Disability
- Parkinson’s disease, Pirates and Tai Chi (PDF)
- We recommend the following book on disabilities for a new perspective: Disability Studies Today, by Colin Barnes, Mike Oliver, Len Barton. Wiley-Blackwell, 2002. For a sample of their approach, see the following quote:
“Traditional approaches [to disability] centered almost exclusively on individual limitations, whether real or imagined, as the principle cause of the multiple deprivations encountered by disabled people. By contrast the social interpretation argues that people with accredited or perceived impairments, regardless of cause, are disabled by society’s failure to accommodate their needs.
This approach does not deny the significance of impairment in people’s lives, but concentrates instead on the various barriers, economic, political and social, constructed on top of impairment. Thus ‘disability’ is not a product of individual failings, but is socially created; explanations of its changing character are found in the organization and structures of society. Rather than identifying disability as an individual limitation, the social model identifies society as the problem and looks to fundamental political and cultural changes to generate solutions.” (Barnes et al, 2002: 5)
