The Disability Rights Movement

This chapter provides an overview of the social movement advocating for disability rights, including its origins, goals, strategies, structure, and impact. The chapter’s primary focus is on the movement in the United States, although developments in other nations are also discussed. The chapter reviews the origins of the disability rights movement in the 20th century in response to stigma and discrimination associated with disabilities and the medical model of disability; addresses the movement’s advocacy strategies, as well as the social model of disability that provided the conceptual underpinning for its goals and activities; and describes how the major components of the movement, including cross-disability organization, were brought together through collaboration and the common experiences of disability culture.

Equity: What Model Should We Use When We Talk About Autism?

In the Canadian disability rights movement, with regards to autism specifically, there has been a shift towards recognizing what is called a social model of disability. Through this movement, there has been a desire to incorporate that model into practice in governments, institutions, and healthcare. This desire also stems from advocate-centric and first-voice communities, where disabilities like autism are not viewed through a deficit-based lens. This article aims to discuss the often polarizing social and medical models of disability, comparing their uses in the disability world while weighing their respective benefits. Finally, an alternative model of disability that intersects these models is discussed as an alternative. This model is called the International Classification of Functioning, which recognizes three levels that impair a disabled person: the body, the person, and the environment. It is from this focus that policy can be developed to answer the calls of the pan-disability movement; to provide equitable changes across services and domains that are rightly deserved for Autistic and disabled people.

“Companions”

The documentary Crip Camp presents a 1970s summer camp for disabled youth as a place of friendship and political dialogues that spawned the American disability rights movement. The film also represented Camp Jened as a haven of racial harmony and inclusion. Jened was not the only American micro-community of disability solidarity and political possibilities that also involved questions of racial politics. Scholars have criticized disability activists and disability studies scholars for neglecting problems of racial oppression. This historical study examines three examples of empowering disability subcultures in twentieth century America: Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Warm Springs rehabilitation resort from the mid-1920s through the mid-1940s, the Rolling Quads at the University of California, Berkeley, in the late 1960s, and Camp Interdependence in California in the 1980s. The article interrogates the racial politics of these egalitarian communities.

Participation: ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’

This chapter focuses on the participation of disabled people. It starts by looking at the way in which disabled people organisations joined forces in the CRPD’s negotiation process and disabled people managed to infuse their claims into the Convention, thereby accelerating the formation of the disability rights movement. It then turns to the domestic level examining the obligation to consult disabled people ‘through their representative organizations’, including the requirements of such consultations, and the necessity of facilitating the participation of disabled people in the implementation of the Convention. It also explores the broader implications of ‘Nothing about us without us’ for international human rights law with regard to the involvement of civil society organisations.

Teaching and the Experience of Disability: The Pedagogy of Ed Roberts

Ed Roberts was a renowned activist considered to be one of the founding leaders of the American disability rights movement. Although he engaged in numerous political strategies, his main form of activism was teaching in his prolific public speaking career across the United States and around the world. The content and methods of his pedagogy were crafted from his own personal experiences as a disabled man. His teaching featured autobiographic selections from his own life in which he fought and defeated forces of oppression and discrimination. This article examines Roberts’ disability rights teaching in relation to the experiential sources, political content, and teaching techniques.

A critical reflection on the Health and Care Professions Council Standards of Proficiency for music therapists: A critical disability studies perspective

This article takes the theoretical and philosophical lens of critical disability studies to critically reflect on the Health and Care Professions Council Standards of Proficiency for Arts Therapists. The discipline of critical disability studies, evolving from disability studies and the disability rights movement, is initially defined before multiple paradigms of disability are introduced as central tenets of these disciplines. The relationship between critical disability studies and music therapy is explored, with reference to seminal publications and the perceptions of music therapy within them. The Health and Care Professions Council Standards of Proficiency are then taken as a source of reflection to attempt to understand the perpetuation of medicalised perspectives in the profession and the potential friction between critical disability studies and music therapy. A selection of the Standards of Proficiency are analysed according to distinct paradigms of disability. Questions are posed to interrogate and contextualise the standards in relation to critical disability studies philosophy. From this critical reflection, a discussion emerges which reflects on the reach of these professional standards and how they might contribute to a continuing, outdated expert-model of music therapy in the United Kingdom. The article concludes by drawing these threads together in a series of recommendations to educators, practitioners and the wider profession.

Praesidalism

This chapter explains how it is easy for the author to focus on the communicative function of language when a mother has a child with minimal language. It points out how language remains a blunt instrument in the author's house as she paid more attention to equipping Jonah with tools to express his preferences. It also discusses vitriol that was being exchanged online over whether to use the phrase “autistic person” or “person with autism.” The chapter emphasizes the person-first language endorsed by the disability rights movement since the 1980s. It refers to Lydia Brown and other self-advocates that opt for identity-first language, such as “autistic person” or simply “autistic,” as they understand that autism is an inherent part of an individual's identity.

Mental capacity and decision-making

This chapter takes the reader through the elements that make up mental capacity and underpin, therefore, decision-making. The provisions of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) are considered in some detail, but the laws governing other jurisdictions in the UK are mentioned. It discusses the legal consequences of incapacity, both for the older person concerned and others, are considered and broader principles (e.g. to do with best interests) governing the use of restraint, deprivation of liberty, and support for decision making. Finally, we turn our attention to how international human rights legislation, and the international disability rights movement generally, increasingly shape the legal approach to capacity and decision making in the UK. The chapter ends, therefore, by considering the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the compatibility of the MCA with its provisions.