Experiences Of Disabled People Research Articles

Redefining Family Relationships: The Impact of Disability on Working-Class Families during the Industrial Revolution in Britain

The Industrial Revolution traditionally has been seen in Disability Studies as marking a decisive shift in the lives of disabled people. It is argued that the rise of mechanisation, time discipline and standardisation made the industrial workplace a hostile environment for people with non-standard bodies. According to this view, increasing demands to work outside the home also meant that families were less capable of caring for older and disabled members, leading to greater institutionalisation. This view of increasing segregation of disabled people from home and work has dominated understanding of disability in the British Industrial Revolution, but it does not reflect the variability of disabled people's experiences at the time. Drawing on official enquiries, fictional literature, journalism and social commentary from the 1830s and 1840s – a time when the impact of industrialisation on the bodies and family relationships of workers became matters of public, political concern – this article shows the continuing importance of family in the lives of disabled people. The legal duty of families to care for sick and disabled relatives was an enduring social principle throughout this period. Interpersonal relations were tested and sometimes re-drawn by disability, forcing a change in traditional familial roles and expectations. For working people and their families, the potentials for poverty resulting from disability could be great. However, disabled people continued to play significant roles in the lives of their families, and where possible continued to contribute to the domestic economy. Taking a disability perspective on the history of the family highlights the interdependence between family members in industrialising Britain.

Raising relational legal consciousness through co‐production research? Making law more accessible

AbstractThis article offers co‐production as a new methodology for relational approaches to legal consciousness studies that allows for deeper analysis of and engagement with the everyday experience of law. We argue that the inherent relationality of co‐production has the potential to both expose and change legal consciousness. As an approach that equalizes status in the co‐production of knowledge, social structures and hierarchies are reproduced in real time, allowing the relational networks through which legal consciousness is formed to emerge. We demonstrate both the possibility and the value of this approach through a discussion of early findings from a co‐produced project focused on accessible legal information for disabled people with cognitive impairments. Our emerging data show that disabled people's experience as ‘outsiders’ in their communities, and the barriers to justice that they encounter through being not believed or information being given in inaccessible formats, creates uncertainty and distrust of the utility of legal professionals as routes for resolution – even as they express a desire for formal legal process. These data also show that engaging with co‐production work can increase the legal confidence of people from marginalized groups.

No Level Playing Field: Barriers to Disability Representation in Politics

AbstractWhile one in five people in the UK are disabled, their number among elected representatives remains disproportionately low. In ongoing efforts to make politics more inclusive and diverse, disabled people often remain sidelined. As a politically relevant identity, disability is associated with a shared set of experiences and policy interests which are often overlooked. This is at least in part owing to the under‐representation of disabled politicians, which is likely also contributing to a sense of political alienation. Thus, tackling the barriers that disabled people experience in the political recruitment process is not only a matter of democratic justice and equality, but also essential for ensuring that disabled people's needs and concerns are recognised and met. This article outlines the obstacles that disabled people experience in pursuing elected office—including inaccessibility, inadequate financial resources and ableist institutions and cultures—and offers recommendations to political parties, parliaments and governments on how to mitigate them.

Community views of neurodiversity, models of disability and autism intervention: Mixed methods reveal shared goals and key tensions.

What is already known about the topic? Some people support the neurodiversity movement and other people criticize it. They often disagree about what the neurodiversity movement means. Confusion about what the neurodiversity movement is makes it hard for people to agree about how best to support autistic or disabled people.What does this article add? We studied autistic and autism community members' views on the neurodiversity movement and autism interventions. Most participants supported the neurodiversity movement. Support for the neurodiversity movement was related to wanting to change society and make places more comfortable for autistic people. Neurodiversity supporters felt autistic children should choose their own intervention goals and that autistic adults should help children choose goals. Neurodiversity supporters did not think autistic people should be taught to act less autistic. Both those agreeing and disagreeing with the neurodiversity movement said that it is important to help autistic people be well. Many participants said that society causes all the difficulties disabled people experience. Yet they were somewhat open to helping people grow by teaching them useful skills and trying to cure depression and epilepsy.Implications for practice, research or policy. To better help autistic people, we should listen to participants in this study. They called for improving society, building more spaces where autistic people feel comfortable and helping autistic people lead change. They warned against teaching autistic people to hide their autism. Critics of the neurodiversity movement should read this article to better understand what neurodiversity movement supporters believe. By taking time to learn from one another, we can work together to better support autistic people.

