When the state managerializes the law: Enforcing and commodifying disability inclusion

Background: Social and financial services are essential for the inclusion and well-being of people with disabilities (PWDs), who often rely on family caregivers to access these systems. In Saudi Arabia, where disability inclusion is a strategic goal under Vision 2030, understanding caregiver experiences is crucial to identifying service gaps and improving accessibility. Objectives: This study aimed to explore caregivers’ perspectives on awareness, perceived barriers, and accessibility of social and financial services for PWDs in Saudi Arabia. The analysis is grounded in Andersen’s Behavioural Model of Health Service Use and the WHO’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) framework. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 3353 caregivers of PWDs attending specialised day schools. The survey collected data on demographic characteristics, service awareness, utilisation, and perceived obstacles. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) identified latent constructs, and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to test relationships between awareness, barriers, and accessibility. Results: Findings reveal that over 70% of caregivers lacked awareness of available services, and only about 3% had accessed them. Key challenges included technological barriers, complex procedures, and non-functional or unclear service provider platforms. Both User Barriers and Service Barriers were negatively associated with Awareness and Accessibility. Awareness, in turn, significantly predicted perceived Accessibility. Caregiver demographics, such as age, education, gender, and geographic location, also influenced awareness and service use. Conclusions: There is a pressing need for targeted awareness campaigns, accessible digital service platforms, and simplified service processes tailored to diverse caregiver profiles. Inclusive communication, decentralised outreach, and policy reforms are necessary to enhance service access and promote the societal inclusion of PWDs in alignment with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030.

In this article, the authors examine the important yet often overlooked role of specialized disability resource professionals (DRPs) in medical education. Although disability inclusion has gained momentum, disparities in accommodations, learning environments, and residency selection persist for medical students with disabilities (MSWDs). Despite national calls for institutional commitment to accessibility, only 9% of U.S. medical schools employ a dedicated DRP, leaving many MSWDs without specialized support to navigate the complexities of medical training. The authors argue that DRPs are essential not only for individual accommodation implementation but also for institutional change, including faculty development, policy reform, and the dismantling of systemic ableism in medical education.Drawing on Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory, the authors propose a framework for understanding the multilevel impact of DRPs from direct student support to shaping national policies. Data from the 2024 Association of American Medical Colleges Graduation Questionnaire (GQ) highlight significant barriers in disability support services: 15.4% of students found the accommodation process overly difficult, 27.2% refrained from seeking accommodations due to stigma, and 5.1% reported unclear institutional processes for requesting accommodations. These findings underscore the necessity of specialized DRPs to enhance transparency, streamline accommodation processes, and improve faculty preparedness to support disabled learners.The authors advocate for standardized DRP competencies in medical education to ensure consistent, high-quality disability support across institutions. Without investment in specialized DRPs, inequities in medical education may persist, undermining broader efforts toward inclusion. To create a truly accessible and equitable learning environment, medical schools should move beyond compliance and recognize DRPs as indispensable to the success of all learners.

This conceptual paper explores the integration of mindfulness principles into the development of transportation services for people with disabilities (PWDs) in Malaysia. Transportation plays a critical role in promoting inclusivity and enhancing the quality of life for PWDs, yet accessibility remains a significant challenge due to infrastructural barriers, lack of awareness, and limited empathy from service providers. Drawing on the concepts of mindfulness, which are rooted in awareness, empathy, and responsiveness, this paper proposes a framework that emphasizes inclusivity, respect, and collaboration among key stakeholders. The proposed framework emphasizes the need for a holistic approach that incorporates physical accessibility, staff training, and policy reforms. Inclusivity involves modifying infrastructure to meet universal design standards, while empathy requires transport providers to understand the unique challenges faced by PWDs and offer compassionate, tailored services. Responsiveness, a key element of mindfulness, calls for flexible and adaptive transport services that cater to the real-time needs of PWDs, ensuring that they can access public transportation with ease and dignity. By applying this mindful approach, the transportation system can become more accommodating and respectful toward PWDs, thereby reducing social exclusion and improving their mobility. This paper contributes to the growing body of literature on disability inclusion and provides actionable strategies for policymakers, transport providers, and disability organizations to work together in creating a more accessible public transportation system. Future research should investigate the practical application of this framework and its potential to drive policy changes that benefit PWDs across Malaysia.

