News and commentary from the broader disability community

Disabling Ableism (podcast 19m 04s)
Anne Kavanagh, Pursuit, 15 March 2017
Professor Anne Kavanagh from the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health shares how changes in her own life led her to question our understanding of the health of those living with a disability. A proud activist, Professor Kavanagh says having a disability need not equal poor health ...

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The fidget spinning fad and disability discrimination

Ingrid Robeyns, Crooked Timber, 21 May 2017

... So here we see disability discrimination at work. For some neuro-atypical and disabled people, stimming is a way to reduce stress, and indeed also to concentrate better. But often they are told not to do this. The same holds for other forms of behaviour that neurotypicals consider ‘abnormal’. The fidget spinning just shows how much of a social convention, and hence form of domination, those social norms regarding ‘normal behaviour’ are, and that at least some of those conventions are biased against the needs of some groups of disabled people and neuro-atypicals ...

New short documentary shines a light on adults with intellectual disabilities
Social Work News, McMaster University (Canada), 11 May 2017
A new short documentary film – part of a research project led by the McMaster School of Social Work's Ann Fudge Schormans – is providing a unique glimpse into the lives of adults with intellectual disabilities living in Toronto.

What if you didn’t feel welcome in the city you live in? What if you didn’t feel comfortable, or even safe, going into stores or taking transit? What if, wherever you went, you felt like people were staring at you? For many of us, that kind of alienation is hard to imagine, but for many people with intellectual disabilities, it’s a part of everyday life ...