Disability Identity Research Articles

Polysemic Interpretations: Examining How Women with Visual Impairments Incorporate, Resist, and Subvert Advertising Content

This article takes a feminist disability studies approach to the analysis of the responses of women with visual impairments to representations of blindness, disability, and gender in advertising. Empirical data gathered via semi-structured interviews with women who are visually impaired (N = 5) enhances existing understandings of oppressed audiences’ polysemic interpretations of advertisements. The research findings reveal participants’ subversion of stereotypical approaches to visual impairments, ocularcentrism, and gendered constructions of blindness, which are found in advertisements (N = 3) produced post-2000 in the United Kingdom and United States. Participants highlighted subtle stereotyping in advertisements through exploring the intersecting nature of disability and gender identities. Advertisements were used by participants as prompts for reasserting their affirmative senses of self and as a means of critiquing sociocultural attitudes toward women with visual impairments. Recommendations for future research and practice in relation to advertising polysemy and the representation of disabled women in advertising are provided.

Beyond Diversity and Inclusion: Understanding and Addressing Ableism, Heterosexism, and Transmisia in the Legal Profession: Comment on Blanck, Hyseni, and Altunkol Wise's National Study of the Legal Profession.

Far too many-if not most-of us in the legal profession who belong to both the disability and LGBTQ+ communities have known informally, through our own experiences and those of others like us, that workplace bias and discrimination on the basis of disability, sexuality, and gender identity is still widespread. The new study by Blanck et al. on diversity and inclusion in the U.S. legal profession provides empirical proof of this phenomenon, which might otherwise be dismissed as being based on anecdotal evidence.1 Its findings lend credibility to our position that the legal profession must make systemic changes to address workplace ableism, heterosexism, and transmisia.2 They also suggest possibilities as to where and how it might start to do so through providing information on who employers discriminate against most often and in what forms.3.

A Clinician's Guide to Polycultural Psychiatry.

Patients and families each present unique microcultures, mixing and blending numerous broadly conceptualized cultural identity groups. Within individuals and families, cultural identities are experienced and enacted as complex matrices of intersecting identities that, to varying degrees, complement, assimilate, accommodate, or clash. In these patterns, individuals' relationships to cultures are not necessarily categorically distinct ("multicultural"). Instead, they are often "polycultural," defined as partial and plural; rather than interpreting different cultural traditions as separate and independent, they are, within the lives of individuals and families, better understood as systems that interact with and influence one another.Cultural identity groups extend beyond those traditionally considered by transcultural psychiatry-that is, beyond ethnic, racial, and language groups. They encompass (in alphabetical order) educational, ethnic, extended family, gender-oriented, generational, geographic, language and dialect, organizational, physical or psychiatric disability, political, professional, racial, religious, sect, social class, and vocational identity groups, among others. Simplistic assumptions and generalities about identity groups risk cultural stereotyping that may negatively bias clinical assessments. Therefore, practitioners striving for cultural sensitivity need to adopt nuanced strategies for approaching broad polycultural identity questions in clinical practice. Accordingly, this article suggests frameworks and strategies for (1) assessing and confronting one's own cultural preconceptions and prejudices, and (2) developing etic (objective quantitative data) and emic (insiders' experiential worldviews) perspectives pertinent to clinical anthropathology. Both etic and emic perspectives are necessary for polyculturally nuanced, respectful, comprehensive inquiries pertinent to patients' and family's health beliefs, psychiatric difficulties, and health practices. Supplementary material from the DSM-5 section on cultural formulation is adapted and discussed, along with the implications of polycultural psychiatry for education and training in psychiatry.

