The Role of Estonian Community Settings for Achieving Independent Living for Persons with Disabilities in Eastern European Countries

This article is dedicated to analysing the implementation of Article 19 (paragraphs ‘b’ and ‘c’) of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (hereby: the CRPD) in community settings in Estonia and how Estonian experiences can shift the development of independent living and deinstitutionalization in other non-European Union member countries of Eastern Europe. In this regard, this article depicts the details of independent living for persons with mental health problems according to the UN CRPD Committee. Furthermore, the introduction of Maarja Küla (village) SA and its role in providing independent living has been highlighted as well. Finally, the primary obstacles in Eastern European countries ahead of establishing an independent living as well as solutions for the implementation of Article 19 are underlined, and as an author, I have emphasized how to foster deinstitutionalization in the conclusion. In most congregated community settings where organizational management techniques have relied on the medical model of disability rather than the social model of disability, inhabitants suffer from legal incapacitation in most cases. These community settings had been established before the adoption of the CRPD, but gradually have been developed and adjusted to the fundamental principles of the Convention. In my view, a human rights approach has been emerging in such places, though the UN CRPD Committee has urged to rectify management methods and to promote the social model of disability. This research paper also aims to describe the current situation in community settings that has arisen following the pandemic and to find out scientific and practical solutions to abolish the remaining elements of the medical model of disability and to substitute the human rights approach towards a social model of disability in the management and philosophical views of community settings for persons with disabilities.

Constructing Ableism

This essay builds upon research in disability studies through the extension of Garland-Thomson’s figure of the normate. I argue that biopower, through the disciplinary normalization of individual bodies and the biopolitics of populations, in the nineteenth-century United States produced the normate citizen as a white, able-bodied man. The normate citizen developed with the new political technology of power that emerged with the transition from sovereign power to biopower. I focus on the disciplinary normalization of bodies and the role of industrial capitalism in the construction of able-bodied norms. I argue that the medical model of disability is produced through a dual process of incorporation: the production of corporeal individuals and the localization of illness in the body.

Hak atas Pekerjaan bagi Penyandang Disabilitas di Sektor Publik: Antara Model Disabilitas Sosial dan Medis

The opportunity to fulfill the rights to work for persons with disabilities has been increasing since the ratification of Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Indonesia has adopted a “quota scheme” through the Law Number 8 of 2016 on Persons with Disabilities where government institution has set a minimum quantity of two percent as the number of workers for persons with disabilities as affirmative action targeted at promoting human rights. This article examines the progress of the legal framework for persons with disabilities by using a case study in civil cervants in the public sector. We argue that despite Indonesia’s disability legal regime has pushed the social model of disabilities that promotes human rights-based approach, its implementation is still based on the medical model of disability, in which it sees persons with disabilities on physical condition, and thus, they are assumed to be able to work in a certain field determined by the government. This article argues that affirmative policy does not provide equal opportunities to persons with disabilities as the special formation and medical requirements prevent them from applying for occupations that match their interests and educational background. The use of the medical model of disability in providing employment opportunities in the public sector prevents the level of participation and the formation of an inclusive workplace environment. Abstrak Peluang untuk memenuhi hak atas pekerjaan bagi para penyandang disabilitas terus meningkat sejak ratifikasi Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Indonesia mengadopsi “skema kuota” melalui UU Nomor 8 Tahun 2016 tentang Penyandang Disabilitas di mana institusi negara menetapkan minimal dua persen jumlah formasi pekerja bagi para penyandang disabilitas sebagai tindakan afirmatif yang ditargetkan untuk mempromosikan hak asasi manusia. Artikel ini memeriksa sejauh mana kerangka kerja hukum disabilitas di Indonesia memfasilitasi pemenuhan hak atas pekerjaan bagi penyandang disabilitas dengan menggunakan contoh kasus pada penyelenggaraan ketenagakerjaan di sektor publik. Kami berpendapat bahwa meskipun rezim hukum disabilitas di Indonesia menekankan model sosial disabilitas yang mempromosikan pendekatan berbasis hak asasi manusia, implementasinya masih didasarkan pada model medis disabilitas yang memandang penyandang disabilitas berdasarkan kondisi fisik dan karenanya diasumsikan hanya dapat masuk pada bidang pekerjaan yang telah ditentukan oleh negara. Artikel ini berpendapat bahwa kebijakan afirmatif tidak memberikan peluang yang setara bagi penyandang disabilitas karena formasi khusus dan persyaratan medis menghambat mereka untuk melamar pada bidang pekerjaan yang sesuai dengan minat dan latar belakang pendidikannya. Penggunaan model medis disabilitas dalam penyelenggaraan kesempatan kerja di sektor publik pada gilirannya menghambat tingkat partisipasi dan pembentukan lingkungan kerja yang inklusif.

Childhood, disability and vocational training in Franco's Spain during the 1950s and early 1960s

PurposeThis paper analyses the strategies designed by Franco´s dictatorship to address the “problem” of children with physical disabilities, focusing on the relevance given to vocational training.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws mainly on official documents, reports from international organisations, and Spanish experts' papers.FindingsFrancoism turned labour into one of the key pillars of its national project and included vocational training in the different stages of school life. From the mid-1950s, vocational training also became a key factor for the dictatorship's strategy towards disability. Following the recommendations issued by international agencies, Francoism began to adopt different measures towards the rehabilitation of children with disabilities. One of them was the creation, in 1959, of a special unit for adolescents within the National Institute for the Rehabilitation of Invalids. In addition to medical treatment, this unit provided children with education and vocational training.Originality/valueThe value of this paper lies in the fact that the topic it analyses has been little studied. Until now no attention has been given to the special unit for adolescents, despite it being a very interesting example of the medical model of disability and its contradictions. During their stay at the unit children were promised greater autonomy and independence, but their lives also became medicalised and they were forced to collaborate with experts.

