News and opinion from the broader disability community

Local Pathways to Disability-Inclusive Governance in Indonesia

Natalia Warat, Asia Foundation, 16th December 2015

“Nothing About Us Without Us” has become a familiar slogan used by the international disability movement and relies on the principle of full participation for all. However, in Indonesia, where people with disabilities (PWDs) still face enormous barriers, we’re just recently starting to see this slogan being put into practice.

How School Systems Create *That* Parent for Children in Special Education

Laurie Levy, Huffington Post Australia, 16th December 2015

Demanding. Annoying. Angry. Unrealistic. Unreasonable. Every teacher, principal, and school district administrator knows *that* parent. In special education, there are much greater numbers of *that* parent, and I'm sure school systems feel irritated and challenged by the threats of law suits and seemingly endless fights over Individualized Education Plan (IEP) goals. But do they realize their role in creating *that* parent? ...

Featured Philosop-her: Elizabeth Barnes
Meena Krishnamurthy, Philosop-her, 15th May 2015

... I have sat in philosophy seminars where it was asserted that I should be left to die on a desert island if the choice was between saving me and saving an arbitrary non-disabled person. I have been told it would be wrong for me to have my biological children because of my disability. I have been told that, while it isn’t bad for me to exist, it would’ve been better if my mother could’ve had a non-disabled child instead. I’ve even been told that it would’ve been better, had she known, for my mother to have an abortion and try again in hopes of conceiving a non-disabled child. I have been told that it is obvious that my life is less valuable when compared to the lives of arbitrary non-disabled people. And these things weren’t said as the conclusions of careful, extended argument. They were casual assertions. They were the kind of thing you skip over without pause because it’s the uncontroversial part of your talk ...

Government to pay disabled workers 70% of back wages as class action ends

Helen Davidson, The Guardian, 18th December 2015

A long-running legal battle over a disability employment scheme which paid some people as little as $1 an hour has come to an end after the federal government agreed to back pay 70% of the wages owed ...