Developmental disability vs. neurodiverse identity: how cognitive lens affects the general public’s perceptions of autism

Participants read a very brief educational message describing Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as a developmental disability or neurodiverse identity. Participants who read the neurodiverse identity message were significantly more likely to endorse an entity/fixed mindset about autistic individuals, perceiving them as less likely to change over time. Educational message did not significantly affect social distance towards individuals with ASD, perceived importance of workplace accommodations for individuals with ASD, or perceived ability of individuals with ASD to possess or learn employability skills. These results suggest that the neurodiversity framework could be at risk for misinterpretation by the general population. Future research should carefully consider how to design public education campaigns that promote respect and appreciation for autistic differences, without potentially triggering an entity/fixed mindset about autistic capabilities. Points of interest In this study, participants read a very brief message describing Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as a developmental disability or a neurodiversity. Participants who read the neurodiversity message were more likely to perceive autistic individuals as being fixed or unlikely to change over time. The type of message didn’t affect participants’ willingness to interact with individuals with ASD, the degree to which they viewed workplace accommodations to be important for individuals with ASD, or their perceptions that individuals with ASD had or could learn new employability skills. Public education campaigns should aim to promote respect and appreciation for autistic individuals, while also encouraging a mindset of growth and development for all individuals.

Journalism and Disability in Canada: Blind and Visually Impaired Journalists Weigh In

This roundtable dialogue foregrounds the pragmatic experiences of five disabled journalists, four of whom are blind or visually impaired. The journalists speak to the politics of disability identity in the newsroom, their career trajectories amid ableist environments, and the ways in which they grapple with the longstanding traditions of disability representation. They engage in larger theoretical conversations about the relationship between disability and media in the fields of communication, journalism, and critical disability studies.

PROTOCOL: Online interventions for reducing hate speech and cyberhate: A systematic review.

PROTOCOL: Online interventions for reducing hate speech and cyberhate: A systematic review.

The Hybrid I/Eye

Hybridity, when related to identity research, points to a blending of difference in such a way that new performances of identity may appear in various social interactions. Exploring hybridity can create new perceptions of social life and reveal the complex ways that people’s diverse relationships and life stages construct people’s identities. In this critical autoethnography, I consider how disability and racial identities intersect. More specifically, I relate how my narrative experience with the disabling symptoms of Graves’ Disease impacted the ascription of Asian racial identity based on the reading of the physicality of my eyes. Grounded in these personal narratives, I theorize about ways that hybridity can cross boundaries of categorical difference in the ways that it is socially constructed, fluid, and changing. Some changes are expected, as age transforms all of us; others are unexpected, as the body and mind are surprised by illness and rapid physical changes impact avowed and ascribed identities. I offer this autoethnography of these intersecting spaces as one performance of evolving identity work that impacted my own and others’ imagination of race and disability. I hope to create new insight into how our social worlds are constructed (and privileged ideologies promoted) in everyday life.

In the Time of Pandemic, the Deep Structure of Biopower Is Laid Bare

The article focuses on the Americans with Disabilities Act which acknowledges subjectivities and human rights involved in disabled identity and mentions that the coronavirus pandemic has brought into war of survival Topics discussed include biopolitics and thanatopolitics that might display to have been in opposition, proliferation of life that blunted emotional response and utilitarian guidelines adopted by several states

Stigma, Identity, and the Power of Communicative Interaction between People with and without Disabilities أثر مفاهیم العیب، والهویة، وسلطة التفاعلات الاجتماعیة بین العادیین وذوی الاحتیاجات الخاصة