Global Climate Change (GCC) is the most significant environmental concern of our current age and studies such as those by IPCC (2001b); Stern (2006), and IPCC (2007a), have demonstrated the pace with which policies on GCC issues are moving and affecting all parts of society, including organisations that, as a result of existing work, can be held accountable for their actions. The literature on accounting education suggests that the use of social and environmental reporting as a pedagogical tool could spearhead emancipation from superficial educational accounting practices. Thus, the main objective of this article is to suggest a practical exercise using GCC disclosure to develop students’ critical accounting perspectives.This article suggests a checklist with which to analyse GCC disclosure. This checklist was developed from our examination of relevant literature on GCC. We illustrate how the checklist may be used in practice. The use of GCC disclosure as an educational tool may (i) motivate students to understand the main concepts central to GCC issues; (ii) help to critique conservative accounting practices; (iii) guide critical engagement with organisational practices regarding GCC, and (iv) develop students’ interests in accounting for their carbon emissions decisions and activities.

Given that there are no specific legal protections for obese employees, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the litigated case characteristics and case outcomes when an employee is subjected to negative consequences in the workplace and subsequently sues the employer. The study is an analysis of a random sample of 276 litigated cases based on adverse employment decisions of individuals who were obese. These cases were retrieved using Lexis/Nexis over the past 10 years. Eighty cases were included in the empirical analysis. This analysis considered demographic characteristics, organizational and cases characteristics, legal bases, and confounding physical factors. Multivariate logistic regression was performed in order to investigate the effect of the independent variables. The employee prevailed in almost 40% of the cases. The case characteristics associated with the employer prevailing included the employee being a professional, being in the public sector and filing lawsuits under discrimination, health and disability laws. Some of the findings are contrary to popular perception. Obese employees have legal protections under various discrimination laws, even though there does not seem to be explicit protections under the law. Thus, organizations must be more vigilant in sanctioning obesity. However, this sanctioning is neither a disability nor a gender issue. This is the first study using qualitative content analysis of litigated cases and logistic regression to analyze litigated cases in which obese employees were disciplined.

Logit Model to Predict Outcomes of Litigated Employee Obesity Cases

An Ever-Expanding InclusivenessBending over Backwards Tom O'Connor (bio) Bending Over Backwards By Lennard Davis; New York University Press, 2002 In his recent collection of essays, Bending over Backwards, Lennard Davis states the following: my solution to the problem of identity is not the inclusion of disability on the roster of favored identities. Rather, the point is that identity studies itself is limited by the necessarily taxonomic peculiarity of its endeavor. The list of identities will only grow larger, tied to an ever-expanding idea of inclusiveness. After all, when all identities are finally included, there will be no identity. When studies focus on alterity, and when alterity must be included, then, in the full plenum of inclusion, alterity ceases to be Other. (30) The above quote outlines the book's purpose in potentially controversial terms. Bending over Backwards is not just a re-evaluation of the disability theories Davis first presented in Enforcing Normalcy (Verso 1995); it is a more extensive look at how notions of disability challenge other political assumptions and privileges. In this sense, disability theories inherently possess a multimodal, cultural critique: not only can literary theory and identity-politics be retheorized through the lens of disability but also the assumptions that often operate unchecked in the legal system, scientific study, and ethics. Davis clearly demonstrates how disability is unique in cultural ideology because it productively deconstructs the most fundamental "binary" in Western culture—that is, the opposition between "the normal" and "the abnormal." For this fact alone, Davis's book is a significant contribution to cultural studies at large. Davis takes his title Bending over Backwards from a rather blatant [End Page 161] bias operating in the legal system today: courts have continually sided with employers who must make "exceptions" for disabled workers, coding such "exceptions"—in legal language—as wholly negative and un-American. For example, the courts in the case Vande Zande vs. State of Wisconsin Department of Administration describe an employer as one who must "bend over backwards to accommodate a disabled worker" (126). Such problematic social "judgments" are what Davis's book attacks head-on from multiple perspectives, especially in the chapters "The End of Identity Politics and the Beginning of Dismodernism" and "Crips Strike Back." Consequently, Davis claims that we need a new umbrella term for both literary as well as cultural studies, one that can overcome the problematic, humanistic/ableist strain that is one of postmodernism's key flaws; his new term is dismodernism, which establishes a nonidealized ethics that can affirm all that makes life nonideal, namely, our limitations and our mortality: politics have been directed toward making all identities equal under a model of the rights of the dominant, often white, male, "normal," subject. In a dismodernist mode, the ideal is not a hypostatization of the normal (that is, dominant) subject, but aims to create a new category based on the partial, incomplete subject whose realization is not in autonomy and independence but dependency and interdependence. This is a very different notion from subjectivity organized around wounded identities; rather, all humans are seen as wounded. (30) Hence, dependence and interdependence should no longer be viewed as pejorative terms, since the hypostatized desire for "perfection"/ "the ideal" is nothing but an alienating illusion. Davis further comments: "we are all disabled by injustice and oppression of various kinds. We are all nonstandard . . . " (31–32). Disability is a reality that everyone must face, since anyone can become physically disabled at any moment—especially later in life. Davis's theorization of dismodernism is a potential link for all identities, regardless of class, race, gender, or any other identity marker. However, it must be noted that "dismodern" disability theories do not attempt to demean the identity-politics based on those particular identity markers; instead, they offer a more inclusive logic that doesn't only privilege certain wounded identities: all "attempts to remake the identity inevitably end up relying on the categories first used to create the oppression" (19). Davis acknowledges that there will [End Page 162] always be some minority group that isn't considered a favored category, such as "Bosnian mothers, Albanian Serbs, or Ethiopian Jews," and so forth (89...