Disability inclusion in national surveys.

National surveys are important for understanding the disparities that disabled people experience across social determinants of health; however, limited research has examined the methods used to include disabled people in these surveys. This study reviewed nationally representative surveys administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the US Census Bureau that collected data in the past 5 years and sampled adults ≥18 years. Data from both publicly available online survey documents and a questionnaire emailed to survey administrators were used to determine whether surveys (1) oversampled disabled people, (2) had a data-accessibility protocol to support data collection, and (3) provided multiple data-collection modalities (eg, phone, paper). Of the 201 surveys identified, 30 met the inclusion criteria for the study. Of these 30 surveys, 1 oversampled disabled people, none had a data-collection accessibility protocol, and 21 provided multiple data-collection modalities. This study highlights barriers and opportunities to including disabled people in national surveys, which is essential for ensuring survey data are generalizable to the US population.

Do employers’ equality certifications improve equality outcomes? An assessment of the United Kingdom's Two Ticks and Disability Confident schemes

AbstractThis article contributes to debates on equality, diversity and inclusion by exploring the efficacy of employers’ equality certifications, focusing on the UK government's Two Ticks and Disability Confident certifications. In Study 1, using data on Two Ticks certification matched into the nationally representative Workplace Employment Relations Study 2011, we found the adoption of disability equality policies and practices, the prevalence of disabled people in the workforce and disabled people's experience of work were no better in Two Ticks than in non‐Two Ticks workplaces. In Study 2, using Department for Work and Pensions data on Disability Confident certification matched into WorkL 2021–2023 data (the world's largest employee experience database), we found that the proportion of the workforce that is disabled is no higher in Disability Confident Level 1 ‘Committed’ organisations and Level 3 ‘Leader’ organisations than in non‐Disability Confident organisations. While the proportion of the workforce that is disabled is higher in Disability Confident Level 2 ‘Employer’ organisations than in non‐Disability Confident organisations, just 22 per cent of Disability Confident organisations are at this level. Disabled people's experience of work was no better in Disability Confident than in non‐Disability Confident organisations. Our findings therefore question the efficacy of these employers’ equality certifications.

“They have been a saving grace in all this”: the role of the third sector in disabled people’s experiences of COVID-19 and implications for sector–state relations

This article explores the third sector’s role during the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the experiences of disabled people in England and Scotland. It draws on semi-structured longitudinal interviews with 71 disabled people and 31 key informants, primarily from disabled people’s organisations. The third sector’s nimble response, supporting people in myriad innovative ways, emerged as a key finding. In contrast, statutory services were experienced by many as a barrier rather than an enabler, posing doubts about the state’s ability to respond to the crisis. Our findings raise questions about the role of the state and the third sector. We employ and critique Young’s typology of sector–state relations, concluding that the state needs to engage with the third sector as an equal and strategic partner, recognising its civil society credentials. Further, we raise questions about the appropriateness of using supply and demand models to understand the third sector’s societal role.

Goodbye to PIP, but hello to what? Disability, social security, devolution and policy change in Scotland

The Scottish Government has ambitions to build a new social security system in Scotland with new powers over social security. With the ability to now entirely replace the UK’s Personal Independence Payment, highly controversial for the way it has narrowed entitlement and made the process of applying stressful, the Scottish Government has the opportunity to transform both the experience of disabled people in applying for social security and ensure that what is paid more accurately reflects the costs of disability. However, while significant improvements to the process of applying appear to have been made and these are having a positive impact on access to payment, the Scottish Government’s gradualist approach has also put off by some years more fundamental improvements.