This study is addressing the nature of communicative interaction between people with disabilities and the temporarily able-bodied community. It also investigates the covert and overt impacts of such interactions on the identity and self-image of people with disabilities. The purpose of this study is to scrutinize the nature of interaction between communication, identity, and perception and how these interactions influence the perception and identity of people with disabilities. Further, the study provides a robust perspective in regard to who is capable of defining people with disabilities, and how people with disabilities negotiate their self-identity at any given society. The study equips activists with a great perspective and profound understanding of the communication issues that people with disabilities are experiencing. Prejudices, stigmatizations, and negative attitudes toward people with disabilities perpetuate environmental and social injustices. However, this paper attempts to increase the awareness of the disability identity and its positive impacts on people with disabilities. تقوم هذه الدراسة بتسليط الضوء على طبيعة التفاعل التواصلي بين مجتمع ذوي الاحتياجات الخاصة وبين مجتمع ذوي القدرة الجسدية المؤقتة (العاديين). کما تحقق الدراسة في الآثار الصريحة والضمنية لهذه التفاعلات التواصلية على الهوية وصورة الذات لذوي الاحتياجات الخاصة. تهدف هذه الدراسة لفحص التفاعلات بين عوامل الهوية، والتواصل الاجتماعي، والإدراک؛ وکيف لهذه التفاعلات فيما بينها القدرة على صياغة هوية ذوي الإعاقة وتصوراتهم عن ذواتهم. إضافة إلى ذلک، تستعرض الدراسة تصور معرفي رصين ومتماسک حول سؤال من هو المخول في تعريف وتحديد ذوي الاحتياجات الخاصة، وکيف لذوي الاحتياجات الخاصة التفاوض مع مجتمعاتهم على تشکيل وصياغة هوياتهم الذاتية؟ تزود الدراسة المختصين والمهتمين بشأن ذوي الاحتياجات الخاصة برؤية فلسفية غائرة وفهم عميق بمشکلات التفاعلات الاجتماعية التي يعيشها ذوي الاحتياجات الخاصة. تعمل کلا من، التحيزات النفسية السلبية تجاه ذوي الإعاقة وإشعارهم بمشاعر العيب تجاه وجودهم في الفضاءات العامة والرؤى السلبية، على تخليد معاناتهم البيئية والاجتماعية. ولکن، الغاية الکبرى من هذه الدراسة هو رفع مستوى الوعي المجتمعي تجاه أهمية هويات الإعاقة وأثرها الإيجابي على ذوي الاحتياجات الخاصة.

Towards an Integrated View of Disability: Bridging Theory and Praxis

For a long time, disability was perceived through a medical lens as a purely individual, physical manifestation. This view has changed through the works of various social model theorists who presented disability as a socially imposed experience, as opposed to the experiences of individual impairments. Nevertheless, each of these perspectives present an aspect of what seems to be a complex reality. The aim of this paper is to pursue an understanding of the disabled identity that is holistic and takes into account the built environment, and the historical aspects of the disabled identity. Another problem that we must confront ourselves with is how such a complex understanding of the disabled identity which draws from the post-structural critique of the same could be meaningfully used to inform policy. This paper tries to integrate John-Sebastien Beaudry’s method of liminal reasoning and Mari J. Matsuda’s method of multiple consciousness in order to conceive a method that may help to employ critical perspectives that inform theory into practice in policy and legality, bridging the gap between theory and practice.

30 Years of Women's Health Issues

30 Years of Women's Health Issues

Constraints on Applying Disability Identity Card: A Study from Roshi Rural Municipality from Midhill, Nepal

Disability Identity Card (ID)is the key document issued for individuals with disabilities and qualifies a person as a recipient of disability allowance, a Social Security Programme of the Government of Nepal. Based on primary data collected using household questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews from Roshi Rural Municipality in Midhill Nepal, this paper aims to assess the socio-cultural backgrounds and major constraints in applying and acquiring the Disability ID card. Findings show that lack of knowledge about the ID card, its benefits and the application process are found to be the major constraints in acquiring it. Those who know about the application process have also been facing difficulties such as longer travel distance to district headquarters, lengthy and ambiguous processes, lack of money, and lack of supporting documents. The state restructuring and federalisation was found to be an opportunity in terms of the active roles that the local municipal government have played wherein more person with disability (PwDs) have approached for the card.

"I Hear You Just Fine": Disability and Queer Identity in Yuki Fumino's I Hear the Sunspot

Yuki Fumino’s currently ongoing series, I Hear the Sunspot, is a manga that provides a voice for those on the “outside” of society as it examines Japanese cultural attitudes toward both disability and homosexuality. Employing a range of characters, the manga confronts the problem of compulsory able-bodiedness and the need for disabled persons to fill prescribed roles, the process of moving away from self-isolation to self-acceptance, and the debate between living insularly within a disabled community or community building between disabled and nondisabled communities. Fumino uses the figure of Kohei to represent the struggles of self-acceptance as it relates to intersectional queer and disabled identities, and the figure of Taichi to represent the ‘bridge’ of community building as a catalyst to this self-acceptance in a society where both disabled and queer communities are seen as outsiders.