Purpose: Many Eastern and Southern African (ESA) states are obliged to review and amend their legal frameworks with regards to disability since signing and ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The HIV epidemic is one of the main health concerns in the region and is becoming increasingly associated with causing disabilities. In addition, people with disabilities are particularly at risk of exposure to HIV. Despite this, HIV programming has not yet included the interrelationship of disability and HIV. The principles within the CRPD may create much-needed international pressure and so provide a platform for the integration and inclusion of disability into HIV policies and programs. Method: This paper is based on a review of the legal framework in relation to HIV and disability in 19 ESA countries. It identifies 12 key articles of the Convention, which are particularly relevant to the interrelationship of HIV and disability. The paper assesses how these are integrated in the region’s disability or HIV legal frameworks and identifies the main gaps within these legal systems. Results: While many country’s constitutions, disability and HIV laws protect certain key rights, such as the rights to equality and nondiscrimination, employment and health, there are clear gaps in the legal responses to disability and HIV. In particular, legal frameworks fail to provide adequately for accessibility, mobility and access to justice and protection from violence for people with disabilities. This results in limited protection for people with disabilities from HIV exposure and access to services to address HIV-related health and welfare needs. Conclusions: The paper identifies the gaps and makes recommendations for implementing steps toward the integration of disability into HIV-related laws, policies and programs.Implications for RehabilitationRehabilitation in Eastern and Southern Africa has to cater for an increasing number of people living with HIV who experience disability.The legal obligation of Article 25 in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) obliges African states to provide appropriate rehabilitation and access to health care services for people with disabilities.

The insights, uses, and ethics of social neuroscience in anti-discrimination law

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to explore the methodological dimensions and potential of photo‐elicitation, particularly as a historical research tool for archival, oral and critical accounting, and management historians.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis draws upon the methodological, theoretical and empirical literatures of visual anthropology, visual sociology, visual ethnography, oral history, and visual research methods and develops a methodological agenda for photo‐elicitation research in accounting and management history.FindingsIt reveals the potential for contextualised, interpretive and critical discovery in accounting and management history. The prospect of peeling back of hidden layers and voices is significantly enhanced by the introduction of photo‐elicitation, which offers empowerment not only through the visual triggering of memory but through the negotiation and construction of images themselves.Originality/valueThe prospect of more direct access to organisational and personal experience and context is accompanied by new understandings of multiple voices and fresh narratives. Together, these promise potential insights from the particular to the societal.

