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Building on theoretical foundations from communication and disability studies, we ran an online experiment to study the influence of online constructions corresponding to the medical and social models of disability on attitudes toward wheelchair users. We recruited students from a public university in the Mediterranean region and, after a pretest on their attitudes toward wheelchair users, we had them read social media posts and online news items that corresponded to the medical model (medical experimental group), the social model (social experimental group) or were neutral (control group). The participants received the stimuli via email during a five-day period after the pretest and were then posttested. Pro-social stimuli produced a significant mild change in the expected direction, while the corresponding effect of pro-medical stimuli was not significant. Both social and medical group posttest means were significantly different from the control group posttest mean, suggesting that exposure to online constructions based on both models influences attitudes toward disability. A repeat posttest, administered one week after the posttest, showed stability of the observed changes. The study adds to the limited existing knowledge about the influence of online constructions on attitudes toward persons with disabilities.

In “Rights of Persons With Disabilities (RPWD) Bill, Disability has been defined based on an evolving and dynamic concept and the types of disabilities have been increased from existing 7 to 21 and the Central Government will have the power to add more types of disabilities.1 The Speech and Language Disability and Specific Learning Disability have been added for the first time. Acid Attack Victims have been included.

Justifications for access to physical activity for people who experience disability tend to focus on the health benefits associated with a medical model of disability. The result is often programs that are segregated and impairment-focused, with limited access to integrated settings that are also potentially inclusive. In this instrumental case study, the authors engaged 20 participants with and without impairment from an adult integrated indoor cycling program to explore what contributed to meaningful and inclusive experiences in this setting. Data were generated through semistructured interviews and reflective notes. Thematic analysis led to three themes: (a) “just going to a spin class” (b) “seamless”? and (c) “deliberate community.” Using a relational ethics framework, the findings are discussed with regard to their potential to inform the development of integrated and inclusive physical activity programs, with emphasis on program structure and instructor reflexivity and training.

Social work education has been slow to integrate the intersectionality of disability, even though the prevalence of social work practice with disabled persons is increasing. The profession has historically prescribed to a medical model of disability and struggles with how best to support service users in the disability community. Social workers’ attitudes toward disabled persons is an essential component to the rapport and working relationship with persons with disabilities. As most social work graduates will encounter persons with disabilities in their practice, training and field education must incorporate assessment tools to assist in student evaluations with this population. Evidence suggests that field instructors need additional assessment tools for evaluating students’ preparedness for the field (Vinton & Wilke, 2011). This paper has three objectives: 1) to review disability competence within the social work profession in the North American context, 2) to compare the validity, practicality, and theoretical frameworks of two disability attitudinal scales as potential assessment tools for student evaluations, and 3) to offer recommendations for the implication of social work education and practice.

PurposeThis article presents a conceptual synthesis of the international literature on inclusive education while expanding upon, and incorporating, the articles in this special issue. The authors present their 3P model (philosophy, policy and praxis) and relate each paper in this special issue to different aspects of their model.Design/methodology/approachThis article serves as an epilogue to this special issue of theJournal of Educational Administrationas well as a discussion of historical and conceptual distinctions between mainstreaming and inclusion while examining global trends in understanding the move toward inclusive education.FindingsThe authors examined the detrimental effects of ableism and a medical model of disability and their effects on the educational system. They conducted an analysis based on examining the philosophy, policy and practice of the inclusive movement, specifically by examining conceptual models and inclusive decisions, conceptual frameworks for describing inclusive policy and a focus of the application to educational administration. The authors examined the global movement from segregation/exclusion to integration and then to inclusionary praxis.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors maintain that the inclusion literature lacks a sound positivistic empirical base, and so they present throughout the article possible avenues for such research as well as future directions for comparative research.Practical implicationsUnderstanding the philosophical underpinnings of the inclusive movement is central to developing viable inclusive educational settings. The authors distinguish between inclusive schools and local educational authorities where stakeholders have moved toward an inclusionary system (the minority) versus locales who are reluctant to move systems to actual change.Originality/valueThis article takes a wider view of inclusionary practices, from one focusing on children with disabilities to one focusing on historical and traditional exclusionary practices. By widening the scope of the inclusion discussion, to one of exclusion, the authors present a viably wider lens to educational administration.

