Despite strong business case indicators, people with intellectual disabilities experience persistent inequity in the workplace. With a desire to enact social change by sharing lived experience and addressing ableist structures within disability employment, a self-advocate led disability theatre project in British Columbia, Canada was created and performed. This article explores audience member evaluations, asking: “What was the impact of the theatre production, We Deserve to Work - a theatre for social change project - on the participating audience members?” Informed by critical disability studies and disability justice theory, qualitative descriptive methods were utilised to identify themes across audience member evaluations. The thematic findings highlighted impact across a number of areas, including (i) transformed perspectives on disability, (ii) identification of ableist systems and structures in the workplace, (iii) the potential of inclusive employment, and (iv) theatre as a vehicle for activism. The audience experience and subsequent evaluations affirm the potential of disability justice-oriented theatre to shift perspectives and create social change.

This article reviews the first three finalised applications by the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Quality and Safeguards Commission to the Federal Court of Australia for civil penalties against disability service providers. The cases concern the deaths of people with intellectual disabilities. In all three cases, the providers accepted that they breached their statutory obligations to provide safe care. The penalties of $400,000, $1.8 million and a little over $1.9 million, respectively, were successively larger than previous penalties imposed by Australian courts concerning service provision to people with disabilities. Informed by research about organisational predictors of quality practice in supported accommodation and schools of thought about safety, five categories of lessons about the micro-level processes of service provision are identified. These are about risk assessment and management, staff learning and development, role and task clarity, policy and procedures and their implementation, and leadership focus.

Despite extensive literature on attitudes towards people with ­disabilities, literature on attitudes towards people with intellectual disabilities is less extensive. To further this research and to better understand attitudes towards this group, a systematic review of the literature on attitudes towards people with intellectual disabilities was conducted, based on the Web of Science, PsycINFO, and Scopus databases. Sixty-one articles met the inclusion criteria. Most of these studies sought to understand the attitudes of a general population towards people with intellectual disabilities using questionnaires; however, there was a lack of uniformity among them with regards to measurement instruments. While the results of these previous studies indicated positive attitudes towards people with intellectual disabilities, they were inconclusive regarding gender, age, and other socio-demographic variables. The quality of contact with people with intellectual disabilities was shown to be a determining variable.

This study explores the experiences of social participation among older adults with intellectual disabilities in Chile, a population often excluded from aging and disability policy agendas. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 123 people with intellectual disabilities aged 45 and over from three diverse regions, the study identified the types of activities they engage in, the barriers they face, and the adaptive strategies they use to remain socially connected. Using thematic analysis, we found that participation was shaped by a complex interplay of personal, environmental, and structural factors. Barriers included inaccessible transport and environments, cognitive demands, and attitudinal exclusion. Facilitators included relational trust, personalised activities, flexible programming, and accessible communication. Findings highlighted the need to move beyond binary notions of inclusion and understand participation as a negotiated, context-dependent process. The study offers regionally grounded evidence to inform inclusive aging policy, emphasising the importance of low-cost, relationally responsive adaptations and coordinated supports. It also calls for greater integration between aging and disability sectors to ensure equitable opportunities for engagement across the life course.

Among the universal rights recognised by the United Nations is the right of all people to communicate for themselves. And yet, certain vulnerable people are increasingly at risk of having their communication rights violated. Growing numbers of minimally- and non-speaking people are being subjected to Facilitated Communication, Rapid Prompting Method, Spellers Method, and variants—all referred to in this article as Facilitated Communication. The aim of this article was to (a) describe the populations most vulnerable to having their communication rights violated through the use of Facilitated Communication and variants; (b) describe the origins of Facilitated Communication and variants, and their characteristics; (c) provide guidance and protocols for safeguarding the communication rights of people subjected to these techniques, including authorship testing; and (d) suggest actions that responsible persons should follow to secure the minimally- or non-speaking person’s human right to independent, autonomous, and effective communication. Methods were a review of peer-reviewed and grey literature, scientific literature, legal cases, communication rights documents, guidance on communication methods, and clinical and lived experiences of the authors who include an autistic adult. Recommendations can help health and educational professionals and advocates to (a) recognise when Facilitated Communication and variants are being used, (b) be aware of methods used in reliable authorship evaluations, and (c) respond to the outcomes by providing the person with effective forms of augmentative and alternative communication that allow them unimpeded access to their communication rights.

This article applies Principal-Agent Theory and the concept of moral hazard to explain the Australian Government’s ineffective regulatory design for chemical restraint in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The article begins by describing how public administration philosophy and statutory agencies in Australia structured the early design of regulation. The specific challenges of regulating chemical restraint are summarised before applying Principal Agent Theory, arguing that it allows the government to remain sufficiently engaged in the rhetoric of chemical restraint reduction but at the same time distanced from the responsibility. This distance allows moral hazard to exist, where the regulation of chemical restraint is obscure, burdens are displaced onto the States and Territories, while people with intellectual and developmental disabilities bear the risks. This article offers the first theoretical explanation for the lack of progress in the regulation of chemical restraint and challenges the government’s policy goal of reducing and eliminating chemical restraint. Significant reform of chemical restraint regulation beyond disability service providers is required to achieve any meaningful outcomes for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.