The sustainable development goals reaffirmed human rights and articulated global commitments that will only be achieved by including all individuals among these people with disabilities. Despite concerted international and national efforts to uphold their rights, experiences of discrimination, social exclusion, and lack of opportunities for full and effective participation in society persist. This theoretical essay, with a reflective and interpretative nature, explores the relationship between the inclusion of people with disabilities in the workplace and the promotion of sustainability. It uses the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a basis for analysis and the Brazilian normative framework. The discussion highlights the essential role of people with disabilities inclusion in achieving specific SDG targets, particularly those related to work, given the role of this activity in promoting equality and sustainable economic growth. Thus, it emphasizes the need to formulate strategies to boost the participation of people with disabilities in work, ensuring access to employment, permanence in the activity, and professional development.

Health disparities encompass a range of factors, including race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability status, and socioeconomic conditions. This project highlights disparities in healthcare access, quality of care, and health outcomes, with a particular focus on racial and ethnic disparities in health insurance coverage, prenatal care, and maternal morbidity. Gender disparities are also evident. Addressing these issues requires a multifaceted approach, including addressing social determinants of health, promoting equitable healthcare policies, and fostering cultural competence. Equitable access to healthcare services, quality care, and improved data collection are essential in eliminating disparities. Initiatives to support underserved communities, improve healthcare quality, and enhance cultural competence are recommended. Research and evidence-based approaches, along with policy reforms at various levels, such as anti-discrimination laws and increased funding for public health, are crucial. Collaboration among healthcare organizations, community groups, government agencies, and advocacy organizations is essential for effective interventions

Transmission of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS is a public health problem that is still a global challenge. This article aims to analyze the factors causing the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases and stigma towards people with HIV/AIDS, and to examine solutions that support human rights. The results of the analysis show that social, economic, cultural, and structural factors, such as poverty, gender inequality, and limited access to health information and services, increase the vulnerability of certain community groups to the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. Meanwhile, widespread stigma and discrimination in society have robbed the basic rights of people with HIV, especially the right to health, work, and social participation. This article suggests a human rights-based approach as a comprehensive solution. Preventive and treatment interventions carried out, legal protection and anti-discrimination policies, empowerment of communities and vulnerable groups, and increasing government accountability. The implementation of these solutions is expected to address the root of the problem and encourage the fulfillment of human rights related to sexual and reproductive health. The conclusions obtained in this study include efforts to increase access to comprehensive health services, accompanied by effective public education campaigns. In addition, legal and policy reforms that respect the human rights of people with sexually transmitted diseases are also important steps to address stigma and discrimination.

To improve public health and support at-risk individuals and families, service navigation has emerged as a primary prevention approach to promote service access. Guided by the Ecological Framework, this study explored workforce experiences and perceptions of barriers and facilitators to health and social care access using qualitative methods. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted with community health workers, family navigators, supervisors, and program administrators from diverse settings. They were transcribed and independently coded by the research team using thematic analysis methodology. Findings showed that barriers to navigation occurred at multiple ecological levels, including the client (e.g., transportation, stigma), navigator (e.g., cultural competence, language barriers), organization (e.g., workforce shortages, referral challenges), community (e.g., transportation), and systemic (e.g., discrimination and bias) levels. Facilitators also occurred at multiple levels, including at the navigator (e.g., rapport building, coordinated referrals), organization (e.g., inter-agency collaboration, culturally holistic services), and systemic (e.g., anti-discrimination policies) levels. Frontline navigators adopt multilevel strategies to improve service access. However, organizational and systemic barriers impede equitable care access. Policy reforms, including strategic workforce development, improved technology, interorganizational collaborations, and sustainable funding are needed.

This paper identifies inequality patterns across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and provides new analysis of their policy and non-policy drivers. One key finding is that education and anti-discrimination policies, well-designed labor market institutions and large and/or progressive tax and transfer systems can all reduce income inequality. On this basis, the paper identifies several policy reforms that could yield a double dividend in terms of boosting GDP per capita and reducing income inequality, and also flags other policy areas where reforms would entail a trade-off between both objectives.