PurposeThe United States (US) system of special education committed three original sins that perpetuate inequities between children with disabilities and their peers. The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of the US system, contrast this history against international disability law and identify opportunities for leaders to transform policy and practice for inclusive education.Design/methodology/approachThis paper explores the development of the three sins in US special education law: (1) weaving throughout it a medical model of disability, (2) failing to mandate inclusion and (3) hampering meaningful enforcement. The paper contrasts the US system with the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), an international law adopted by 180 nations that requires inclusion of people with disabilities at all levels of systems.FindingsThis paper finds that the United States has not embraced inclusion in education, but has permitted a continuum of segregation and integration. After a discussion of the three sins and the CRPD, the authors describe opportunities for international and US leaders to learn from the original sins of the United States and develop a system of true inclusion for all students through the transformation of policy and practice.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the literature on policy development and implementation, with implications for future amendments to US education law and international public administration of education.

The privation theory of evil (PTE) states that evil is the absence of some good that is supposed to be present. For example, if vision is an intrinsic good, and if human beings are supposed to have vision, then PTE implies that a human being’s lacking vision is an evil, or a bad state of affairs. The mere-difference view of disability (MDD) states that disabilities like blindness are not inherently bad. Therefore, it would seem that lacking sight is not a bad state of affairs. Thus PTE and MDD seem to be in tension. This essay discusses that apparent tension and explains how it might be resolved without doing violence to either view. Given the prominence of PTE in the history of Christian theology, and the wide support for MDD among disability theorists, it is worth finding a way to harmonize these two views.

The article is theoretical and concerns the situation of people with intellectual disabilities in the world of changing disability paradigms. The main thesis is based on the observation that the changes potentially brought by ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Poland may generate for this group (along with its parents and other supporters) a number of difficulties and doubts related to the practical implementation of the new model of approach to disability. For the purposes of the analysis, a VUCA scheme was used based on the categories of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity – corresponding to the assumptions of applied sociology.

In this chapter, the authors examine the challenges presented by supporting higher education students with disabilities in an online learning environment and put forth a discussion and recommendations for delivering literacy supports to geographically disparate students in fully online courses by embracing the social model of disability and universal design principals as opposed to the typical medical model of disability that it pervasive in educational systems. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, educational institutions are required to promote auxiliary aids and services. Broadly defined, these aids are meant to enhance communication, inclusion, and participation of people with disabilities. The discussion of the resources put forth in this chapter begins with an exploration of the evolving consensus on the nature of disability and the standard (medical) model for providing accommodations and supports for students with disabilities, which was developed before the rise of online and blended learning environments. Next, the authors explore the problems inherent in the use of the medical model and highlight how the social model and universal design for learning can be utilized to empower learners and enhance their learning experiences in online and blended learning environments. The discussion returns to the importance of inclusion, participation, and engagement for students with disabilities no matter the modality of learning. This chapter concludes with a comparison of two models of support and recommended changes for implementation of best practices to enhance literacy supports in online learning environments.

While there are many contestations surrounding the significance, meanings, and interpretations of dis/ability in the field of critical cultural studies, the author presents a variety of foundational as well as emergent concepts, structures, and histories in order to situate these debates. The 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2020, increasingly frequent criticisms of the “sea of whiteness” in disability critique, and an attendant call for equitable attention to intersectional theorization and practice, accompanied by a variety of frameworks, are employed to introduce the relevance of these contestations as well as to equip readers with opportunities to engage and study further.