‘In your own head everyone is staring’: the disability related identity experiences of young people with hemiplegic cerebral palsy

ABSTRACT This article explores the disability related identity experiences of young people with hemiplegic cerebral palsy. Using a narrative inquiry methodology, 25 young people between 18 and 29 years participated in in-depth interviews. Their narratives highlighted growing perceptions of difference and how the negative actions and attitudes of a few people in their past continued to shadow their current lives. Influenced by perceived negative attitudes of others to disability and their own internalisation of these, the young people conceptualise a binary of normalcy and difference, finding themselves liminally positioned, somewhere in between, and mostly seeking to avoid a disability association. In new social situations, the young people reported engaging in disability identity management work, while often resisting having disability as part of their identity. These can be conceptualised as acts of resilience and of resistance in the face of oppressive social forces. There is a powerful counter narrative in a sub group of the participants who were actively engaged with peers with experience of disability. For these young people, the inclusion of disability within social identities became possible. The findings of this study have implications for our understandings of managing identities in young lives, particularly for those in marginal positions.

Wacana Identitas Disabilitas dalam Film What They Don’t Talk When They Talk about Love (2013)

This study is a film text analysis study that aims to describe the disability discourse in the film What They Don't Talk When They Talk About Love (2013), which is represented and distributed to the audience regarding disability identity discourse in Indonesia today. This research is significant because of the representation of people with disabilities rarely shown as a figure and central issue. The film What They Don't Talk When They Talk About Love (2013) is a film directed by Mouly Surya that raises the big theme of the life of a person with a disability that is rarely shown primarily in presenting representations of people with disabilities that are humanist. This research method is a qualitative text-based analysis using film discourse interpretation by Jenna Wildfeuer to uncover the discourse of identity of disability in the film by doing two stages to understand and construct the meaning of the film namely the formal description of the inference process and functional analysis of the communicative purposes. The results of this study indicate that identity of disability in this film is through social interaction as something that is not bodily, but an environment that is not inclusive or discourse on the limited access of persons with hearing impairments communicating in society, through social relations persons with disabilities are shown as sexual beings and empowered over his body or discourse on sexuality and the exploration of the body of persons with disabilities, and through character representations that exist in the community or depictions of stories encountered in daily life.

Resisting ableism in deliberately developmental organizations: A discursive analysis of the identity work of employees with disabilities

AbstractPeople with disabilities, an understudied population in human resource development, are often constructed as deficient and unproductive in the workplace. Such a phenomenon can largely be attributed to ableism, which is intensified by the widespread organizational emphasis on productivity. With the recognition of people with disabilities as political agents, this study examined the discursive practices of employees with disabilities in Deliberately Developmental Organizations (DDOs). DDOs as a research site were purposefully selected given their commitment to employees' continuous learning, growth, and development distinct from productivity as the main organizing principle. The critical discourse analysis of seven employees with disabilities in DDOs revealed two ways in which the participants countered the negative stereotypes associated with them: (a) the participants resisted ableism by openly communicating the scope of their ability, and (b) the participants resisted ableism by stepping outside the category of people with disabilities. These two radical ways in which the participants challenged ableism by drawing upon the empowering discursive resources in DDOs did not have ableism's reproducing effects and therefore illuminates the potential of continuing to research DDOs as a promising alternative organizational space for inclusion. This study expands our knowledge of disability identity in the workplace by highlighting that a DDO culture provides a unique context under which the distinct identity work of employees with disabilities can be observed and theorized.

Providing a foundation for decent work and adequate income during health and economic crises: constitutional approaches in 193 countries

