Search Results

This chapter discusses the Inclusive Archive of Learning Disability History. It points to a collaborative relationship between the political ideas derived from public political logics — public service, public sphere, ‘on behalf of the public’ and for posterity — and those that derive from relational and personal-centred politics. Rather than favouring one or the other, the chapter argues that for an archive to be an archive, and for it to be an inclusive one, an approach to archival practice that held both the public and the relational political traditions in dialogue needed to be developed. Both political traditions have a history of being very effectively expressed in the learning disability self-advocacy movement as speaking up and being heard, and of arguing for services to start with the individual by being more ‘person-centered’. As such, the chapter reveals that the task of this archive is to explore fruitful combinations and collaborations between the two political traditions.

As awareness of the needs and aspirations of people with autism grows, new ideas and innovations that assist autistic adults live the lives they choose have begun to appear with increasing regularity. This chapter explores some of these innovations including what is currently under development and what is on the horizon. New housing types and living arrangements that move beyond the group home and residential placement are emerging spurred in part by an expanding self-advocacy movement that champions housing choice and self-determination. Increasingly, adults with autism are working with designers, planners, and housing and service providers to envision new living environments. Similar collaborations are beginning to take place in creating effective new smart technologies that enable autistic adults to live more independently. With innovations occurring almost daily, the opportunities for new technology to transform how individuals with autism live is substantial as long as it is used appropriately.

This chapter explores policy and practice in Hong Kong, and their impact on people with intellectual disabilities and their families. From a historical perspective, this development has consisted of three phases. Hong Kong, the world’s most populated area, remained a British colony until 1997, when it became a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China. Early service provision began in the 1970s. This was followed by a so-called ‘golden period’ in the 1990s when it seemed that a new age of rights and family- and self-advocacy was dawning. From around the end of the twentieth century a worrying period of minimal progress and stagnation has threatened to submerge earlier gains. Life-stories reflect this trajectory from defiance and struggle in the early days, through the euphoria of progress and change, to the present state of anxiety as victory seems to appear in danger of receding.

On 1 October 2007, the Government of India ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). This chapter argues that colonialism and post colonialism - in India as well as other commonwealth nations - continue to create barriers to people with psychosocial disabilities, preventing them from realising the human rights and social inclusion envisioned in the Convention. The author describes the evolution of this situation in India and the Asian region. It suggests that, although the policy situation is extremely complex and contested, persons with psychosocial disabilities have imbibed the ‘spirit’ of the CRPD. The chapter explores how – through coming together, mobilising and forming associations and self-advocacy organisations – people with psychosocial disabilities are beginning to adopt a disability identity and framework to argue for their human rights.  

Years ago, long before he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at the age of twenty-one, Donald Rindale described music as “the only love of my life.” It’s different for Donald now. “Honestly, if my trombone got run over by a tank, I’d be delighted,” he asserts, adding that being a musician “was a wonderful chapter of my life, but that page has long been turned.” We first meet Donald as a musicology graduate student on the verge of falling out of love with musicology and in love with the study of law. At chapter’s end some four years later, he has just graduated from law school and is envisioning a legal career involving autism and disability advocacy. But Donald retains a nostalgic fondness for music, which in his reckoning has been kinder to him than most people have: “The music did not laugh, or judge, or make nasty comments, or quizzical facial expressions and gestures at the sight of some unexpected behavioral tendencies, among other things. For those reasons, I will always love it.”

In the first half of the twentieth century UK policy, dominated by the passing of the Mental Deficiency Act in 1913, was not driven solely by eugenic discourse but by a commonly held assumption across the ideological spectrum that the ‘mentally deficient’ population needed ‘fixing’ in some way. Lurking beneath this desire for completeness and the tidying up of the social sphere were deep anxieties about urban modernity and human capacity to meet its challenges. In the second half of the century we see the voice of the person with intellectual disability finally emerge as self-advocacy, as the institutions met their end and care in the community became policy. A so-called ‘golden period’ in the 1990s, characterized by thoughtful policy and a commitment to inclusion, raised hopes of genuine citizenship and improved support. The chapter ends however with a cautionary warning from the 21^st century, where gains seem to be receding and the institution rising from its grave.

This chapter is a treatise on the issue of passing as a hard-of-hearing, or rather, as a deaf adult. The author, who comes from a background in English studies and rhetorical analysis, forged her professional identity as a deaf female academic grounded in the arts and humanities. Using this background as a foundation, she has created an extensive body of literature on the meanings of disability, deaf identities, gender, and the interactions of all three. Her thoughts and experiences as a deaf academic and deaf family member related to these three constructs have propelled her to describe in this chapter how she has moved from her previous conceptualization of “almost passing” as a hearing individual to “always passing” as a deaf individual. She illustrates how taking a stand regarding passing and being upfront about her needs as a deaf person can be affirming in terms of identity.