Around the world, attention to the issue of disability inclusion is gaining increasing prominence. One strategy to promote disability-inclusion in benefit participation programs that a growing number of countries are considering is the creation of a disability identification (ID) card. There exists a long history of various types of disability ID cards (or certificates) and associated social protection schemes in high-income countries. Disability ID cards currently exist in many middle-income countries, and are under development or consideration in a growing number of low and middle-income countries. However, it should be acknowledged that many of the issues with respect to the administration of a disability ID card in low and middle-income countries differ from those in high-income countries. The purpose of this article is to discuss some of the challenges involved in creating a disability ID and identify key issues that can help in developing a framework for addressing these challenges in the context of low and middle-income countries. We argue that countries considering instituting disability ID cards must move with caution; ID card programs can only advance disability policy and the well being of persons with disabilities if undertaken in well-designed manner in line with a country's administrative capacity.

This article presents an archaeological inquiry into the early histories of Quality of Life (QoL) measures, and takes this as an occasion to rethink the concept of the ‘medical model of disability’. Focusing on three instruments that set the ground for the emergence of QoL measures, namely, the Karnofsky Performance Scale (KPS, 1948), and the classification of functional capacity as a diagnostic criterion for heart diseases (Bainton, 1928) and as a supplementary aid to therapeutic criteria in rheumatoid arthritis ( Steinbrocker, Traeger, and Batterman, 1949 ) – I discuss how medicine, throughout the emergence of QoL, began to expand its gaze beyond the confines of the body to what that body does in daily life. Building upon Armstrong et al.’s notion of ‘distal symptoms’ (2007) and Wahlberg’s idea of ‘knowledge of living’ (2018), I propose the notion of disabilitization to encapsulate this expansion of the clinical gaze, through which medicine has come to articulate diseases and their treatments in new ways, and in so doing, has inadvertently created disability as a new kind of knowledge category in itself – a category that is defined not through its reduction to mere pathology, but through its dispersal into everyday life. I present this concept not as a periodization, but as a provocative discontinuity with the totalizing history assumed within the medical model of disability, and in so doing, ask what, in fact, holds ‘the medical model’ together, and whether there might be other ways of understanding medicine’s complex relationship to disability than what the concept of the medical model allows us to envisage.

Intellectual Disability (ID) is not a disease or a disability, but a syndrome grouping similar to that of dementia, characterised by a pervasive cognitive impairment occurring in the early developmental period. It includes a heterogeneous group of conditions with considerable differences in the nature, ranging from genetic to environmental factors. The prevalence rate of ID for Northern European countries is reportedly around 0.7%, but it may rise to 4% in low and middle-income countries (LAMIC) (Durkin 2002; Maulik et al. 2011; Girimaji and Srinath 2010; Jeevanandam 2009). In these regions the excess rate of ID appears to be associated to fully preventable aetiologies such as teratogens, diet deficiencies, pregnancy and birth-related conditions (Persha et al. 2007; Bertelli et al. 2009). However, the cause remains not identified in 60% of persons with ID.

This thesis explores the experiences of parents with an intellectual disability who participated in a family support program over a twelve month period. It also explores the impact of this program on their ability to effectively parent and protect their children. Parents with an intellectual disability are overly represented within child protection notifications and investigations. This group of parents experience heightened surveillance, as do other marginalised groups, and having a disability becomes a form of oppression in a hostile environment (Read, 2000). Others liken their lived experiences to a form of apartheid (Goggin and Newell, 2005) where the social construction of disability produces negative perceptions and therefore responses by social institutions and systems.Limited attention has been paid to the needs and experiences of parents with an intellectual disability leaving them increasingly vulnerable in the community. Such parents are typically assumed to be 'bad' parents and children usually removed without accurate or appropriate assessment of risk and needs. Relatively few research programs have explored the issues for these parents and even fewer practice options have been available within the general field of family support. This study addresses this gap.This qualitative study explored the experiences of five families where one or both parents had an intellectual disability and where there was increased risk of notification to and or involvement of child protection authorities. All the families participated in a family support program specifically designed for parents with an intellectual disability over a twelve month period. Using in depth interviews with the parents and the practitioners who provided the interventions this study revealed important findings for future practice with this group. The thesis also discusses the implications for policy, practice and future research.