A comparative study of disabled people's experiences with the video conferencing tools Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet and Skype

ABSTRACT The paper presents a comparative mixed methods study of the accessibility and usability for disabled people of four video conferencing tools, Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet and Skype. Useable responses were obtained from 81 disabled people with diverse characteristics, mainly in the UK, though some groups had low representation. None of the tools was considered fully accessible and useable. Zoom was both the most commonly used and the most frequently preferred (56.1%) tool, with MS Teams second in usage and a trailing second in preferences (15.9%). It was considered to have better captioning, but otherwise to generally be a poor second to Zoom. Skype was the most commonly used before lockdown, but was considered dated and its limited use was mainly social, whereas the other tools were also used in work and education. The results were used to draw up separate lists of recommendations for developers and meeting organisers and hosts, as the study also identified actions for organisers and hosts to improve meeting accessibility. Developer recommendations include several easy to set customisation and user friendly interface features, involving disabled people and specific accessibility features, including compatibility with assistive technology, keyboard shortcuts for all functions and automatically-on high quality captions.

Medicalizing disabled people's emotions-Symptom of a dis/ableist society.

The theoretical-conceptual article at hand explores how emotional discourses shape social relations by specifically focusing on the medicalization of disabled- and chronically ill-people's emotions. Medicalization is a concept from medical sociology that describes medicine's expansion into non-medical life areas, for instance into the realm of emotions, sometimes in order to challenge this expansion. The emotions of disabled people are often presented as a medicalized problem, rather than recognizing their embeddedness in a dis/ableist socio-cultural context. Such discourses instrumentalize feelings in order to individualize the responsibility for disability. For a contextualized and emancipatory approach, this study reviews papers on medicalized emotions from Disability Studies-a research program that can provide a rich archive of experiential accounts yet to be theorized through a comprehensive emotional perspective. The medicalization of disabled people's emotions can manifest in different ways: (1) In a dis/ableist society, able-mindedness is compulsory; i.e., we fail to question that a healthy mind is the norm and something to strive for unconditionally. This is also true on an emotional level; after all, some medical diagnoses are based on the wrong degree or temporality of emotionality. (2) Unpleasant feelings such as sadness are misunderstood as symptoms of impairment rather than effects of discrimination. (3) The expression of hurt feelings, e.g., related to discrimination, can easily be dismissed as hysterical. This assumption epistemologically disables patients. (4) Love and desire are delegitimized as fetish, for example, the desire for a disabled lover or the wish to start a family despite a chronic illness. The medicalization of disabled people's emotions individualizes and delegitimizes unpleasant emotions that emerge in a dis/ableist society. Different facets of medicalization enforce medical treatment instead, albeit in different ways. Disabled and sick people are cast as not feeling and desiring the right way, while hegemonic discourse prescribes psychological treatment against the effects of discrimination and bodily symptoms it cannot explain. Beyond the dismissal of disabled people's experience, adverse effects on healthcare delivery and health outcomes can be expected.

Reproductive justice for disabled people post-Dobbs: A call-to-action for researchers

The recent Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization endangers reproductive freedom, particularly for marginalized communities, including disabled people. Disability and health equity researchers possess unique insights into the needs and experiences of disabled people, making our involvement crucial in response to the Dobbs decision. Accordingly, guided by disability justice and reproductive justice principles, researchers should undertake disability-inclusive studies on the consequences of abortion restrictions, advocate for policy changes that uphold the reproductive autonomy of disabled people, and collaborate with disability-led movements advocating for reproductive freedom. Indeed, it is imperative for researchers to actively promote the inclusion and self-determination of disabled people regarding their reproductive health and well-being. Given the escalating threats to reproductive freedom and their profound impact on disabled people, there has never been a more pivotal moment for disability and health equity researchers to join the fight for reproductive justice.

Disabled people’s accessible taxi experiences in Toronto, Canada

Many paratransit agencies contract out trips to accessible taxi services. The literature has identified an array of transport barriers facing disabled people, and offers useful insights into how they experience different transport modes. However, remarkably little attention has been given to understanding how disabled people experience accessible taxi trips. In this paper, we present findings from a study focused on understanding how disabled people experience accessible taxi services in Toronto, Canada. Findings emerged from a thematic analysis of 590 customer complaint reports and 494 driver-reported incident reports that were provided by a local accessible taxi brokerage. To question the embodied experiences of disabled people during accessible taxi trips, we employed a critical disability studies perspective informed by phenomenological and critical ableist studies. Findings underscore the temporal experiences of disability, while highlighting ableist aspects of accessible taxi services that are contributing to various barriers for disabled riders relating to service quality issues, safety concerns, and inflexible taxi service policies. In this paper, we call for enhanced disability-related training for drivers, flexible accessible taxi policies that better account for the needs of disabled riders, improved communication protocols, and greater engagement with disabled people when developing new policies and operational changes.