The Purpose of Play

Play presents a popular pastime for all humans, though not all humans play alike. Subsequently, Human–Computer Interaction Games research is increasingly concerned with the development of games that serve neurodivergent 1 players. In a critical review of 66 publications informed by Disability Studies and Self-Determination Theory, we analyse which populations , research methods, kinds of play and overall purpose goals existing games address. We find that games are largely developed for children, in a top-down approach. They tend to focus on educational and medical settings and are driven by factors extrinsic to neurodivergent interests. Existing work predominantly follows a medical model of disability, which fails to support self-determination of neurodivergent players and marginalises their opportunities for immersion. Our contribution comprises a large-scale investigation into a budding area of research gaining traction with the intent to capture a status quo and identify opportunities for future work attending to differences without articulating them as deficit.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the ways that The Mark of Slavery moves between experiences of disability in everyday enslaved life and the discursive relationship between racism and ableism forged in antebellum medicine, law, politics, and popular culture. The “new” disability history and, in particular, this field’s use of a social (as opposed to a medical) model of disability is central to the project of writing a disability history of slavery. Disability’s power to stigmatize derived from its relationship to abnormality and its ability to rationalize inequality hinged on one’s real or imagined proximity to it. As disability intertwined with the broader metalanguage of race in the antebellum years, it minimized or amplified specific qualities imagined as innate to whiteness or blackness, racializing and delimiting “normal” bodies.

Reconceptualizing Assistance for Young Children of Color With Disabilities in an Inclusion Classroom

In this article, we draw on DisCrit to critically analyze how a group of early childhood educators approached assistance with young children of color with disabilities in a Head Start inclusion classroom. Using examples from data collected over one school year, we demonstrate how child-centered assistance advances justice for young children of color with disabilities who are often subjected to a surveillance culture in schools. We critique assistance that aligns with the medical model of disability and aims to change young children of color with disabilities to conform to ableist, racist expectations of schooling. We offer examples of assistance practices that contrastingly aim to support young children of color with disabilities to pursue their own interests and purposes. Through these counterstories, we reconceptualize assistance as a practice that can support young children of color with disabilities to be more fully themselves.

Music Theory’s Therapeutic Imperative and the Tyranny of the Normal

Traditional music theory rationalizes abnormal musical elements (like dissonant or chromatic tones or formal anomalies) with respect to normal ones. It is thus allied with a medical model of disability, understood as a deficit or defect located within an individual body, and requiring remediation or cure. A newer sociocultural model of disability understands it as a culturally stigmatized deviance from normative standards for bodily appearance and functioning, analogous to (and intersectional with) race, gender, and sexuality as a source of affirmative political and cultural identity. The sociocultural model of disability suggests the possibility of a disablist music theory, one that subverts the traditional therapeutic imperative and resists the tyranny of the normal. Disablist music theory is music theory without norms, and without a commitment to wholeness, unity, coherence, and completeness—those fantasies of a normal, healthy body. Instead, disablist theory brings the seemingly anomalous event to the center of the discussion and revels in the commotion and discombobulation that result: it makes the normal strange. In the process, it opens up our sense of what music theory is and might be.

Inclusive education in Italy: Historical steps, positive developments, and challenges

The Italian school system has a long tradition of inclusive education, starting in the 1970s with the first experiences of integrating students with disabilities into regular schools. Since then, legislation has developed to guarantee students with disabilities and other special educational needs the right to individualization and personalization. This article presents the main developments in Italian inclusive education, documenting both positive outcomes and ongoing challenges, especially those which could be of interest for international readers. The article is structured around three relevant themes: the persistent influence of an individual-medical model of disability on school practices; support opportunities and additional resources for inclusion; and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms and their role in the improvement of the quality of inclusion.

Imagining Accessibility: Theorizing Disability in Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction

With its emphasis on futurity, its close association with scientific plausibility, and its dedicated interrogation of contemporary ideologies, science fiction stands as a genre ripe with possibilities for disability studies. Many scholars have used the genre and its texts as platforms from which to either condemn or laud representations of disability within a field explicitly concerned with a society's future. My essay contributes to this discussion by foregrounding a science fiction text to theorize what a disabled future looks like. I take as my primary text a selection of short fiction from Uncanny Magazine, an online magazine that published a disability-themed issue Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction in 2018. The stories contained are penned exclusively by authors that identify as disabled; their visions of a disabled future, then, emerge from the contemporary experience of the disabled community. In addition to centering themselves in the discourse, these writers envision a disabled future as one that emphasizes community and frequently critiques and interrogates the costs, emotional and physical, inherent in the medical model of disability, announcing that a truly disabled future is one that features rather than erases the disabled mind and body. Running with the banner of destroying SF, these writers challenge the conventional, harmful tropes that SF has perpetuated and erects in its place an inclusive, intersectional, and disabled future.