At a basic level, laws govern human relations and how we try to manage the world around us. Laws also help legitimize how some attempt to manage the interactions of all, with one another and our physical, social, cultural, economic, and political environments. This chapter tries to illuminate how laws historically operate in relation to public health issues and priorities in the United States, using examples of benefits and disability civil rights laws. The examples will show at least three levels of connection between public health and the operation of law that significantly impact people with disabilities. First, law directly mediates how disabled persons gain access to public benefits, some of which are general and some of which are intended only for people with disabilities. Second, law itself is a major tool for changing our environment and for gaining access to social determinants of health. Third, the law establishes who is a full rights-bearing subject of law who has independent capacity to try and enforce those rights as an individual or as a member of a protected group. There is overlap among these connections, but it is useful for analysis to distinguish between them. The end of the chapter suggests a fourth connection that occurs as our larger environment shapes how society writes and enforces law even as our laws, in turn, shape how we perceive a need for law and its just implementation. Disability civil rights laws have tried to change how disability is understood and are therefore treated in and under laws relating to public health.

Many commonly accepted models for understanding disability use a vertical method in which disability is defined as a category into which people are slotted based on whether or not they fit its definitional criteria. This method, and the models of disability developed in accordance with it, inevitably homogenizes the experiences of disabled people to preserve the integrity of the definition of disability that a given model provides. A hermeneutic investigation and critique of commonly accepted models for understanding disability will provide an epistemological tool that makes it possible both to critique and to augment contemporary models of disability.

The 2007–2008 financial crisis has affected the prospects for workers in a range of ways. In-work poverty represents just one, yet key feature of how prospects for workers have changed in recent times. In-work poverty disproportionately impacts on marginalised groups, such as the disabled. Current research reveals little about how disability and poverty intersect in the context of employment. To address this oversight, life history interviews were conducted with disabled people in in-work poverty. The findings were analysed using the social model of disability and the lens of intersectionality. The results highlight how government policies, employer practices and household finances impact on disabled workers’ lived experience of in-work poverty. The findings suggest that governments and employers can do more to reduce barriers to escaping in-work poverty for disabled workers.

The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) framework is an excellent tool to facilitate the writing of functional goals for children who exhibit communication disorders and other developmental problems that require services from professionals in multiple therapeutic areas. The holistic view of children provides each professional with an approach that integrates how one's specific health conditions and contextual factors influence a child's functioning and participation in daily activities. This allows the interprofessional team to view the child as a person, recognizing how one need influences another within his or her environment.

The International Summit on Intellectual Disability and Dementia covered a range of issues related to dementia and intellectual disability, including the dearth of personal reflections of persons with intellectual disability affected by dementia. This article reflects on this deficiency and explores some of the personal perspectives gleaned from the literature, from the Summit attendees and from the experiences of persons with intellectual disability recorded or scribed in advance of the two-day Summit meeting. Systemic recommendations included reinforcing the value of the involvement of persons with intellectual disability in (a) research alongside removing barriers to inclusion posed by institutional/ethics review boards, (b) planning groups that establish supports for dementia and (c) peer support. Practice recommendations included (a) valuing personal perspectives in decision-making, (b) enabling peer-to-peer support models, (c) supporting choice in community-dwelling arrangements and (d) broadening availability of materials for persons with intellectual disability that would promote understanding of dementia.

Due to the expected decline in the working-age population, especially in European countries, people with disabilities are now more often recognized as a valuable resource in the workforce and research into disability and employment is more important than ever. This paper outlines the state of affairs of research on disability and employment. We thereby focus on one particular group of people with disabilities, that is to say people with mental disabilities. We define disability according to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) of the World Health Organization, by that recognizing that disability results from the interaction of person and environment. Key issues, including the complexity of defining disability, the legal situation in Europe and North America concerning disability at work, and barriers and enablers to employment, are discussed. For each of the topics we show important findings in the existing literature and indicate where more in-depth research is needed. We finalize with a concrete research agenda on disability and employment and provide recommendations for practice.