Academic Coverage of Social Stressors Experienced by Disabled People: A Scoping Review

Social stress can be caused by many factors. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) highlights many social stressors disabled people experience in their daily lives. How social stressors experienced by disabled people are discussed in the academic literature and what data are generated influence social-stressor related policies, education, and research. Therefore, the aim of our study was to better understand the academic coverage of social stressors experienced by disabled people. We performed a scoping review study of academic abstracts employing SCOPUS, the 70 databases of EBSCO-HOST and Web of Science, and a directed qualitative content analysis to achieve our aim. Using many different search strategies, we found few to no abstracts covering social stressors experienced by disabled people. Of the 1809 abstracts obtained using various stress-related phrases and disability terms, we found a bias towards covering disabled people as stressors for others. Seventeen abstracts mentioned social stressors experienced by disabled people. Fourteen abstracts flagged “disability” as the stressor. No abstract contained stress phrases specific to social stressors disabled people experience, such as “disablism stress*” or “ableism stress*”. Of the abstracts containing equity, diversity, and inclusion phrases and policy frameworks, only one was relevant, and none of the abstracts covering emergency and disaster discussions, stress-identifying technologies, or science and technology governance were relevant. Anxiety is one consequence of social stressors. We found no abstract that contained anxiety phrases that are specific to social stressors disabled people experience, such as “ableism anxiety”, “disablism anxiety” or “disability anxiety”. Within the 1809 abstract, only one stated that a social stressor is a cause of anxiety. Finally, of the abstracts that contained anxiety phrases linked to a changing natural environment, such as “climate anxiety”, none were relevant. Our study found many gaps in the academic literature that should be fixed and with that highlights many opportunities.

“They Weren’t Necessarily Designed with Lived Experiences of Disability in Mind”

Using semi-structured interviews with disabled archival users and building on the emerging field of critical access studies, this article illustrates the ways in which archival spaces and their in/accessibility affectively impact disabled people. Interviewees describe how they experience barriers to accessibility not only at a basic, architectural level – of not being able to get into a building or archives room – but also through archives’ policies and expectations regarding the ways in which archival work is done. The way that accessibility is implemented, even beyond legal compliance, greatly impacts the extent to which disabled researchers feel they belong in archival spaces. Inaccessibility, this research shows, produces a sense of unbelonging; the deprioritization of disability both as a subject or organizing category and as an identity of a potential researcher, shows disabled people that they do not belong in archival spaces, and this is further complicated for multiply marginalized disabled people. By examining the multifaceted ways that disabled people experience inaccessibility, this article focuses on the “emotionally expensive” aspects of inaccessibility to emphasize the ways in which barriers compound and accumulate and can prevent disabled people from accessing our own histories. These findings demonstrate how central accessibility is to disabled people’s lives: it is almost impossible to talk about our experiences of archival materials and history without discussing how we navigate the multiple barriers to accessing them.

Interstices of Dis/abling Experiences in Times of Crises

It is the very lived experiences of crises that draw attention to the situated relations of dis/embodied, spatial, and cultural practices that constitute dis/abling experiences that this Special Issue wishes to address and critically engage with. How are crises lived and experienced by disabled people and how can we learn from the experiences of disabled people in dealing with spatio-culturally situated differences and related specific constraints and requirements in situations of crises? How may these experiences allude to the diversity of embodied life? Understood as precarious interstices, crises experiences not only tell us much about how we live and think by troubling of how we think and live, but they also make us think, hesitate, imagine, and tinker of how we do and may wish to live differently. By unfolding these interstitial experiences, this Special Issue wishes to contribute to the emergence of “publics” (Dewey) which draw attention to the diversity of dis/abling experiences and related modes of existence.

