a famous concert venue, delivering a rousing air guitar interpretation of a beloved rock solo for a live audience. Maybe you seek something more subtle, so you pull out your smartphone and record yourself lip-syncing to a guilty pleasure, showing your followers how seamlessly the music fits your movements. Perhaps instead you want others to hear how the music makes you feel, which leads you to record a podcast episode that translates the thrill of listening into audible exclamations. In ways both mundane and sensational, listening can be an expressive act, enabling people to stage consumption as a public practice -- what author Byrd McDaniel calls "spectacular listening." Contemporary digital platforms not only support such activity but actively encourage people to package personal music reception into a performance that may be widely shared. With a range of compelling ethnographic case studies, McDaniel investigates a broad shift in contemporary listening norms and the stakes for listeners with disabilities. He reveals how listening-as-performance can be an opportunity for play, as well as a critical practice that exposes ableism in music institutions, technologies, and discourse.

Superhero comics reckon with issues of corporeal control. And while they commonly deal in characters of exceptional or superhuman ability, they have also shown an increasing attention and sensitivity to diverse forms of disability, both physical and cognitive. The essays in this collection reveal how the superhero genre, in fusing fantasy with realism, provides a visual forum for engaging with issues of disability and intersectional identity (race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality) and helps to imagine different ways of being in the world.

Approximately 15% of the global population is affected by some sort of disability, according to the World Report on Disability. Many C-Suite executives perceive digital accessibility (DA) as an endless task. Among the engineering leaders, one in four leaders are reliant on very limited knowledge about digital accessibility. Many countries are increasing their legislative efforts to make web accessibility an important part in web development and testing of software releases. Numerous organizations are facing extreme turbulence when not adhering to international accessibility guidelines while developing their software's and website applications. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a global guide on accessibility recommendations that are developed through the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to help organizations to meet minimum standard accessibility guidelines. It has become critical for every organization to focus on implementing the accessibility checks at every stage of their application development to avoid costly mistakes. Meanwhile, the need for front-end engineers and Quality Assurance (QA) test analysts to learn WCAG best practices is immensely important for the growing need to incorporate accessibility-focused inclusive design, development, and extensive accessibility testing, which are essential for most of the customer-facing websites. In a fast-paced world, incorporating shift left accessibility within development and testing is the new normal. The Web Accessibility Project: Development and Testing Best Practices helps developers address right accessibility attributes to user interface (UI) components. It also helps developers focus on developing manual and automation tests for QA professionals to inject accessibility audit, accessibility functional tests, and accessibility automation tests as part of their Continuous Integration and Continuous Development (CI/CD) models. The book is filled with readily usable best practices to adapt web accessibility early in application development. By applying the accessibility best practices covered in this book, developers can help their organizations rise to a whole new level of accessibility adherence, innovation, and inclusive design. They will also see greater work satisfaction in their professional lives and a way to help improve digital accessibility for end users.

Irby is forty, and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin despite what Inspirational Instagram Infographics have promised her. She has left her job as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, has published successful books and has been friendzoned by Hollywood, left Chicago, and moved into a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how with her wife in a Blue town in the middle of a Red state where she now hosts book clubs and makes mason jar salads. This is the bourgeois life of a Hallmark Channel dream. She goes on bad dates with new friends, spends weeks in Los Angeles taking meetings with "tv executives slash amateur astrologers" while being a "cheese fry-eating slightly damp Midwest person," "with neck pain and no cartilage in [her] knees," who still hides past due bills under her pillow. The essays in this collection draw on the raw, hilarious particulars of Irby's new life. Wow, No Thank You is Irby at her most unflinching, riotous, and relatable

Diagnosed with bilateral sensorineural progressive hearing loss in the first grade, Charo Mato became fully deaf by the age of 23, and received cochlear implants against her parents’ wishes. Structured with eight distinct stories and questions, Mato’s autobiographical documentary flits between childhood stories and digressive memories, the scientific and medical explanations of hearing loss and implants, and poetic ruminations on the nature of life and language. Mato uses the film to process her own experience. A beautiful, highly personal film processing and celebrating the experiences of those with hearing loss.