PurposeAs coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) spreads globally, the economic and health consequences are disproportionately affecting marginalized workers. However, countries' existing labor and social security laws often exclude the most vulnerable workers from coverage, exacerbating existing inequalities. Guaranteeing the rights to adequate income even when ill, decent working conditions and nondiscrimination in constitutions may provide a foundation for protecting rights universally, safeguarding against counterproductive austerity measures, and providing a normative foundation for equality and inclusion as economies recover. The purpose of this article is to examine the prevalence of these rights globally and assess some of their early impacts amid the pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThe authors created and analyzed a database of constitutional rights for all 193 United Nations member states. All constitutions were double coded by an international multidisciplinary, multilingual team of researchers.FindingsThis study finds that 54% of countries take some approach to guaranteeing income security in their constitutions, including 23% that guarantee income security during illness. Thirty-one percent guarantee the right to safe working conditions. Only 36% of constitutions explicitly guarantee at least some aspect of nondiscrimination at work. With respect to equal rights broadly, constitutional protections are most common on the basis of sex (85%), followed by religion (78%), race/ethnicity (76%), socioeconomic status (59%), disability (27%), citizenship (22%), sexual orientation (5%) and gender identity (3%). Across almost all areas, protections for rights are far more common in constitutions adopted more recently.Originality/valueThis is the first study to systematically examine protections for income security and decent work, together with nondiscrimination, in the constitutions of all 193 UN member states.

Disability Affirmation Predicts Employment Among Adults With Visual Impairment and Blindness

Empirical research on psychosocial correlates of employment among adults with visual impairment or blindness (VI) is limited, and previous studies involving psychological constructs have reported generally nonsignificant or mixed findings. Considering persistent disparities in employment outcomes faced by people with VI, further investigation is needed to understand the role of psychosocial factors in employment in this population. In the current study, stepwise logistic regression was used to explore the association between personal disability identity (i.e., disability affirmation and disability acceptance) and employment status in a sample of 180 working-age U.S. residents. Results indicated that employment status was predicted by higher disability affirmation ( p = .001, odds ratio [OR] = 2.21) in a model that included demographic and impairment-related variables that have previously been examined in employment among adults with VI. The exploratory model predicting employment also included higher educational attainment ( p < .001, OR = 6.03), self-reported visibility of disability ( p = .006, OR = 4.22), age ( p < .001, OR = 0.94), and use of mobility tool ( p < .001, OR = 0.05). The regression model yielded a pseudo R2 value of .32, indicating good fit. Important among these findings, the current study introduces disability affirmation, which involves disability pride and positive self-concept as a person with a disability, as a predictor of employment among working-age U.S. residents. Rehabilitation counselors may benefit from a consideration of the role of disability affirmation in consumer employment outcomes.

Eugenic Nostalgia: Self-Narration and Internalized Ableism in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson has recently argued that Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go deconstructs ableism’s binary structure by postulating the existence of clone characters who occupy an abject position in a eugenic dystopia precisely because their genetically engineered, idealized able bodies exist to be used to “cure” the disabilities of others. The article builds on Garland-Thomson’s work, discussing the role of science fiction in Ishiguro’s book as a means to explore how ableist narratives contribute to cultural norms that enable an overt disciplining of disabled bodies that still occurs, despite it no longer being socially acceptable, and posits protagonist Kathy H.’s story as a narrative of disability identity that exposes the contradictory nature of a belief in the able body and its opposition to disability. Putatively able-bodied, Kathy narrates her experience of the world from a subject position that undermines a stable construction of the body within an ableist framework, ultimately showing these distinctions to be untenable. By discussing the role of first-person perspective in Ishiguro’s novel as a means to interrogate internalized cultural narratives that perpetuate ableist practices, the article examines how cultural notions of ability and disability function as terms that define through exclusion the citizen-subject in liberal democratic societies.

“Disabled or Not, People Just Want to Feel Welcome”: Stories of Belonging from College Students with Intellectual Disability

As part of a larger storytelling project with college students belonging to minoritized social groups, nine young adults from an inclusive college program for students with intellectual disability (ID) participated in narrative interviews. All were invited to tell stories about campus incidents of microaggression and microaffirmation related to their disability. They also were invited to tell stories about other social identities they claimed. Stories were analyzed thematically and for correspondence with findings from previous studies involving other social identity groups. Students told a variety of stories about interpersonal incidents on campus that made them feel respected or disrespected. They also shared stories of institutional encounters that influenced their sense of acceptance at the university. Although they told more stories about microaffirmations, they were not immune to microaggressions. However, many of the students’ microaffirmation stories placed importance on not being perceived as different rather than a clear affirmation of disability identity. Students’ stories have implications for fostering a campus climate where students with ID are respected and included and where ableism is addressed in substantial ways.