Assistive technology control using eeg signal

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare states that about 18% of people in Australia, which is 4.4 million, suffers disability. Hosseini et al argued that physically disabled people experience more restrictions in social activities than healthy people, which are associated with lower level of well-being and poor quality of life. To improve the life quality of disabled people, a study is carried out to determine an effective and accurate way to realize what disabled people think. Although there are similar products been made, the previous built products are heavy, clunky, slow in response and inaccurate. In order to solve the problem, an integrated circuit (IC) with a microcontroller is used instead of a laptop and a control system is also implemented to accelerate the response and improve the accuracy. An isolating circuit is implemented as well to improve the stability and durability of the system. Experiment result shows that the IC implemented weighs around 5g, which is 400 times lighter comparing with previous products. The deviation is controlled to be within 2% and the response time is measured to be 0.5s the power consumption is measured to be less than 100W, which is well within the budget.

Disabled people’s experiences accessing healthcare services during the COVID-19 pandemic: a scoping review

BackgroundDisruptions to healthcare services during the COVID-19 pandemic are well-recognised problems. However, a dearth of research exists on disabled people’s experiences with accessing these services. A scoping review was undertaken to identify and explore research on the experience of disabled people in accessing healthcare services between 2020 and 6 February 2023.MethodsPubMed, Web of Science, CINAHL, and OVID were employed to search for research that included the voice of disabled people, or their parents or caregivers. Over two distinct phases, a total of 2,201 articles were reviewed according to article titles, keywords, and abstracts. Eighty-one studies were identified that met the inclusion criteria; these were reviewed in full.ResultsEighteen studies specifically described the experiences of accessing healthcare or disability services, and sixty-three raised healthcare challenges as a secondary consideration. Many disabled people struggled to access healthcare services and felt they were invisible; as a result, individuals’ mental health was negatively affected. Disabled people with compounding vulnerabilities were at the most risk of experiencing a lack of healthcare access.ConclusionsThere is an urgent need for research and policy that is responsive to disabled people’s access to healthcare during the pandemic; currently many health policies are ‘disability-blind’ and exclude these members of the global community. Furthermore, to assist in creating disability-responsive research, funding needs to prioritise researchers within the disabled community.

Challenges facing Hong Kong’s intellectually disabled people in using public services during the COVID-19 pandemic

The needs of disabled people are often insufficiently recognized by mainstream society, causing this population to be excluded from society and activities of daily life. This problem is clearly reflected in the obstacles that intellectually disabled people have encountered in their use of public services during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this qualitative study, we conducted focus group sessions with 17 social workers and 12 carers supporting individuals with intellectual disabilities in Hong Kong. Using a thematic analysis, we found that (a) the social-emotional needs of intellectually disabled people were intensified by the disruption of social services; (b) they received limited benefit from the use of video conferencing services; and (c) they encountered significant difficulties in complying with preventive measures. To achieve equity in public service, universal design should be emphasized during the planning stage, and the experiences of disabled people should be carefully considered from the outset.

EMPATHY THE CRUCIAL ELEMENT FOR SUCCESSFUL SUPPORTING PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

Empathy, the ability to understand other people, plays a key role in successfully supporting people with disabilities in their daily lives. Although in general most people are empathic, it is usually necessary to release empathy. This is most simply achieved by means of empathy tests that simulate different forms of disability and the difficulties that disabled people experience in their daily activities due to this impairment. The paper describes simple tests and their impact on changing attitudestowards people with disabilities and ways of supporting them.Key words:empathy, people with disabilities, support, education.

What’s in a news image? Framing people with disabilities in the changing society of China

The stereotype and stigma that disabled people experience is a communication proposition that deserves academic attention. How the media reports people with disabilities reflects society’s overall perception and evaluation of people with disabilities. This study uses content analysis to demonstrate how People’s Daily, the mainstream media in mainland China, has undergone a process in the designation of people with disabilities from canfei (disabled and waste) to canji (disabled and ill) to canzhang (people encountering obstacles). News reports related to the image of people with disabilities often relate to terms such as ‘heroes’, ‘role models’, ‘builders’, ‘beneficiaries’, and ‘free riders’.