Stéphane is autistic, Audrey is dyslexic. Both of them are middle-distance runners and both are qualified for the Special Olympics World Games. From preparation in Canada to the finals in Dubai, they take us through their sporting and emotional epic. Determined to become world champions, they demonstrate through their physical and psychological management of training, stress, effort, and emotional roller coaster, that they are first and foremost athletes whose difference makes them strong, beyond all prejudices.

CRUTCH documents Bill's extraordinary journey: the history of his medical odyssey and his struggles with chronic pain, the evolution of his crutch dancing and skating, his rise to become a world-renowned performance artist, and his transformation from an angry skate punk to an international hero.

An inspirational and heartwarming one-hour documentary, highlighting the journey of disabled veterans whose lives are transformed through the unconditional love of service dogs that have been expertly trained by female prison inmates.

Reality and fiction merge in this film about – and featuring – professional actors with intellectual disabilities, which explores the heart-rending tensions between what its spontaneous stars want, are able and are allowed to do. Inside My Heart is a film that moves between the magic of an opera and the depth of a documentary, a baroque drama written in verse, a fairy tale about murder, manslaughter and eroticism with the seven deadly sins as a major theme. Director Saskia Boddeke’s imaginative style employs every possible cinematic means to make the sharp contrast between fiction and reality palpable in a light-hearted way.

LIVE OUT LOUD is a documentary film that presents a unique tap dance collaboration between students from the Overbrook School for the Blind and dancers-in-training from the Pennsylvania Ballet's Second Company. In addition to detailing the rehearsal process and final performance, the film shows how the dancers — all new to tap — learn about the rhythms of the art form, and about each other. Friendships form, confidence grows and abilities abound in this documentary film about art and life.

Imagine a world with Complete Accessibility. MARK: A CALL TO ACTION is the story of Dr. Mark Bookman, a severely disabled Pennsylvania-born American who later resided in Tokyo full-time, becoming one of Japan's leading experts on accessibility and a policy consultant to governments and major corporations around the world.

Tony Award-winning actress Ali Stroker (Oklahoma!) and choreographer-actress Alexandria Wailes (Big River) discuss their collaboration on Deaf West's Broadway revival of Spring Awakening, as well as the importance of seeing yourself represented on stage, and how increased access enriches the artistic landscape.

A year in the life of five kids from all walks of life who enter a revolutionary new program for kids who stutter.

On the day before an operation to save his eyesight, filmmaker Mark Cousins explores what looking means to him, and the role our visual experience plays in our individual and collective lives. In a deeply personal meditation on the power of looking in his own life, he guides us through the riches of the visible world, through a kaleidoscope of imagery across cultures and eras, drawing on art history, biology, neuroscience, psychology, poetry and philosophy. As he goes under the surgeon's knife, he suggests that we are in the midst of a looking revolution more powerful than any which has gone before, which has the potential to change the world — for better or for worse.

Unseen follows Jess and Ryan Ronne, a blended family with 8 children, including Lucas, who has profound disabilities requiring total care. Their situation has gotten more and more challenging as Lucas gets older and stronger. With limited resources and support, caregiving takes a toll on their physical and mental health. It’s a common story among parent caregivers: the isolation, uncertainty about the future, lack of options, and a never-ending daily to-do list means the role of caregiver overpowers nearly every other facet of life. Video diaries from diverse caregivers featured in the film illustrate this universality, while interviews with mental health and policy/legal experts provide a broader view on the societal impacts. Through the power of unfiltered, compelling human stories, Unseen cultivates compassion and tangible support for the caregivers in our communities.

The portrait of the flamboyant, Catalan dance collective Liant la Troca, of which some of the performers have a physical disability. Fluently merging documentary and dance into each other, the hybrid film is an ode to zest for life and love.